Mobile HTML5 – Its Growing But Still Facing Obstacles

Amongst the wide range of web development technologies available in the market, HTML(Hypertext Markup Language) has emerged as one of the most popularly used and recommended technologies. With a continuous drive to stand out from the crowd, HTML has been dominating mobile app development platforms that are seen to outgrow in the foreseeable future.

Web developers have been busy weaving the capabilities of HTML5 for building browser-based applications that are dedicated to the targeted consumers. Through this blog, I’ll be throwing some light on the success of HTML5 and the challenges faced by it in the current scenario.

HTML5 is superseding popular multi-media application development platforms like Flash and Silverlight
There’s no denying of the fact that HTML5 has been successful in superseding the popularity and demand for multimedia application development platforms such as Flash and Silverlight. Nowadays, every proficient iPhone Application Developer is using HTML5 for offering rich multimedia functionality on computer systems that are based on different web browsers. Mobile applications developed using HTML5 are delivered via a browser and are written on a platform-specific programming language that’s composed to both HTML5 as well as client-specific libraries.

HTML5- Growing its span of mobile app development categories
Some of the most popular enterprises such as the Financial Times have witnessed a tremendous amount of benefit from leveraging a focus on HTML5 programming. Well, its not only the enterprises, but even the basic population comprising of students, teachers, socialists etc. that has been greatly benefited from the very popular HTML5 programming language.

Equipped with multiple benefits such as vendor support, ecosystem traction, cross-platform app deployment via a single code base etc. HTML5 has become one of the finest mobile app development languages used by app developers residing in different corners of the world.

SEE ALSO: The Basics of Minimalist Mobile Site Design

HTML5- Challenges in-store
One of the major challenges faced by HTML5 is the inadequate skill-set of the developer. With the web/mobile app developers’ skills still under the maturity level, the browser implementations of HTML5 applications have become weaker and less secure. As yet another challenge faced by HTML5, there’s a lack of full standardization across browser implementation, making the platform hard-to-use for the developers. In addition to this, there are other performance impacts and feature support on native devices that add to the incompetency attached to using HTML5 for developing out-of-the-box applications.

Last but definitely not the least, the rich set of features delivered through HTML5 applications primarily depend on a mishmash of popular technologies including CAA, HTML5, JavaScript and WebRTC. Each of these web technologies have to frequently face their own set of tooling, security and implementation issues, making HTML5 a difficult platform to work with.

Mobile HTML5- Facing a significant competition
Talking about mobile phones, HTML5 mobile app development is still facing a significant competition from popular app development platforms such as iOS and Android. Michael King, the director of enterprise strategy at the popular mobile development tool vendor Appcelerator has told that there’s been a lukewarm interest in HTML5 when it comes to developing applications for the mobile devices. Those who are intending to build a more mass-market application or are looking ahead to accomplish ‘mobilification’ of business processes, HTML5 hasn’t been considered as the number one choice.

Mobile HTML5- 3 Challenges it runs up against
Mobile HTML5 developers are constantly running up against the three key challenges viz: performance, security and access to the device sensors. Under a situation of an offline access, the HTML5-based applications can only operate with whatever has been cached in the browsers. This presents possible limitations on what data can be secured.

The application’s logic can’t be cached in most of the cases. In addition to this, there is a limited access to APIs and native sensors which aren’t available with the core HTML5 programming language. Unlike HTML5, iOS5 comes with six sensors and the most recent iOS equipped with around 1,500 APIs that are actually difficult to use with core HTML5 applications.

Innovative Specifications- Extending the reach of HTML5
Tyler Wassell, the software development manager at Michaels, Ross & Cole Ltd, has reported a growing interest in HTML5 over a majority of other native app development languages. In one of the most recent press conferences, Tyler explained the growing outreach of HTML5 due to the new JavaScript APIs.

These APIs have brought in advantages such as robust communication, effective file management and secure data storage. What’s most important is that all these advantages have been introduced for the mobile browser. Because of this, there’s been an incredible increase in the count of mobile web applications as compared to the native mobile applications.

Moreover, constant improvements to the core HTML5 capabilities and developer tool-kit have made HTML5 more useful for a growing number of applications. HTML5 has been popularly used for developing data-driven applications that will continue to work even in the lack of an internet connection. With developers turning to HTML5 application cache for storing applications’ resources, the idea of not using HTML5 is far from imagination.

Wrapping Up
With all that being said above, it is easy to expect HTML5 and other native mobile applications to co-exist with none of them replacing each other. Yet, HTML5 Mobile app development will definitely encounter a greater amount of success and demand among the professional developers.