Book Image

Building Mobile Applications Using Kendo UI Mobile and ASP.NET Web API

Book Image

Building Mobile Applications Using Kendo UI Mobile and ASP.NET Web API

Overview of this book

With the world becoming more mobile, there is a growing need for mobile websites and applications. Building these from scratch is not a simple process. Kendo UI Mobile makes building websites and applications easier than ever before. Build applications for phones and tablets in no time at all and provide your user with a native look and feel.Building Mobile Applications Using Kendo UI Mobile and ASP.NET Web API helps you to understand the concept of building mobile applications using HTML5 based frameworks, specifically Kendo UI Mobile. It teaches you in a simple step-by-step manner how to create a service backend layer using ASP.NET Web API and how to integrate it with your front end mobile application, which is the missing piece of the puzzle for most developers who are new to mobile applications development. Learn everything from the basics of HTML5 to design and development of a mobile application using Kendo UI Mobile and ASP.NET Web API. Integrate them in the right way using extensible and maintainable JavaScript code.Starting with the basics of the Kendo UI platform, learn how to build a real world mobile application from scratch. You will explore the Kendo UI framework elements and integrate the sample mobile application with the ASP.NET Web API service. One of the most important things that you will learn from this book is how to organize your code using the JavaScript Revealing Module Pattern. You will also take a journey through Kendo UI Mobile widgets with lots of code samples hosted in jsFiddle. At the end of this book, you will complete the integration of the sample application and master fixing real world problems utilizing your newly acquired professional techniques that will save you time and effort.Building Mobile Applications Using Kendo UI Mobile and ASP.NET Web API will help you improve your mobile application development skills using hands-on examples, and will help you address the common problems faced by beginners as well as experienced web programmers. 
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Building Mobile Applications Using Kendo UI Mobile and ASP.NET Web API
Credits
About the Authors
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Native versus hybrid versus mobile websites


As you may already be aware, there are three ways to develop a mobile device compatible application: native, hybrid, or mobile website.

Native apps are coded in a programming language specific to a platform, namely, Objective C for iOS, Java for Android, and so on. Native applications run faster, have access to all device APIs and features, and provide a better user experience. Since native apps are built for a particular platform, the entire application needs to be rewritten if a native application needs to run on another platform. This will create code duplication, maintenance headache, budget increase, and the need to have multiple development teams (specializing in a certain platform) working on the same business rules. Typically, games and applications which require high performance are developed as pure native apps.

Hybrid apps are written using pure web technologies (such as CSS, HTML, and JavaScript) and they run on the device in a native container using the device's browser engine. Hybrid apps are usually packaged using tools such as PhoneGap, which helps the app to access device-specific APIs and hardware features. WebKit rendering engine is used in platforms such as iOS, Android, and Blackberry to render the web-based script/code to be displayed in a web view control of the native platform. Since Hybrid apps are created using a native app shell, they can be distributed using app stores too. Icenium by Telerik is a cloud-based, all-in-one development environment to package, test, and deploy hybrid applications. PhoneGap is another commonly used tool for packaging web apps for deployment on multiple mobile platforms.

Mobile websites are accessed using a URL and run in the mobile device's browser. They can be developed using server-side technologies, such as ASP.NET and PHP, and can be deployed and updated without any approval process from an app store. If the mobile website is written using pure web technologies (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) or using frameworks based on them, such as jQuery, Kendo UI, and jQuery Mobile, mobile websites can be packaged to be installed as a hybrid application without much effort. A major drawback of mobile websites is that only device features that are exposed through the browser can be accessed, and this makes a mobile website suitable for content-based applications. There is no single solution which is suitable for all the scenarios. Selection of a methodology will depend on a number of factors, such as the skill sets you have, budget, time lines, and update frequency.

Kendo UI Mobile is an ideal platform for developing hybrid apps and mobile websites. During the course of this book, we will create a Movie Tickets application using Kendo UI Mobile which will be treated as a mobile website initially and then, towards the end of the book, it will be packaged using PhoneGap as a mobile app and deployed to Android as well as the iOS devices.