Hybrid vs Native…What About a Third Option?

The Hybrid vs. Native mobile discussion has always struck me as a little absurd. The majority of native mobile applications, including well-known third-party ones created by Apple and Google, combine Native UI controls with Web Views. The Web View component wouldn’t exist or be so commonly utilised if this wasn’t such a typical use case. I frequently wonder if an app qualifies as native or not depending on the proportion of native UI elements and web views it has. That has always struck me as being highly subjective.

Ionic has typically focused more on the hybrid/web side, as you might expect. With hooks into native functionality, Ionic apps often employ Capacitor to act as a host for a web app running in a native mobile app shell. This suggests that these apps have complete access to native UI and SDKs. Because of this, these hybrid applications can utilise as much or as little native UI as they like because they are now considered true native apps. However, the majority of the application functions smoothly in the Web View, where teams may utilise conventional web development and exchange code with their own web sites.

This argument would not be taking place if teams were not picking multiple mobile stacks when developing new apps, and many of them opt for a hybrid or cross-platform stack. Ionic can undoubtedly witness to its popularity, especially among big companies that serve as the foundation of our whole industry.

So why do people pick a hybrid stack in such case? The response is shockingly straightforward: since it’s quicker, less expensive, and simpler for them to hire for, and the outcome is just as excellent for their use case.

It’s also clear that a lot of teams decide against launching with a hybrid or cross-platform strategy. These teams mostly employ first-party native development techniques, but they also pick other well-liked cross-platform alternatives.

Why do these teams pick certain stacks in place of others? Many of them favour utilising just first-party languages and technologies. Perhaps they think that using official iOS and Android components and languages is the only way to provide a nice mobile experience. Additionally, it makes sense to use the expertise of that team as they may already have a native mobile engineering staff.

A Third Choice Appearance

A third choice has quietly surfaced while the majority of the mobile world has been arguing between these two strategies. In this third strategy, teams create an app “shell” using whichever stack (native or hybrid) they like before combining web and native experiences as they see fit to create a micro-frontend mobile architecture.

The fundamental tenet of this strategy is that a team may opt to build their primary UI shell elements natively or in their preferred stack, such as tabs, side menus, or navigation containers, but may be content to mix in Web Views for screens, modals, or other embedded experiences.

This method’s ability to allow several teams to work on a single project concurrently is one of its key advantages. For instance, at a bank, the check-scanning experience may be totally native and created by a different team, while the customer’s account screen might be an embedded online experience created by the Account team. If the team wishes to do so, a web-based experience in the app may eventually be moved into the app shell stack, but it is not required.

This choice has unexpectedly gained popularity, especially among the top app development teams. This tactic is frequently applied by Apple in its apps, especially Apple Music. This strategy is frequently used on Instagram. All across the place, banks like Chase employ this strategy.

It makes sense since these teams must integrate a wide range of features into a single app experience, which is simply not possible if each feature must be developed by a separate native mobile team.

Portals: Bringing Micro-frontends to Everyone

Up until now, only teams with the resources and know-how to create and manage a sophisticated web-to-native micro-frontend architecture could use this technique. The bridge between web and native is difficult to construct appropriately with Web Views. Every time they create an app, teams spin the wheel by creating what is basically a hybrid app framework, which they now have to manage in addition to the rest of their app.

Fortunately, it’s not necessary for this to be the case. Earlier this year, we introduced a product for this third strategy called Portals using all the technology and knowledge we’ve developed while creating hybrid apps and assisting teams in using them successfully.

By offering a supercharged Web View component with Web View implementation best practises built in straight out of the box, Portals aids in bringing this new micro-frontend approach to traditional mobile development. This component has a potent native plugin API to controllably share pre-existing native app functionality with these embedded experiences. A piece of the programme may be updated in real-time while being separated from other areas of the app thanks to strong remote update features. A cross-platform solution like Capacitor or React Native or classic native iOS and Android codebases may use Portals as a drop-in component (with support for Flutter coming later this year).

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