Bridging the gap: Investigating device-feature exposure in cross-platform development

Abstract

By traversing academia and developer communities, two predominant approaches to cross-platform mobile development have been identified, specifically Hybrid and Interpreted. Previous research has established the use and integration of platform- and device-specific features to be core requirements for cross-platform frameworks. In this study we assess and discuss how the Hybrid and Interpreted approaches facilitate the use of native device features from within a JavaScript context, and how custom communication bridges are both developed and integrated. Our research motivation lies in data from an industry survey, stating that developers perceive device communication as a real pain-point. While both approaches exist to ease development of mobile apps, they are fundamentally different at a technical level. The article takes a technical approach, drawing evaluations and discussions from two app implementations. Our findings indicate that implementation and development of communication bridges are non-complex tasks, and that execution-time performance varies greatly.