Creating Mobile Web Apps

Abstract

An alternative to creating a web app that adapts to the capabilities of different devices is to create a version that is specifically targeted to mobile devices. Choosing between a responsive web app and a mobile-specific implementation can be difficult, but my rule of thumb is that a mobile version makes sense when I want to offer a radically different experience to mobile and desktop users or when dealing with device constraints in a responsive implementation becomes unwieldy and overly complex. Your decision will, of course, depend on the specifics of your project, but this chapter is for when you decide that one version of your web app, however responsive, won’t cater to your mobile users’ needs.