Mobile is here to stay. But now more than ever, so is the need to provide consumers with cross-platform experiences. As a business executive or decision-maker, how do you approach technology when building for mobile? Taking a look at Flash, HTML5, other mainstream platforms and a few emerging technologies – what are the major considerations when creating such cross-platform experiences?

1. Designing for Cross Platform Mobile Experiences

2.  Derrick Morton, CEO, FlowPlay
 20 years in game development, 17 years online
development
 Past companies – GameHouse, RealNetworks, iWin,
Vivendi Universal Games
 Douglas Pearson, CTO, FlowPlay
 Ph.D. from Univ of Michigan in A.I.
 Founded company focused on mobile games before they
were easy
 12 years in casual game development

3.  Casual game company focusing on virtual worlds
 45 people in Seattle
 Established in 2006
 Funded by Intel Capital and the creators of Skype

6.  The Past Five Years have seen incredible technology
changes
 New Hardware Types – Tablets, Touchscreen Laptops,
Smartphones
 New Operating Systems – Rise of iOS and Android
 New Devices of Every Shape and Size
 Migration from Desktop to Mobile Internet

11. IDC Poll of 3,500 Mobile Developers

12. Visual Complexity
Text &
Simple Forms
Lots of Static
Images
2D games or
environments
3D games or
environments

13. Pots of gold
2 guys in
garage
10 guys with
Seed funding
25 guys with
VC backing
1000 guys
public company
How technical is your team?
Is somebody else building it for you?

14. Target audience
B2B or
Internal only
Your existing
audience
Mass market
New and existing

15. Audience source
B2B or
Internal only
Search
(SEO, SEM, app store positioning etc.)
Marketing campaigns
(web, in-app ads, etc.)

16. Mobile
Desktop
Web
PCs
Consoles

17. + Android Phones
iPhone
+ Android Tablets
iPads
Mobile
iOS

18. 1. Just iOS
2. Just mobile (iOS + Android)
3. Mobile + PC/Console (e.g. games)
4. Mobile + Web (e.g. lots of interactive)
5. Mobile + Web + PC/Console (e.g. going really wide)

19.  HTML5 viewed in browser on phone
 HTML5 wrapped into app (PhoneGap/Appcelerator etc.)
 Native apps
 Unity
 Marmalade
 OpenFL (or Gingee)
 Flash/Air
 (And lots more…)

20. Choice
App
(Lots of choices)
No App
(HTML5)

21.  What is it?
 JavaScript application
 Rendering into a “canvas” (HTML5)
 Viewed in a browser (normal “web” experience)

22.  Pros
 One codebase that works everywhere
 Future proof
 HTML5 not going away
 Lots of industry support
 Steadily better and better performance
 Don’t pay 30% to Apple or Google

23.  Cons
 Browsers can be fickle.
 Esp Internet Explorer (~40% market share on desktop)
 HTML5 is a loose standard – optional features, variable support
 Browser release can break the app
 Performance will likely be significantly worse than almost all
other solutions
 Likely to be a big deal on mobile – if a highly interactive app
 No access to native features
 No access to app store
 Apple doesn’t want this to succeed
 No rev share if you are in a browser, not an app
 They could kill off successful browser “apps” if they wished

24.  What is it?
 JavaScript application
 Rendering into a “canvas” (HTML5)
 Built as an app that contains an embedded browser
 PhoneGap, Appcelerator,… etc.
 Sometimes called “Hybrid”

25.  Pros
 One codebase that works everywhere
 Have access to native features (via app integration layer)
 Less browser variability (as embedding the browser)
 Quick to market (esp. if existing web app)
 App store presence – discovery etc.

