Friday, February 3, 2012

Web browser vs Android - analogous fragmentation?

Mobile developer Kyle Miller doesn’t see what all the fuss is about Android fragmentation, arguing that web browsers are much more fragmented than Android.

I disagree, in that web browsers indeed represent sometimes dispirit ways of rendering HTML (and not always successfully), but they utilize the same back end system (if a web app) or render the same codebase (be it HTML/CSS or JavaScript). Android apps have to be designed and compiled for differing versions of the OS, and even the devices may impose restrictions based on features implemented.

So developing for Android doesn't mean just supplying a few alternate CSS files or using some code tricks to make the app work on different handsets or mobile devices. You have to maintain separate code base sets (here's a good description of several approaches).

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