HTML5 VS NATIVE APP IS I

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1 HTML5 VS NATIVE APP WHICH ORGANIZATI IS I ION? RIGHT FOR YOUR This white paper discusses the pros and cons of the available approaches available to organizations seeking to develop their first smartphone App.

2 HTML5 vs Native app WHICH IS RIGHT FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION? INTRODUCTION Your organization has decided to release its first App. You are confronted first with a difficult yet fundamental question Native or HTML5? If you re new to the issues around mobile applications, you may be asking why this question even exists. After all, our lives have been transformed by web based apps we access on our browsers (webmail, Salesforce.com, WordPress, and dozens of others). So why do we even have to ask about native vs browserbased Apps on SmartPhones and tablets, when we love web apps on the laptop?? The answer lies in the unique capabilities of these devices. Your desktop doesn t have a GPS, movie camera, or an accelerometer. And HTML5 does not have the same ability to leverage the full power of these SmartPhone/tablet features. A Native App does. What is HTML5? Physicist Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML in the 1980 s as a simple way of presenting, organizing and serving up text and images. It is basically the language of the World Wide Web and is the instructions to your browser about how to build a particular web page. Over the years HTML evolved to include video and rich Internet applications such as Flash and JavaScript, some requiring an additional software module called a plug-in. The current HTML4 standard was first proposed in 1997, and has undergone several updates over the years. Copyright Stack Agility Inc Page 1

3 HTML5 represents the attempt by the World Wide Web Consortium to include the additional capabilities of today s hardware and update the software to eliminate the need for plug-in applications while still providing a richer user experience. advantage of this is that it promises the ability for developers to write one application that runs on multiple platforms using the web browser. The potential for this savings is very significant, and this is the first time that a browser-based App could contend in the mobile space. For example, previously if your mobile browser lost connectivity with the Internet, your App would stop functioning. HTML5 includes API s that allow the App to continue working without a network connection. Until HTML5 the notion of a browser-based App was not a serious consideration for anyone wanting a quality user experience. What is a native APP Native Apps are software programs that run on a particular Operating System (OS) such as ios (Apple) or Android (Google). An App designed for one will not run on the other. Smartphones all come with pre-loaded Apps for mail, text messaging, making phone calls, Internet browsing, and possibly other things such as stock quotes and weather reports. Each SmartPhone user then customizes their experience with one of hundreds of thousands of Apps that can be downloaded from various App stores, some of which are run by the OS developers. Because they are designed with a particular OS in mind, Native Apps have the advantage of smoother integration with other Apps and the device hardware functions such as GPS, video/still cameras, and the accelerometer. This adds up to better memory management and a richer user experience in general as compared to Apps developed in HTML5. The NATIVE VS HTML5 THE FACE OFF There are several factors that you want to consider when deciding between HTML5 and Native Apps. Page 2 Copyright Stack Agility Inc. 2013

4 1. User experience Native Apps simply give the designer a much greater control of the look and feel of the App. Major brands want to know exactly what the device experience will be and it s just simpler to control those elements with native. The features in HTML5 pale in comparison to the features that native developers can leverage in their apps, and the more picky brand managers will prefer the ability of a Native App to totally control the on screen experience for the user. Not having access to gestures such as double-tap or pinch and spread for photos, or access to the calendar, contacts and camera, will be a non-starter for many. Part of the reason for HTML5 s disadvantage is deliberate. Major OS developers like Apple and Google have little reason to update their browsers to implement access to new device features, while at the same time they release thousands of API s annually to developers to help them write apps which will of course end up in their app stores! Probably the most compelling experience related differentiator is the ability of Native Apps to manage Push Notifications. HTML5 does not support these, which have become a key part of both desktop and mobile apps. On balance, Native wins the argument. 2. Cost of Development and Fragmentation of Devices/OS s The great promise of HTML5 is that you can write one set of code and it will run on all browsers. In theory this is a great idea. Unfortunately in practice it doesn t work out that way. There are dozens of browsers and more devices. Copyright Stack Agility Inc Page 3

5 While there are some cost advantages to HTML5 as compared to developing separately for ios, Android, Windows and Blackberry, they are not as great as anticipated because of the differences in browser implementations and the need for a diligent QA initiative to mete out the tweaks that will inevitably be required for the various browsers. This generally ends up being less challenging than the number of Android implementations, but is nonetheless not trivial. The other more sinister effect is that unless you want to have multiples of multiple variations, you end up coding to the lowest common denominator of device / browser features, losing some of the most compelling user benefits. This is not to gloss over the challenges of serving multiple device audiences that today include four major players, one of which, Android, has no less than 18 API levels 1, and dozens of manufacturers implementing their software. The number of permutations is staggering, so most developers cater to the most recent and most popular versions. On balance, HTML5 wins the argument. 3. Performance Of course the ability of a Native App to work without Internet access is a big performance to begin with. But screens also load and render faster in a Native App. In general they react 10-15% faster than HTML5 apps, 1 Source: Page 4 Copyright Stack Agility Inc. 2013

