Desktop - Mobile apps

[Former Member]

Hi,

Building an app, can be accessed from both desktop and mobile.

What is the best practice,

1. Do we build a separate app one for desktop and mobile.

2. Single app and control rendering on different devices by CSS.

3. Do we embed code in the app basing on device.

Appreciate your inputs on designing apps running on multiple devices.

Regards

[SergioG_TX · Accepted solution]

Sri, I concur with Maksim response 1) no 2) yes - use responsive design 3) it will depend on your functionality. if you need native functionality from the device then yes, otherwise you do not need to embed any device specific functionality hope this helps

[former_member182862 · Accepted solution]

I would say that it is difficult to provide inputs unless we know more about the apps. The apps may be able to display more things on desktop and has limited features on the mobile. One app may work however, it is not optimized for desktop nor for mobile devices.

my 2 cents worth

-D

[midhun_vp]

Hi Srihari,

The question on whether to develop separate app for desktop and mobile completely depends on your requirement. It is also a question on how fast and efficient your app should be.

You should have a look at the comparison between native, hybrid and web apps.

• If the app is too complex, for example it has a 25 screens that has to manage large amount of data to do a business process. You would not get a better user experience with a web app that works in both desktop and mobile.
• With few changes to your web app you could create a hybrid app (cordova based) that could provide a better performance than web apps.
• Native apps are the fastest and most efficient apps. You could go with this approach if your app is too complex and need the best user experience.
• Native features like offline, contacts, camera etc could be achieved with hybrid and native apps. This is possible with web apps too but would to be inefficient.

I still remember the Linkedin hybrid mobile app released few years back which was lagging in performance. But now they moved to native approach which gives best performance.

If you are developing mobile apps you have to consider other enterprise level features too - encrypted data transfer, encrypted data storage (if offline), easy troubleshooting, different auth mechanisms (ldap, sso, saml, certificate), app life cycle management, users management, supporting multiple mobile OS (ios, android, win), supporting heterogenous backends (SAP Oracle, MySQL) etc..

Because of these common requirements SAP came up with a product called SMP 3/HCPMS, which has all the enterprise features inbuilt.

It provides an sdk that allows you to create native and hybrid mobile apps quickly.

Regards, Midhun

SAP Technology RIG

[Former Member]

Good information this, thank you. My target area is more towards hybrid/web apps.

Appreciate all your inputs.

Regards,

SriHari

[former_member182372]

1) no

2) yes: single app, with responsive layout: https://experience.sap.com/fiori-design/foundation/responsiveness-adaptiveness/

3) yes:  if (sap.ui.Device.system.phone) and so on

[Former Member]

Hi,

Since you going to develop an app whose functionality is similar for both desktop and mobile, its not appreciated to use seperate app.

1. Create a rough layout and test in all platform ( Desktop  and mobile)

2. Use @media css to render in mobile device

3. Create a responsive web design (To make it so simple)