App Development discussion

armandorg

Hello,

So recently we have been thinking of creating an app for our country with some specific feature that will include GPS tracker, place map locator, photos, instagram feed and some information. The app will be mostly static [no registration or such, as a start though.] We want it both for Android and iOS.

However we lack a team member who knows how to program apps, we are all website developers mostly and have no experience at all in mobile building.

What would you do in this case and who would you think would make the job done. Should we look into these "app makers with no coding needed..." etc. Do you use anything currently?

Looking to hear some opinions regarding this. Hiring somebody is out of option.

Regards, Armand

FlamesRunner

https://developer.android.com

https://developer.apple.com/swift/

Good luck.

mohamed

@armandorg

Did you hear about Cordova, ionic and framework7 ?

armandorg

@mohamed I've heard of those, if i'm not wrong building an app using HTML/CSS/JavaScript?

mohamed

@armandorg

yes, that is application UI but the backend can be php/python or any backend you like.

FlamesRunner

@armandorg said:
@mohamed I've heard of those, if i'm not wrong building an app using HTML/CSS/JavaScript?

Google's Android has progressive web application support. That may be an option.

wlambrechts

Can I recommend www.b4x.com ? Using it for a long time, easy to use, excellent support ...

jh

I own a company that creates software, much of it for mobile. I would consider a few things:

• Non-native apps tend to have a poorer user experience (e.g. lag). If you want mass appeal (including good ratings on the App Store / Play Store), a native app is the way to go.
• There are some limitations with cross-platform development. If you need a feature that can't be implemented in the framework (e.g. a long time ago, we were building an app to take short bursts of video and join the clips together, which was impossible in the frameworks we considered), you may end up having to rewrite the whole app.
• Apple in particular is starting to reject apps that could essentially be a mobile website (i.e. no real engagement). This doesn't sound like it's relevant in your case though.

If your web developers are generally good software engineers then you could give them some time to get to know Swift/Java. They'll probably thank you for it.

Alternatively, you could outsource development. As a rough guide, we tend to charge £3500-ish (GBP) to create a simple app for Android OR iOS.

TriJetScud

Xamarin is a great framework to get started on if you want to share the maximum amount of code possible across mobile platforms.

Since Visual Studio 2017 that has the Xamarin add-on is free, you can easily get started with coding mobile apps with the .NET framework which isn't too hard to pick up on.

Ympker

You might wanna play around a bit with Android Studio

Pandy

There's also React Native, where you can create the application with react like framework, but its not html/css but something similar in terms of use (just dont expect everything html/css to work there)

it compiles into native code, so it should be pretty performant, and if your team already knows react then it should be decently easy. loads of addons for it too for different stuff, and everything should work in both ios and android

willie

Yeah like Pandy I was about to mention React Native if you are already using React. It does result in a bloated app from what I've heard.

elwebmaster

Cordova / Ionic would be the way to go in your case. Just make sure your devs really are good web devs and you will be fine. A web app can perform just as smooth as a native app if you code it with performance in mind, which a good web dev can do. Improving your team's web dev skills (in particular CSS and modern JavaScript) will likely pay off more in the future since your other initiatives are all web, as opposed to "kind of learning" Android AND Swift which will be useless outside the mobile project.

willie

elwebmaster said: A web app can perform just as smooth as a native app

Sorry, that is dreaming .

try4lontalk

A shortcut is to try searching similar apps on Github, or other open-source platforms.

Once you get the source codes of those similar apps, you can modify them to suit for your needs. It will be much better than you start everything from scratch.

lukesUbuntu

I like react-native or nativescript

here is a good video on the differences between some of the frameworks out there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb8smP_xTTY

Farish

React Native is very fast and will write to both platforms equally well. Example of React Native apps in the market discord, uber eats, Airbnb, Instagram, and vogue which won an award from Apple.

mrtz

@jh said:
- Non-native apps tend to have a poorer user experience (e.g. lag). If you want mass appeal (including good ratings on the App Store / Play Store), a native app is the way to go.

Thats a fun thing tho, what do you consider native? Do you consider Xamarin native, for example?

mark_lemberg

From my side, I would like to recommend this https://www.codejig.com/en/builder/ app development platform - because it's really fast way to create something great without big efforts

armandorg

@mark_lemberg said:
From my side, I would like to recommend this https://www.codejig.com/en/builder/ app development platform - because it's really fast way to create something great without big efforts

Thanks mate, it's not like it's been too much, just a year. I'll probably decide by next year.