Reaching across - managing variants of one application on multiple platforms

Abstract: The number of platforms to support in today's software projects are many and there are a wide range of differences to consider. There are tons of programming languages on the market and each platform, both mobile and desktop, have different preferences on how to develop applications. This do often result in multiple applications, similar to the end user but different to the developers. The same functionality has to be developed and maintained in multiple versions of the application in different ways. To solve these issues there is a need to think of the applications and platform in a new way. They have to be unified and commonalities has to be found or made. New application structures and tools are also needed to keep the platforms in sync. When developing those concepts each platform’s flexibility must be protected. Each platform has it’s own advantages and features like a GPS and camera and they have to be available to build a competitive product. This report concludes that web technology such as HTML5, JavaScript and CSS is a promising way to introduce common parts in the application. This helps to manage the platforms in one way and reduces the differences. To retain the platform specifics, language bridges are used to directly communicate with the native platform from the web parts. This enables the full strength of each platform and makes the solution a fully featured competitor to native applications.