By Daniel Jebaraj

Now that mobile devices have taken us by storm, most enterprise developers will, sooner or later, have to develop a mobile application of some kind. Serious consideration must be given to find the best environment for mobile development. This is challenging given that the mobile marketplace is so fragmented.

Currently, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone are the dominant operating systems in the market. Most developers want to deploy their apps on all these devices; nothing is gained by choosing only one. However, this fragmentation presents many obstacles to development: (1) Several possible platforms that can be used for development; (2) at least three IDEs for three operating systems; (3) multiple versions of Android; (4) varying access to native hardware, depending on which development environment you choose.

Doesn’t it make you long for the days when enterprise development just meant targeting Windows? This is new ground for developers, especially those of us working on the .NET platform.

Right now, as a developer, you basically have three options in front of you: Mobile Web sites, native applications, or “hybrid” applications. The pros and cons of each have to be weighed. Making the wrong choice today could mean a lot of backpedaling tomorrow.

Mobile websites powered by HTML 5 are probably the most popular option for mobile development right now. HTML 5 itself has gotten a great deal of press due to the fact that the current versions of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS have created richer Web-based applications than was achievable in the past without a plugin. Choosing this route makes sense because the Web browsers on all mobile devices are good, and relatively standards-adherent, you can be very confident that your Web-based app will render the same across multiple devices.

With mobile websites, you also work in a single, simplified structure often backed by great server-side tooling such as the ASP.NET MVC platform. What you miss, however, is extended access to native hardware. To get that, you have to choose native development.

Native development is the best way to create an app that can access and utilize native hardware. It also offers a seamless user experience. What you lose by choosing the native route is time. Deploying to each device requires your team be skilled in Objective C, Java, and C# or VB.NET. Each device requires a separate code base. That’s a great deal of development time and training spent to ensure your app reaches all devices.

Outside of mobile Web development and native development, an alternate option that has recently gained a lot of ground is the so-called “hybrid” option. Hybrid applications host a native Web browser control inside a native shell. They then display either local or remotely served Web pages.

For most developers, this solution provides the best of all worlds. It’s a good balance between the standardization of HTML 5 on the client side, the access to hardware of a native app, and the control, power, and code reuse provided by a server platform. I recently conducted a webinar on how to develop a hybrid app from scratch using an ASP.NET MVC template. Please check it out. And keep an eye on our website for updates on the bridging wrapper we’re developing for our ASP.NET MVC controls.

Globally, more tablets were sold last year than babies were born. Considering the weight with which mobile devices have influenced every aspect of life, it was only a matter of time before they came to press upon line-of-business applications.

Daniel Jebaraj’s latest webinar addresses one of the best cross-platform ways to develop mobile applications that are native to most devices. “ASP.NET MVC for Standards-Based, Native Mobile Apps” is a 54-minute in-depth look into why MVC is your best bet for mobile development.

This webinar covers:

· The challenges posed by the fragmentation of mobile devices.

· How Web development is the future of line-of-business applications.

· The concept of the hybrid application and why ASP.NET MVC is best suited for it.

· An end-to-end sample of an ASP.NET MVC hybrid application.

You can watch the full webinar here.

By Davis Jebaraj

For some time now, we’ve been telling you that ASP.NET MVC is an ideal platform for mobile development. We don’t say this just because we’ve always been heavily involved with MVC—we started to work with MVC when it was first released in 2009, and since then we’ve developed the most comprehensive suite of ASP.NET MVC controls on the market, not mention the widest range for MVC controls targeted toward mobile devices.

Our proclamation that you should use MVC for mobile development is rooted in certain facts surrounding the inherent nature of MVC that makes it a prime solution for mobile development. In this post, I’ll go over the advantages of MVC, the easiest way to get started with MVC, and the type of app you can expect in the end.

Regarding its advantages, first, MVC is a cross-platform development model that is a secure, server-based solution. Deploying mobile Web sites and applications from an ASP.NET MVC-based server-cloud environment is a natural fit for enterprises moving to mobile application development.

Also, the model-view-controller scheme is better for mobile development because the model and controller can be kept common for all views. You can have the same model for an iPhone as you do for a desktop. The fact that you can keep your basic business logic the same while having multiple views is key to why ASP.NET MVC is best suited for mobile applications.

With multiple views, you can create and control different layouts for a variety of devices. For example, you could have one layout for tablets and a different layout for phones. MVC gives you that degree of control.

