Mobile application packages

With the advancement in wireless technology, big technology companies, such as Apple, Amazon, Google, and so on, came out with a solution that provides users with a more realistic approach to finding information, making decisions, shopping, and other countless things at their fingertips by developing mobile applications for their products. The main purpose of developing mobile applications was actually to retrieve information using various productivity tools, which includes calculator, e-mail, calendar, contacts, and many more. However, with more demand for and the availability of resources, there was a rapid growth and expansion in other categories, such as mobile games, shopping, GPS and location-based services, banking, order tracking, ticket purchases, and recently, mobile medical applications.

The distribution platforms, such as Apple App Store, Google Play, Windows Phone Store, Nokia Store, and BlackBerry Application World, are operated by the owners of the mobile operating systems, and mobile applications are made available to users by them. We usually hear about the terms such as a native application, hybrid application, or web application, so, did you ever wonder what they are and what is the difference is between them? Moving ahead, we will discuss the different mobile packages available for use and their salient features that make an impact on the selection of a strategy and testing tool for automation.

The different mobile packages available are:

• Native applications
• Web applications
• Hybrid applications

Native applications

Any mobile application needs to be installed through various distribution systems, such as Application Store and Google Play. Native applications are the applications developed specifically for one platform, such as iOS, Android, Windows, and many more. They can interact and take full advantage of operating system features and other software that is typically installed on that platform. They have the ability to use device-specific hardware and software, such as the GPS, compass, camera, contact book, and so on.

These types of applications can also incorporate gestures such as standard operating system gestures or new application-defined gestures. Native applications have their entire code developed for a particular operating system and hence have no reusability across operating systems. A native application for iOS would thus have its application handles built specifically for Objective-C or Swift and hence would not work on an Android device. If the same application needs to be used across different operating systems, which is a very logical requirement for any successful application, then developers would have to write a whole new repository of code for another mobile operating system.

This makes the application maintenance cumbersome and the uniformity of features is another challenge that becomes difficult to manage. However, having different code bases for different operating systems allows the flexibility to have operating-system-specific customizations that are easy to build and deploy. Also, today, there is a need to follow very strict "look and feel" guidelines for each operating system. Using a native application might be the best way to keep this presentation correct one for each OS.

Also, testing native applications is usually limited to the operating system in question and hence, the fragmentation is usually limited in impact. Only manufactures and operating system versions need to be considered.

Mobile web applications

A mobile web application is actually not an application but in essence only websites that are accessed via a mobile interface, and it has design features specific to the smaller screen interface and it has user interactions such as swipe, scroll, pinch, and zoom built in. These mobile web applications are accessed via a mobile browser and are typically developed using HTML or HTML5. Users first access them as they would access any web page. They navigate to a special URL and then have the option of installing them on their home screen by creating a bookmark for that page.

So, in many ways, a web application is hard to differentiate from a native application, as in mobile screens, usually there are no visible browser buttons or bars, although it runs in mobile browsers. A user can perform various native application functionalities, such as swiping to move on to new sections of the application.

Most of the native application features are available in the HTML5 web application, for example, they can use the tap-to-call feature, GPS, compass, camera, contact book, and so on. However, there are still some native features that are inaccessible (at least for now) in a browser, such as the push notifications, running an application in the background, accelerometer information (other than detecting landscape or portrait orientations), complex gestures, and more.

While web applications are generally very quick to develop with a lot of ready-to-use libraries and tools, such as AngularJS, Sencha, and JQuery, and also provide a unique code base for all operating systems, there is an added complexity of testing that adds to the fragmentation problem discussed earlier. There is no dearth of good mobile browsers and on a mobile device, there is very limited control that application developers can have, so users are free to use any mobile browser of their choice, such as Chrome, Safari, UC Browser, Opera Mobile, Opera Mini, Firefox, and many more. Consequently, these applications are generally development-light and testing-heavy. Hence, while developing automation scripts, the solution has to consider this impact, and the tool and technique selected should have the facility to run scripts on all these different browsers.

Of course, it could be argued that many applications (native or otherwise) do not take advantage of the extra features provided by native applications. However, if an application really requires native features, you will have to create a native application or, at least, a hybrid application.

Hybrid applications

Hybrid applications are combinations of both native applications and web applications, and because of that, many people incorrectly call them web applications. Like native applications, they are installed in a device through an Application Store and can take advantage of the many device features available. Just like web applications, hybrid applications are dependent on HTML being rendered in a browser, with the caveat that the browser is embedded within the application. So, for an existing web page, companies build hybrid applications as wrappers without spending significant effort and resources, and they can get their existence known in Application Store and have a star rating! Web applications usually do not have one and hence have this added disadvantage of lacking the automatic publicity that a five-star rating provides in the mobile stores.

Because of cross-platform development and significantly low development costs, hybrid applications are becoming popular, as the same HTML code components are reusable on different mobile operating systems. The other added advantage is that hybrid applications can have the same code base wrapped inside an operating-system-specific shell thereby making it development-light. By removing the problem posed by various device browsers, hybrid applications can be more tightly controlled, making them less prone to fragmentation, at least on the browser side. However, since they are hybrid applications, any automation testing solution should have the ability to test across different operating system and version combinations, with the ability to differentiate between various operating-system-specific functionality differences. Various tools such as PhoneGap and Sencha allow developers to code and design an application across various platforms just by using the power of HTML.