The mobile application development scene is a difficult target for developers due to variation in development and distribution methods. Native development requires more effort, but has the best performance and a native look and feel for the user interface. Web-based solutions are easier to develop and distribute to several platforms, but suffer from the lack of access to device features. As a result, several tools have been created to bridge this gap.
Mobile application generators offer a way to access functionality that is native to a device, while the development is done using common web technologies. Choosing the most suitable generator could be difficult, due to issues in mobile development and differences between the tools. The issues in mobile application development include the lack of asset portability between mobile operating systems and multiple development technologies being used. Therefore, a set of metrics and criteria were proposed to evaluate mobile application generators, based on previous research and identified characteristics of these tools.
Information about the tools was hard to find. Nevertheless, many differences in provided functionality were noted, even within a single generator. Some mobile operating systems had better support, and differences in implementation could interfere with using the same assets for several target platforms. Three publicly available mobile application generators were evaluated using the proposed metrics and criteria. They turned out to be rather similar from the usage perspective, all capable of generating relatively simple multi-platform applications from user-created source code. Depending on whether faster multi-platform development or more efficient applications with a native look and feel are preferred, it is up to the developer to decide the development method.