With multiple views, the server will actually detect the type of device making a request and then provide the correct view for that device. This is something ASP.NET MVC inherently does, making life for the developer that much easier.

Where to start

If you want to get started with MVC, you can use a tool that many are already familiar with: Visual Studio. MVC support is offered in VS 2010, and that support will continue in the upcoming release of VS 11.

Also, as I mentioned, Syncfusion has developed many MVC controls targeted to take advantage of mobile environments, and we have many more coming out in April. MVC support in Visual Studio, when combined with the emerging landscape of prebuilt MVC controls, is the fastest and easiest way to get started in mobile development.

The end result

By using the paradigm of MVC, in the end you’ll have an app that is not just an enhanced Web site that is also suitable for mobile—only treating mobile as a second thought—but you will instead have an app that can fully utilize all that the mobile device offers. As a result, by using MVC, your web-based app will provide an experience as seamless as a native app.

I'll even go as far as to say that most end-users will not be able to tell the difference.

By Daniel Jebaraj

It’s an exciting time to be involved in mobile development, especially now that we’re seeing the speculations made a decade ago actually coming true—mobile devices are being used to find restaurants, pay for meals, and then post food reviews online. That’s a lot of power in a little machine.

Gartner predicts that by 2016 at least 50 percent of enterprise users will rely on Web-based e-mail or a mobile e-mail client instead of a desktop client. As a result, software application development targeting mobile devices will also increase dramatically in the coming years.

Knowing that line-of-business applications will have to be available on mobile platforms in the immediate future, you will be pressed to come up with a code base that’s future-proof—one that will not need dramatic changes over the next decade of innovation. The fragmentation of mobile devices presents a challenge in doing this. According to PCMag.com, the variants of Android accounted for 47 percent of devices sold in October and November of 2011, and iOS accounted for about 43 percent, with RIM/Blackberry accounting for another 6 percent. Windows phone took around 1 percent.

So, that’s the problem. Native development on all these devices involves working with substantially different development platforms.

Web applications are an alternative to native applications, but building a mobile Web site does not offer the same experience as a native application. Users are accustomed to the enhanced experience they have with the native features of a device—starting the app from the launcher surface, accessing contacts and images, or using the camera.

What is needed is a bridge between Web applications and the native features; enter the hybrid app. Hybrid applications are the most promising solution for any line-of-business mobile application. They offer a stable base on which applications can be built with the certainty that they will continue to work for the foreseeable future.

Hybrid applications can of course be built with any Web back end, but we firmly believe that ASP.NET MVC is ideally suited for the implementation of hybrid applications. For details on why, please read my white paper, Building 100% Native Apps with ASP.NET MVC. The white paper also walks you through building a sample hybrid app with ASP.NET MVC.

Syncfusion is currently working on a full-scale solution that will give Web-based applications a bridge to become native apps while letting you mange everything from a single code base. We’re calling it OneBase.

Vice President Daniel Jebaraj talks about OneBase—the bridge between Web and native mobile apps.

Our upcoming solution will allow you to leverage your existing .NET Web development skills and produce powerful 100 percent native solutions that work on a broad cross section of devices. Given that we already have a wide set of mobile ASP.NET MVC controls our bridging technology will give you an easy path to creating powerful hybrid mobile apps.

Look for this solution to hit the market next month.

We are starting 2012 off with a bang…Essential Studio 2012 Volume 1 has been released!

At Syncfusion, our Mobile MVC platform is on the forefront of our development efforts. The Essential Studio 2012 Volume 1 release contains the largest ASP.NET MVC suite for mobile with 12 new controls. Our customers can now develop with the highly anticipated cross-platform mobile grid and the HTML 5 gauge. Samples of our new controls are available for users to interact with. We have expanded the HTML 5 Gauge for ASP.NET to include digital and rolling gauges. Our HTML 5 efforts were focused around our customers who can now take advantage of the high performance, ease of user interactivity, and stunning visuals enabled by the HTML 5 CANVAS element. Other features include:

• A fully client-side RDL reporting engine added to our reporting suite—standard reports, no server license needed.
• Bing Maps integration, bringing rich detail to Silverlight and WPF mapping apps.
• Gantt control enhancements, simplifying project management.

In the video below, Vice President Daniel Jebaraj talks about some of the highlights of this release.

Everything we do here at Syncfusion is to make application development faster, easier, and sleeker. We based our latest and greatest features on customer requests. Yes, we listen and react so that we can be the best development partner on the market. Download the latest evaluation on our website.