Category: ReactNative

  • Ionic Capacitor support(All your OSes are belong to us)

    Ionic Capacitor support
    (All your OSes are belong to us)

    UPDATE July 2022: 

    We are sorry to update that we are no longer supporting Ionic as a Contextual platform.

     


    No…that’s not a typo. Old memers and gamers will remember “All your base are belong to us”.
    It’s our cheeky way of saying that only Contextual supports all that platforms that you need coverage for Announcements, Guides, Feedback and Contextual Help.
    Today we are announcing beta support for Capacitor JS with a V2 plugin!

    Native IOS Apps for iPhone and iPad. Also with the November Macbook announcement using M1 chip, it hints that IOS Apps may run on MacOS soon. Contextual integrations instructions are here. We support Swift and Objective C in a just few fast Mb.

    Native Android Apps for phones and tablets. Contextual integrations instructions are here. We support Kotlin and Java with an SDK of just few hundred fast kilobytes.

    Contextual has a WebSDK that supports all of the main browsers at runtime: Chrome, Safari, Mozilla, Edge etc. We havn’t checked Tor ????. Integration docs are here.

    With our Chrome/Edge extension you can get started even without adding the SDK. 

    ReactNative was open sourced by Facebook and is a super popular hybrid platform for Javascript developers. The main benefit is cross-platform development but with true native user interface widgets and is very fast. Today this is a super-popular platform for B2B App development teams. Integration of our SDK is here.

    Apache Cordova (once called Phonegap) is the grand-daddy of hybrid app platforms and until recently had sponsorship from Adobe via Phonegap Build.

    Whilst not as fast as Native or ReactNative, Cordova remains a very popular platform because of Apache open-source support. Integration of our SDK is here.

    Ionic is a well-funded development environment that breathes more life, UI elements and speed into a  Cordova style model. We support Ionic via our Cordova integration. Ionic support migration from Cordova to their Appflow.

    ionicons-v5_logos

    And….now….Capacitor is a key part of Ionic’s infrastructure. It is the obvious (only??) heir-apparent to Cordova that will be aggressively maintained. 

    Capacitor is billed as “an open source native runtime for building cross-platform mobile and Progressive Web Apps, with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.”

    It has a lot of build similarities to Cordova, so migration appears to be relatively painless.

    Credit: https://capacitorjs.com/

    So with Contextual supporting Capacitor, this gives Native Mobile and Hybrid mobile developers the richest choice for engaging users with Onboarding, Announcement, Guides, Coachmarks, Tooltips.

    Our beta docs for Capacitor are here

    Platforms not supported by Contextual (today)

    NativeScript is in Beta currently on Android. We are not sure if NS has a long term future, but some big Apps like SAP use it. Docs for Android are here.

    We dropped Xamarin support a while ago. We were bullish on it at one stage because we think a lot of Mobile Digital Adoption in enterprises will come from C# developers, but there is a lack of interest and lack of active OEM support from Microsoft – frustrating for us – if you have a solution, please let us know.

    We are super excited about Flutter and it’s on the roadmap – the integration is pretty deep for us, so it will take some time to get right.

    Unity is a major platform for gaming and VR (using C# or JS), its not currently our focus but we are keeping an eye out.

    Same for Unreal Engine which uses C++. Neither of these are really used in Mobile B2B, B2C apps, in B2C its commonplace for games but most customers are using the platforms we support.

    Can’t I just use a Web Onboarding solution for Mobile?

    Ask other vendors whether they support offline mode, poor networking, variable form-factors (portait vs landscape).

    Contextual will intelligently pre-fetch and buffer content and analytics on mobile because that is the right thing to do. A web-only approach (even on hybrid platforms) is unreliable to these realistic conditions on mobile.

    How do I integrate with a Capacitor App?

    Firstly we are not supporting V1 Capacitor, we are going for V2 only (at this stage)

    The creation of this plugin is really building on the Cordova technology we’ve had in production for a long-time and should not have too many problems. But it is beta. So feel free to check is out and give feedback to our support folks – we want to make this a great one!

    Our beta docs for Capacitor are here

  • iPad, Tablets coming or going in workplace Apps?

    iPad and Tablet apps are going strong in Retail POS, Retail Shop Assistants, Field Service Applications, Healthcare and design niches.

