Native or Web mobile app for an application that uses data from a distant server?

Question

i am in the process of creating an app for both mobile platforms ( iOs and Android) and i came up to the point where i should decide if i am gonna create seperate apps using each platform SDK or create a web app and deploy it in both. my app will not use features from the device... it will need to connect to a distant server and LOAD & SEND data { images, texts, videos } and i ll need to put that in some well presented form.

So my question is what's best HTML5& CSS3, Native OR Hybrid?

if it's Web: then is there any Free Platforms to do that?

PS: it's my first attempt to create a mobile app ! Thank you !

Answer 1

Did you know phoneGap ?

It's a way to host a browser inside your application. I used and works well.

Answer 2

I think there are many ways to fulfill this. You can use some kind of third party controls to make your app look the same in both Android and iOS. Or you can you some kinds of new technology( at least for me ) like PhoneGap

It depends on how much time do you want to spend for your project? The performance that you expect from you apps.

Hope it helps:)

Answer 3

Your Screen UI design would also influence the choice: For example

1. with web Frameworks (such as jquery Mobile) you will not get great scroll performance if you have a list with large number of rows in it
2. CSS fixed positioning is not supported by most of the mobile browsers in market. This means, realizing fixed tab on the bottom of the screen is difficult.
3. If you have any pixel accurate rendering requirements in any part of your app, web apps would not be a good choice (It is possible to achieve with meta viewport, but the implementation varies across browser significantly)