Activity Spotlight

Web Native: A New Approach to Cross-platform App Development

Over 10 years ago, Apache Cordova launched, providing web developers the opportunity to use their existing skills to build mobile apps. They could do everything native devs could, including accessing native device functionality like the camera, geolocation, and Bluetooth. The Cordova community grew strongly for several years, driven primarily by open source maintainers. However, the pace of native platform innovation, especially on mobile (iOS, Android), overwhelmed the community. With new device hardware released every year, new design paradigms to learn, and the introduction of modern plugin systems (CocoaPods, Gradle) and programming languages (Swift, Kotlin), it became clear that this approach wasn’t sustainable long-term. Enter Capacitor. This open-source, modern cross-platform app runtime makes it easy to build web apps that run natively on iOS, Android, Electron, and the web. Dubbed “Native Progressive Web Apps”, they represent the next evolution of hybrid apps - backed by a company dedicated to hybrid mobile development (the creators of the popular Ionic Framework UI component library). Capacitor enables: - Web Developers to leverage web standards-based APIs to access rich native device features - Native teams to work alongside web teams - Cordova devs to migrate easily, adding improved maintenance and troubleshooting and more visibility into native project changes - Powerful native extensibility via a simple Plugin API - Swift on iOS, Java on Android, and JavaScript for the web. Capacitor is a breath of fresh air for That Conference campers - a mix of pine and cedar with web development and modern native tooling. It’s "write once, run anywhere" redefined. Come learn how to craft modern, compelling app experiences with Capacitor.