6 and while HTML5 is bridging the gap there is still an edge to native. Native Apps can cache previous activity and have the speed advantage due to complete integration with and direct access to device software and hardware features. This becomes evident when doing OS gestures such as swiping, rotating, or shaking, as the response from a Native App will be noticeably faster. For apps such as games that require a highly interactive user experience with graphic or video intensive content, the edge is even greater. Linked In dumped it s HTML5 App in favour of native 2 not because of speed or rendering but rather memory, which is much more easily managed with native. On balance, Native wins the argument. 4. Monetizing is a real consideration. For many organizations this is a non-issue. For example, enterprise apps that are used internally and don t need to be sold, can be internally distributed. They don t need access to the app stores in most cases and for them, HTML5 However for app developers who rely on access to mass audiences for their paid or freemium apps, access to the Apple App Store, Google Play, Blackberry World and the Windows Phone store is crucial to their success. Their sheer volume is very 2 Source: Copyright Stack Agility Inc Page 5

7 difficult to ignore. For example, in May 2013, Apple downloaded their 50 billionth app! 3 Of course the store operators will take their cut as much as 30% of your revenue however their reach is hard to ignore. And then you have to get above the noise of the other several hundred thousand apps. But not being there is probably worse. Regardless, developers who are relying on paid apps can t really consider HTML5, as it has no parallel to the app stores. On balance, Native wins the argument. 5. Availability of Developers HTML5 is an evolution of HTML, which has been in use for over 30 years, while the languages used in native app development are much younger. For this reason, there are many more developers available who can either do HTML or easily transition to it than there are engineers skilled in Android, ios and the other native OS. In addition due to the supply disparity, native developers cost more, which only aggravates the fact that the time required to develop for native is longer, making development costs higher for native. On balance, HTML5 wins the argument. 3 Source: (Accessed July 30, 2013) Page 6 Copyright Stack Agility Inc. 2013

8 6. Immediate Updating / Absolute Version Control crucial updates. Each one of the various app stores has their own set of rules to some extent. All apps have to be reviewed as to content and, to a degree, functionality and performance. This process can take days to weeks depending on the number of iterations, leading to delays deploying One of the clear benefits offered by HTML5 is the ability of the organization to deploy apps immediately and automatically, directly to users and thus skipping approvals by the app stores. Just as important, this approach eliminates the need for the user to update the app. On balance, HTML5 wins the argument. 7. Access to Device Features ios 7 was released in the fall of 2013 and as of the summer of 2013, developers had access to the SDK and began including such features as Airdrop, multitasking, and enhanced integration of third-party hardware accessories immediately. Android releases a new API about every six months, and innovation is alive and well due to the open source approach Google employs, and an ecosystem of developers provides Google constant feedback. In contrast it has taken the World Wide Web Consortium, who began work on standardizing HTML5 in 2008, over five years to ratify the standard, which will reportedly occur in Copyright Stack Agility Inc Page 7

9 2014. In the interim period each of the browsers have to implement features before the standard is ratified, increasing the likelihood that the user experience will be vary from one browser to another. In general the number of API s and other programming resources available for native app development dwarfs that which is available to HTML5 programmers. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is that device manufacturers have no incentive to make HTML5 apps attractive as they potentially circumvent their own business models. On balance, Native wins the argument. 8. Security In general, Native Apps offer greater ease of access to advanced security features and encryption. There are four areas where the security of the app or user data is compromised in HTML5 as compared to a Native App: The actual App source code The source code for any HTML5 based app is visible from the device, as it is with HTML on your desktop. For performance reasons, more code is now being executed on the client device using JavaScript, which makes it relatively easy to see the source code. Hackers can use this to then find work-arounds, and possibly areas where your server side code might be vulnerable. Native Apps are fully compiled and nearly impossible to access the source code. The data stored on the device The data at rest on the device is totally secure and can be encrypted in a sandbox on a Native App using both OS features and several third party encryption add-ons. Since HTML5 now allows data to be secured on the device, in an unencrypted browser cache, any stored user data is highly vulnerable in this case. Page 8 Copyright Stack Agility Inc. 2013

10 The data being transferred to the device All the SmartPhone OS manufacturers include encryption tools for data both on and coming in and out of the device. These use industry standard encryption techniques that are virtually unbreakable. For HTML5, you re pretty much limited to Secure Socket Layer (SSL). While technically you can increase the level of confidence by adding a Virtual Private Network (VPN), there can be a noticeable drop in performance, so much so that it is often unworkable in practice. The URL itself Stack Agility's native apps request data from servers using web-service API's where the data is fully encrypted end-to-end using a variety of methods making it less vulnerable to common attacks such as cross-site request forgery, client state and cookie manipulation and SQL injection. Local data (residing on the phone/tablet) is also fully encrypted so that users with rooted devices can not decipher elements in the app's secure sandbox. On balance, Native wins the argument. HYBRID APPS A Hybrid App is written with web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript, however the entire package runs inside a Native App container. This gives companies the ability to use the various app stores (you still need approval), while having a lot of control over the app content. Unfortunately this does not eliminate the security concerns nor does it get around the performance issues. Copyright Stack Agility Inc Page 9

11 THE BOTTOM LINE As with so many things in business, there is no simple or one size fits all answer. Each situation has to be examined in terms of its requirements and the various benefits of the three approaches considered in that context. Generally speaking, if you have a user base that is reluctant to download an app, or an environment where the app is constantly changing then the benefits of HTML 5 may be enough to outweigh the other issues. Also those who don t want Google, Apple and others getting between them and those who will use their apps will also prefer a web-based app. If you need heightened security, absolute control over the look and feel and overall user experience, or want to monetize your app, then you are probably best with a Native App. ABOUT STACK AGILITY: Stack Agility develops software, systems and Apps that provide great user experiences, look awesome, and deliver timely intelligence to the publisher. Visit us at Page 10 Copyright Stack Agility Inc. 2013