Web App vs Mobile App

Web App TCP/IP (HTTP) protocol Using web technology & software

World Wide Web Allows users from anywhere on the internet to retrieve documents from any other computers The main protocol is the HTTP – HyperText Transfer Protocol HTTP provides a standard form of communication between web browsers and web servers.

World Wide Web (cont.) Web browsers Web servers Programs running on client computers Request for documents using URL eg. IE, Mozilla, Chrome Web servers Programs that provide documents to browsers eg. Apache, Dot.Net

World Wide Web (cont.) URL – Uniform Resource Locator A reference of a document on the web. eg. http://webs.cs.utm.my/index.html http://webs.cs.utm.my/images/logo.jpg

Web Architechture How the Web works for static contents (basic architecture) CGI scripts

Advantages Easy for deployment Standard interface (HTML) for many platform (Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac) Distributed task

Disadvantages Compare to standalone apps Security prob – malicious code etc., sensitive data – CC Restricted for client Limited GUI and Interaction

Example tech./framework Conventional CGI – Perl, C, C++, Python, VB Java Servlet Enterprise JavaBeans Server pages – ASP, PHP, JSP Client side script – VB Script, JavaScript

HTML, CSS, & Javascript PHP SQL All of our discussions today will be presented in the C computer language. For C, there are a few required elements which an application must do: Header files describe all of the function calls, their parameters and defined constant values to the compiler. OpenGL has header files for GL (the core library), GLU (the utility library), and GLUT (freeware windowing toolkit). Note: glut.h includes gl.h and glu.h. On Microsoft Windows, including only glut.h is recommended to avoid warnings about redefining Windows macros. Libraries are the operating system dependent implementation of OpenGL on the system you’re using. Each operating system has its own set of libraries. For Unix systems, the OpenGL library is commonly named libGL.so and for Microsoft Windows, it’s named opengl32.lib. Finally, enumerated types are definitions for the basic types (i.e. float, double, int, etc.) which your program uses to store variables. To simplify platform independence for OpenGL programs, a complete set of enumerated types are defined. Use them to simplify transferring your programs to other operating systems. SQL

Mobile App A mobile app is a computer program designed to run on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers The code is native to the device architecture So android app will not run on ios and vice versa

Popular Platform Android iOS Blackberry Windows Mobile

Architecture

Web App as Mobile App Web App running in mobile browser Web App converted into Native

Web App converted into Native This is what we will learn in this course The app will be developed using HTML5 Javascript CSS And a backend server for database access

Web App converted into Native Why choose this over direct native app? Easier to code Application look the same on pc, tablet, smartphone, in browser and native app Can be compiled to a different platform One web app can be deployed to android, ios or windows mobile with very little modifications