Hypertext Markup Language, better known as HTML, is one of the key parts of any website. If it wasn’t for HTML, the web wouldn’t just look a lot different, there’s a very good chance it would have never got off the ground in the first place. But, just because it’s a big part of your web browsing experience, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a big part of your favorite mobile applications, too. Here are some of the ways and some of the reasons why HTML is used in mobile phone app development.
Hybrid Mobile Apps
One of the easiest and, for developers, most straightforward, ways of creating a mobile app is to create something called a Hybrid Mobile App. This is a type of app that is based around HTML, which means that it can build on a skill that most web designers have a great amount of understanding of. It’s built with regular web technologies but it is kept up in a mobile-friendly kind of online wrapper. If you download the app, it will feel like a regular mobile app, but it uses web code such as HTML. If you think of it as basically being a website that behaves like a mobile app, with access to native features, you won’t be too far wrong.
With Hybrid Mobile Apps, the user interface has HTML as its backbone. The entire thing is based around the web language, whether it’s the screen’s layout, the app structure — things like menus, pages, and navigation views – or even the way it renders such content as text, images, lists, tables, and cards. It can even help create templates. There are a range of different hybrid mobile app development frameworks that use HTML, including the highly popular Ionic, Framework7, Onsen UI and Quasar Framework. These will often use a bridge to link HTML to native device features, such as a camera, GPS, or Bluetooth connectivity. So, whether you’re looking for a cool new retailer, a legit alternative to the so-called Mr Beast casino app for all interested online casino gamers looking for a heightened gambling experience, or you are just checking out the latest social media update, then you could be accessing it on your mobile but using HTML to get you there.
Progressive Web Apps
Ever since the future Sir Tim Berners-Lee came up with the idea of an Internet-based hypertext system in 1989, HTML has been at the forefront of web development. That’s true whether you’re accessing the internet traditionally, via a laptop or desktop computer, or through a smartphone. What makes HTML so useful is four-fold. Firstly, it is used everywhere. Whether it’s Apple’s iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, or even smart TVs, they all operate HTML natively and naturally. Similarly, because HTML was designed to describe interfaces, it is simple, easy to learn, flexible, easy to alter, and easy to fix if you make a mistake. This, coupled with its easy integration into WebView, the engine and browser that helps power most mobile apps, makes it a great fit, especially for teams of developers who may not have all had the same background. And HTML is always evolving in a way that is easy for both newcomers and veterans to keep up with, so it can adapt to new tech trends and hardware.
These advantages all combine for one particular type of mobile phone application. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are built with traditional web tech like HTML and JavaScript, but are designed so that they look and feel like a native mobile app. HTML is the main driver behind how pretty much any PWA works, powering its layouts, components, and interactive features. And, what’s more, some of the biggest applications and sites out there are HTML-based PWAs, or are at least very close to being them. The likes of Instagram and Pinterest’s online sites are, in effect, PWAs.
HTML And Traditional Mobile Apps
Even apps which were designed, created, and brought to life as totally mobile native platforms will have some kind of HTML working on it. For example, most apps will have at least some hybrid sections which fuse HTML and the WebView browser. One great example comes in the form of Amazon. Yes, the online retailing giant’s app is on WebView, but its browsing pages are all built using HTML, which means that they are easy to work with, shop with, and lets Amazon’s team fix and change things quickly and easily. Where HTML comes into its own is dealing with content-heavy pages. It can update without publishing a new version, it displays content easily and it lets developers reuse the user interface across platforms. All these features combine to make HTML a very real mainstay of your favorite apps.
HTML can be used for a wide range of features in your apps. Whether it’s a site that is basically all HTML, or whether it just uses the language for certain pages within an app, mobile phone apps as we know them today would just not be the same if it wasn’t for HTML.