    There are many great examples doing well, just to name a few:

    Retail https://tulip.com/
    https://myagi.com/
    Field/Workforce https://happy.co/ (Inspections)
    https://www.handshake.com/ (Sales Orders)
    https://safetyculture.com/ (Safety/Quality Audits)
    https://www.deputy.com/ (Rostering and Tasks)
    Health vitalpac (now systemc) (Clinical Patient Care)
    POS many, many including
    http://kounta.com/
    http://vend.com/

    One compelling reason for success is once you put an app on a customer device you get lockin. Its psychologically more compelling than a mere web SaaS App.

    SOE vs BYOD

    Tablet Apps are being deployed because of the benefits of:

    1. the aforementioned “lockin”
    2. Better UI and input models
    3. UI speed
    4. Offline capabilities
    5. Shared viewing experience with the customer

    Problem is….this has practical BYOD vs SOE challenges:

    1. This requires a hardware investment and a commitment to administration of company property (SOE).
    2. Employees would prefer to just carry one device…their own device (BYOD).
    3. Practically, for many other use-cases, if it won’t fit in your pocket, then it won’t be used.

    The result is: most of these Apps have to support both Portrait Phones and Landscape tablets.

    Fat Apps and Feature Onboarding

    Tablet Apps have a form-factor that allows them the “feature richness” of Desktop Web Apps.

    More features are possible on the form-factor but don’t really work on the phone – things get cramped.  Luckily responsive design methods, tools are widespread for developers – particularly for Native Apps but also for React Native.

    When an App is in Tablet Landscape mode, you can show more features and let the user know they are available. This is a good reason to to do “Progressive Onboarding” to introduce feature when a user is ready.

    Enterprise Apps

    One of the largest under-reported growth areas in Apps is the enterprise “intranet”. This ancient term was popular in the ’90s and early 2000s because companies were rolling out more solutions around their own business processes that were accessed via browser rather than proprietary Windows Apps or Terminal sessions.

    History now repeats and splits into two types:

    • Internal Apps (written by or for the company)
    • SaaS Apps (written by a vendor that solves a broad business application – e.g Salesforce, Jira, Workday etc)

    Both classes also split again into three types:

    • Web Only
    • Web and Mobile (like the examples at the top)
    • Mobile Only

    A whole class of development agencies have emerged that primarily monetize the “Mobile Only” model – as consumer Mobile Apps proved notoriously difficult to make money on and retain users, developers earned their place providing business solutions for enterprise Apps.

    Existing web development shops have mostly tried to deliver mobile-web and hybrid apps, that is getting a lot better as React Native gives a better Javascript coded experience than Cordovea/Phonegap.

    My expectation is that we will see a lot more Tablet enabled applications with React Native under the hood, Contextual is well-progressed to support that. I’m not sure what is happening with Xamarin, its still active but a lot of developers must be thinking that React Native is going to look better on their CV and companies will see more support options from the market. Visual Studio (Microsoft’s development environment/IDE) has some support for React Native and a community supplied bundle here.

    Product Managers should keep tabs on React Native support and do some small test projects to see where the gaps are. One of the gaps is broad SDK support for tools already being used in their native deployments.

    Phablet vs Tablet

    However, in 2017, developers and customers tell me they saw a drop as Phone screens (iPhone 8+, iPhone X, Nexus 6 ‘phablet’ etc) got larger and higher resolution.

    Consumers love tablets but they already have one at home where they use it for lean-back use-cases like Video and News.

    Tablet sales dropped 8.5% in the first quarter of 2017 compared to last year. Apple’s iPad dropped 13.5% in sales compared to 2016.

    Because of the SOE vs BYOD tension in the workplace, many employers don’t have a compelling need to hand out iPads in the workplace because the Phablets are doing a pretty-good-job for most intranet applications and tablet form-factor retreats to the use-cases showcased in the first paragraph.

    I’ve also heard Microsoft Surface increasing in popularity in the enterprise as many companies undergo the generational change from Windows desktops/laptops to the Surface hybrid experience.

    So I expect that:

    1. iPads and  tablets in the workplace will be niche applications and
    2. ReactNative will be a dominant emerging enterprise development platform. This becomes even more true if the Windows trend gets traction – and why wouldn’t it?

    The elephant in the room is that Apple is merging iOS and OS/X and the iPad Mini didn’t get refreshed in 2017. You’d have to expect that Apple wants to counter Microsoft Surface with something unified for all enterprise Applications. Something like an iPad Pro with detachable keyboard.