My 2c on HTML5 for app development

As part of my studies I had a year long project for Uni last year (2012) to develop a mobile app prototype for windows 8 ARM devices. The major question was HTML5 + Javascript vs XAML+C#.

Since this was for a single platform it seems trivial but when you look at it from the perspective of Using HTML5 for developing platform independent apps, it all boils down to what type of app it is and also remember that: When using HTML5 you loose some of the basic functions of the target device i.e. Camera, Geo-location etc.

In the same breath HTML5 apps have some pretty cool attributed to them like, Responsiveness to different screen sizes and cutting down on the amount on man-hours needed to develop for each platform and last but not least the time to market of your app. 

Here are some more tips from Arena Solutions on how to improve your time to market.

So the age old (well so a few months now) battle of Native vs Platform independent.

My Answer: It is contextual, meaning; you have to ask yourself the questions: what is the purpose of the app and what resources does the app need from the device to function.

Self-due-diligence is key (Do your research) and follow an iterative approach to design, prototyping, testing only when you are comfy with preliminary prototype go to the development stage. Remember i said ‘preliminary prototype’, by this I mean keeping your prototypes around as sandboxes encase you later find that there is a cool new trend, how to incorporate that into your app.

Laterz

G!