‘Mobile First’ Movement Drives Application Design

Jim Petrassi, managing director, Systems Integration & Development at CSC, agrees. “A few years from now, you won’t say ‘We need a mobile application,’ you’ll just say ‘We need an application.’ Mobility will be presumed,” Petrassi says.

Developing applications that accommodate devices with different screen sizes, input methods and connectivity is a special challenge. In the enterprise, Marshall says application development can follow the Henry Ford model: “You can have any device you like, as long as it’s an iPad.”

Applications for a broader audience have a greater need to operate across platforms. HTML5, the new standard for describing Internet documents and applications, brings important capabilities to mobile Web development that have previously been available only in native development environments.

• Offline Support — Tools such as AppCache and Database inside HTML5 enable developers to store data locally on a device, ensuring that Web-based apps will work in environments with limited connectivity.
• Canvas and Video — These features support graphics and video on a page without the need for plug-ins. This capability may have influenced Apple’s decision to support HTML5 in its mobile devices instead of the popular Flash published by Adobe Systems. Adobe has since discontinued Flash support for mobile devices to focus on HTML5.
• Advanced Forms — HTML5 improves frequently used features such as forms that will make mobile applications easier to use. For example, HTML5 forms will be able to validate data such as credit card numbers and zip codes inside the browser instead of relying on add-ons. That means less communication and faster processing.

Petrassi says that in addition to HTML5, many of the standards and best practices that communicate to back-end systems are still relevant for mobile apps.

“Mobility adds a layer of complexity because you need lighter weight protocols to reduce the amount of data you’re moving over cellular networks,” Petrassi says. “You need to make sure the data is secure — not only when it’s in transit, but when it’s sitting on that device, too. Is it encrypted? Can I wipe it if I need to?”

Petrassi expects a growing number of enterprise applications will be built with open standards such as HTML5, especially as it matures. “There will always be applications that require native code, but I think over the next couple of years, we can build three of four mobile apps on open platforms,” he says.

Accelerating that trend is a new crop of hybrid application toolkits such as PhoneGap, a development environment that combines native code with HTML5. Native code offers access to device-specific features such as a camera, while the overall application is wrapped in HTML5. This reduces the amount of time required to port an app from one device family to the next. And lest we forget, the impact of Windows 8 has yet to be fully felt in the marketplace. “It’s hard to predict these things, but I do believe Windows 8 is a game changer,” Petrassi says.

Marshall notes that even though Microsoft is arriving late to the mobile party, its large base of enterprise clients and mature management tools make it relevant. He believes that Microsoft may yet play a role in setting, or influencing standards, whether official or de facto.

“When you apply adoption curves to this market, it’s clear that we are still in the innovation phase,” Petrassi says. “We’ll see a lot of change, dead ends, and exciting things in app development and management over the next few years. But one thing is clear — everything will be built with mobility in mind.”

Dale Coyner is a writer for CSC’s digital marketing team.