Advantages / Disadvantages of the HTML / Objective-C iphone Hybrid Application

Question

Are there any significant advantages / disadvantages that I should consider when developing an application that decides whether to create elements (stylized menus, pages with content with a complex layout, etc.) in HTML / UIWebview or do it all on native language?

I would like to hear how people experience this.

Answer 1

Personally, I believe that I do not like web applications that are (usually) disguised as iOS apps. I tend to notice a lot of discrepancies between the web application user interface and the native application, and most of the time it bothers me (my biggest pet button pressed a button and saw that it stands out with a small translucent black box around it, like a link ) Now I can’t imagine the main demographic user, who probably doesn’t care, but this is my personal opinion.

From a programming point of view, I have never written a web application before, but I assume that it will be slightly less structured than the native application, just because writing HTML, Javascript and CSS does not make you assume a specific project structure, unlike applications iPhone, which have various types, controllers, etc. Depending on what you want to write, it may be liberation, but it can also get confused very quickly.

As the middapark said, you can also use a mixture of the two systems if you want. I mean, I assume that you are as good a web developer as an iOS developer. If you are stronger in one suit than in another, then I say that you should lean toward a direction in that direction. I'd rather see a superbly written web application than a poorly written native application, and vice versa.

Answer 2

I suspect that the main advantages / disadvantages are related to the user interface - the “native” UIKit-based user interface will be much more natural than manipulating elements in a web view. (This also means that you can use more of the "standard" components, such as navigation controllers, tab bars, etc.)

However, there is no reason not to use a combination of the two, with the main user interface implemented through various UIKit objects and content provided through a web view.

Answer 3

I would also add that the biggest problem I encountered with hybrid frameworks is that you add another dependency to your application.

For example, take the big iOS update. If your chosen infrastructure breaks, your application crashes and you cannot fix it until the framework is fixed.

In addition, there are many frameworks now, and you should pray that the one you choose does not flush or support the support of one of your target platforms.

Answer 4

Another problem is that in a web application / component that you skip on certain platforms technologies and infrastructures such as core data, GCD (or any other streaming model that can be executed on the Internet, such as Ajax) , uitableview with caching, etc.

If you click on the wall when it comes to performance or storage, then you have many more options in your own structure.