Preface

The importance of mobile may be clear today, but even just a few years ago it was debatable if building mobile apps was worth the time and cost. As of 2015 the number of mobile apps available in the Apple App and Google Play Stores is well over a million. Over six times more phones are sold than desktop/laptop devices, and the number of tablets sold should exceed desktop/laptop devices in 2015. Mobile is here, and here to stay.

Back in 2013, the world of mobile app development was focused primarily on building native apps. These native apps were written in Java or Objective C, and required developers to learn those languages, platform tools, SDKs, and so forth. For a web developer like myself, this presented a barrier to getting into mobile app development. It seemed like the mobile web was focused on building responsive websites, not mobile apps. The idea of a hybrid app (which is a native app built using web technologies) was usually given very little credit due to the quality of older devices and browsers that made hybrid apps sluggish, and design practices that made the apps have a visual disconnect from native apps.