Is HTML5 a Fad or a Mobile Technology to Reckon With?

Before just reaching an irrational decision of following something or banishing something, one needs to know exactly what it is.

People are ranting and raving about HTML 5 , but is it worth the attention it is gaining is what catches my fancy.

Moreover, as a developer i believe it is my responsibility to disseminate the right  information in the market which can help business owners to take a rational decision in order to choose the best technology.

Let’s get familiar!

Question: Why there is a fight among the technologies?

Answer: The proliferation of these devices in the technical town has led to a chaos, as people now have devices of varied sizes and resolution which is a bottleneck to development. You cannot speculate the devices which are yet to come in the market and moreover the current market is also full of numerous devices.

Question: What are we looking for ?

Answer: Firstly, we aim to deliver the an unfettered experience on all the devices, irrespective of their size and resolution. Secondly, we need to keep our business motive intact and find out a sustainable development technology, which is budget friendly and do not compromises with the quality.

Question: What are our options?

Answer: We have  three options, namely: HTML 5 technology, Native apps and Hybrid.

Explore your options

HTML5 being a descendant of HTML. It is an advanced version if markup language which is used to web pages and apps that can function well on all the devices. It also comes with more advanced features of the web development such as audio features, streaming video as well as additional storage device and specific tools for particular devices. HTML 5 is one of the strong contenders when it comes to making a choice among the technological platforms suited best for multiple devices. As nothing is infallible, the approach has its own highs and lows.

Native app development technology is a platform specific methodology for creating mobile apps which can run only on the platform it is designed for. For instance, we have iOS apps which are built with Objective-C and Xcode and Android apps are built with Eclipse and Java. No technology can match the level of competence they deliver , but the problem is that they are quite out of budget for a medium scale industry.

HTML5: A test of mettle

HTML5 has single handedly changes the web development methodology by providing a platform that can build apps for all the devices present in the market and that too with proficiency.  These apps can be easily upgraded with new functionality without installing the updates.

1) In built audio/video playback

We are well aware of the fact that in the previous versions of HTML , developers had to use third party software such as Silverlight, Adobe Flash Player and some more such softwares to run a video or audio file. Though these software helped us, but this still had many complications as at times there were a lot of errors which were encountered while running the files. HTML5 has emerged as a gladiator to solve this problem.

Talking about statistics, we have ample lot of websites which have adopted HTML5.

A code written for HTML5 video playback :

 

In the code mentioned above, there are two files. This is responsible for helping the browser choose a compatible file. Let us suppose that your browser does not supports .mp4 format, then it will switch to the .ogg format mentioned in the next file. 

2) Sophisticated Code

Another major development in HTML 5 is that is it has made the long monotonous and messy sheets of HMTL code much cleaner. Even a wee bit change in the coding and finding out a specific piece of code can be a herculean task. HTML 5 is a more systematize and cleaner version, which is  favorable to the developers and is also optimized for better readability of the search engine. Wherefore, the search engines can easily crawl up to your website as the content is now easily understood by it and this is why it results in getting better ranking in the search results.

3) Offline Caching

This quality of offline caching of HTML5 apps helps to gain it a brownie point. You can load elements of a webpage and for this an internet connection is not a requisite if the user has visited the site earlier.  Moreover, this is good for those who travel quite often and encounter the problem of intermittent connection, as the elements can be easily downloaded irrespective of the fact that you have a poor internet connection.

HTML5 offers the developers the leverage to assign files that can be saved on the browser of the users. HTML5 has launched this brand new technique of Offline caching.

4) Compatibility with the different platforms

One of the major factor one needs to look at before choosing a development platform is to check for its compatibility with major browsers such as Internet explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome. This is where HTML5 has an edge as it do not state that all the elements of HTML 5 will be supported by the browsers, but it won’t at least show an error message as the doctype will be read on the bare minimum condition.

5) Optimizing for mobile

HTML5 is one of the most easiest ways to build mobile friendly apps as it offers comprehensive functionalities. HTML5 bases responsive apps offer highly competitive user experience which requires minimum scrolling, resizing and panning and renders a seamless browsing experience to the users.

Looking at this Adobe has stopped its mobile Flash Player, which a for the benefit of HTML5, which is further counted on to carry on much more interactive tasks on gadgets of different size.

Bare Bones!

Selection of a particular tool is dependent on a lot of factors which is dependent on an organization’s strategy. Other factors also depend on the skills on the developers hired, functionalities needed, interoperability and the security concerns.

Author Biography:

Samuel Dawson is a expert professional in Designs2html Ltd where he is a responsbile Front End Manager. He convert psd to html files very quickly. Samuel has shared a great thought above on how HTML5 has changed the scenario of mobile apps.