26.  Cons
 Performance, performance, performance
 Likely to be a big deal on mobile – if a highly interactive app
 Worse experience than your competitors
 Still got to worry about Internet Explorer on desktop
 Limited HTML5 support, nasty compatibility libraries
 Facebook dropped this approach in a high profile move
 Generally an “OK” rather than “Great” product solution

27.  What is it?
 Custom solution for each targeted platform
 iOS: Objective C and/or Swift
 Android: Java application
 Web: HTML or Flash
 PC/Console: C++

28.  Pros:
 Fastest possible performance
 Access to every platform feature
 Best possible solution on each platform

29.  Cons:
 Many separate codebases
 Bugs/issues in one may not appear in others
 Feature additions need to be made separately in each codebase
 Different tools and production paths, different platform capabilities
 Divides engineering team skills
 Slower to market
 Hard to be agile. Much easier if doing waterfall.
 May lead to a “ports” model where 1 version is great and rest
are so-so
 New technologies require all new port (e.g. Windows phone,
Tizen (Samsung))

30.  What is it?
 A cross-platform game development tool
 3D rendering engine primarily but adding 2D support
 Code written in C#

31.  Pros
 Impressive 3D engine performance on all platforms
 Single implementation deployed everywhere
 Cross compiles as a native app on mobile so native
customizations are possible
 “Future proof ” against new platforms becoming popular
 Huge developer community

32.  Cons
 Web support is a problem
 C# => C++ => JavaScript (asm.js a subset of JavaScript)
 Amazing technology, but result is a very large executable
(~10MB for “hello world”)
 Internet Explorer support is still missing
 Browsers dropping plug-in support

33.  What is it?
 A cross-platform SDK
 Primarily targeting existing C++ apps/games
 Cross compile for iOS, Android, PC/Console
 JavaScript SDK for web

34.  Pros
 Single code base
 Native performance (since C++)
 Cons
 C++ is a tough language to develop in (1990s vs 2010s)
 Slower development (in exchange for faster
performance)
 Web support seems unclear?

35.  What are they?
 Cross compiler solutions
 Actionscript (or Haxe) => C++ or JavaScript
 One set of source code
 => Native apps
 => HTML5
 => …
 OpenFL is open source
 Gingee includes “liquid UI” to scale/relayout elements
on a per-platform basis

36.  Pros
 Single implementation deployed everywhere
 Cross compiles as a native app on mobile so native
customizations are possible
 “Future proof ” against new platforms becoming popular
 Can target HTML5 and Flash for web
 Cons
 Gingee is closed source. Small startup.
 OpenFL is a small team/community
 Limited documentation/support
 Somewhat unproven

37.  What is it?
 Actionscript programming language
 Runs in Flash plugin in browser
 Runs as Air application on desktop/mobile
 Works fine on iOS contrary to rumors…

38.  Pros
 Single implementation deployed everywhere
 Access to native features (via ANEs)
 Supports iOS (common confusion)
 Now with GPU support
 95%+ installed plugin support
 Mature and stable platform. Lots of documentation etc.

39.  Cons
 Flash perceived as “old tech”
 Browser support could be dropped in the future
 Slower performance than native (esp if no GPU support)
 Higher memory usage

41. http://www.flurry.com/bid/109749/Apps-Solidify-Leadership-Six-Years-into-the-Mobile-Revolution

42.  “Very interested” in HTML5
 72.7% in July 2012
 59.9% in Nov 2013
 Browser compatibility
issues
 Performance problems
 Still correct choice in some
cases
http://www.appcelerator.com.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/q4-2013-devsurvey.pdf

43. 2 guys in
garage
10 guys with
Seed funding
25 guys with
VC backing
1000 guys
public company
Native
apps
(maybe)
A cross-platform
toolkit or
language
(not native)
Anything

44. Text &
Simple Forms
Lots of Static
Images
2D games or
environments
3D games or
environments
HTML5 in browser
HTML5 wrapped as app
Unity Unity
Flash+Air
OpenFL

45. Not really
(Just mobile)
(Mobile + PC/Console)
Very
Important
Unity
Marmalade
HTML5
Flash+Air
OpenFL

46.  Flash + Air for tablets and web
 Moving now to GPU accelerated performance
 Redesign of UI to better support tablets
 OpenFL for handsets
 Somewhat experimental but could be good long term