HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
to your web server, and all of your users will instantly have the latest version of
your application.
In Figure 2-5 you can see how the Twitter native application (left) and mobile
web application (right) show the difference between a social application as a
native application and as a mobile web application. As you can see, there is no
real difference. The main feature to be dropped in the mobile web application is
the ability to share content using third-party native applications. Twitter has also
removed the ability to share photos on the mobile web application.
Object/feature detection could provide the ability to upload photos on certain
devices.
Figure 2-5.
Twitter native application (left) and Twitter mobile web application (right)
The information gathered so far in this section should help you decide whether
to go native or mobile web.
There is, however, a third option. Multiple phone web-based application
frameworks, such as PhoneGap, Appcelerator, and Rhomobile, will allow you to
build your applications in XHTML/JavaScript and CSS, but leverage some of the
APIs that might only be available to native web apps.
These frameworks provide a web view for you to develop your app within, and
provide a proxy to the mobile's APIs by using JavaScript as a bridge between
the two. Figure 2-6 shows the structure of multiple phone web-based
application frameworks.
