Advantages/disadvantages of a hybrid HTML/Objective-C iphone app

Question

Are there any major advantages/disadvantages I should take into consideration when developing an app which and deciding whether to creates parts (styled menus, pages with content with complex layout etc.) in HTML/UIWebview or doing it all native?

I would like to hear people's experiences with this.

Answer 1

Personally, I find that I tend to dislike web apps that are (usually) disguised as iOS apps. I tend to notice a lot of inconsistencies between the UI of a web app and a 'native' app, and most of the time, it bothers me (my biggest pet peeve is tapping a button and seeing it highlight with a little translucent black box around it like a link). Now, I don't represent the major user demographic, which probably won't care, but that's my personal opinion.

In terms of programming, I've never written a web app before, but I assume that it's going to be slightly less structured than a native app just because writing HTML, Javascript, and CSS doesn't force you to assume a certain project structure, unlike iPhone apps that have distinct views, controllers, and the like. Depending on what you want to write, this might be liberating, but can also get tangled very quickly.

As middaparka said, you can also use a mixture of the two systems if you'd like. I mean, I'm assuming you're just as good a web developer as you are an iOS developer. If you are stronger in one suit than the other, then I say that you should lean towards heading in that direction. I'd much rather see an excellently written web app than a badly written native app, and vice versa.

Answer 2

I suspect the major advantages/disadvantages relate to the user experience - a "native" UIKit based user interface will feel a lot more natural than manipulating items within a web view. (It'll also mean you can use more "standard" components like navigation controllers, tab bars, etc.)

That said, there's no reason not to use a mix of the two, with the main UI being implemented via the various UIKit objects and the content being provided via a web view.

Answer 3

I would also add that the biggest issue I've found with hybrid frameworks is that you add another dependency to your app.

For example, take a big iOS update. If your chosen framework breaks, your app breaks and you won't be able to fix it until the framework is fixed.

Also, right now there are many frameworks and you have to pray that the one you chose isn't flushed down the toilet or drops support for one of your target platforms.

Answer 4

Another issue is that in a web based app/component you are missing out on platform specific technologies and frameworks like core data, GCD (or any other threading model - which in web you might have do with eg Ajax),uitableview with caching etc.

Should you hit a wall when it comes to performance or storage,then you have many more options in the native framework.