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7 Things You Should Know Before Using Magento Commerce

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Magento

Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform written in PHP. It is one of the most popular open e-commerce systems in the network. This software is created using the Zend Framework.

More than 100,000 online stores have been created on this platform. The platform code has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times, and $155 billion worth of goods have been sold through Magento-based systems in 2019. Two years ago, Magento accounted for about 30% of the total market share.

In a hurry? Here are the 7 things you should consider before using Magento as an enterprise eCommerce platform:

1. Ongoing costs

Despite Magento Opensource doesn’t require paying a minimum yearly fee of $22,000 a year, it requires you to undergo updates, development, and integration from time to time. And those are just the upfront costs — you’ll also have to factor in the hidden costs of running an on-premise website.

Magento regularly rolls out patches and security updates which need to be manually installed. And the manual installation process is not as straightforward as you like it to be. You’re better off getting support to help you managing and installing the updates, but this would come at a cost. You would need to hire Magento specialists or refer to official Magento support, which isn’t cheap.

2. Needy technology

Do you want to manage technology, or use it? If you’re using Magento Commerce edition, you’ll find that it’s based on an old approach of “download and customize”. Not only does that take time, but it also takes technical knowledge — which again, may cost you a pretty penny if you want your eCommerce experience to be bespoke and enterprise-grade.

This approach from Magento also saps your attention and energy away from the activities that will help you scale your business. Instead, you will be forced to worry about managing the technology and running updates as and when required.

3. The support sinkhole

Magento has 1,300 open and ongoing support tickets. So if you run into issues, you may be waiting in line for quite some time before you find a solution.

If you want to bypass official Magento support (which you’d be paying for handsomely) your ongoing support costs will rise even further, as independent Magento support specialists charge hefty fees.

4. Magento is just an eCommerce solution — but that’s not enough for an enterprise

Here’s a vital point that’s often overlooked (before it’s too late, that is).

Magento is a stellar eCommerce platform, but that’s pretty much all it is. But in today’s eCommerce climate, to even stand a slim chance against the eCommerce giants like Amazon, you need so much more than just an eCommerce platform.

The modern consumer isn’t satisfied with just a product page and some on-site reviews. They want content in abundance before they even consider a purchase. They want walkthroughs, unboxing videos, documentation, third-party reviews, and more. The bottom line, they want an omnichannel experience. In fact, according to data compiled by MineWhat.com, 81 percent of consumers conduct online research before buying anything.

Oh, and you’ll also need to monitor your website’s analytics, collect customer data within a CRM, build landing pages for your ad campaigns and execute email marketing campaigns on a regular basis. Magento was to do none of the above.

5. Updates, migrations, and headaches

Running Magento means you must undergo an endless cycle of updates. And as mentioned before, running these maintenance procedures is not a straightforward task. Plus, you would eventually have to migrate to the newest version of Magento, whenever they decide to roll that out. For example, currently, Magento 1 users are experiencing the pain of having to migrate to Magento 2.

Magento 1 users have to either migrate to Magento 2 or replatform completely, as it was announced that Magento Commerce would not be providing support for Magento 1 after June 2022 (previously, it was November 2018, but this was extended).

6. It’s open-source

As an open-source platform, Magento gives users the ability to customize the code in any way they like. That may sound great at first, but when you consider issue #5 mentioned previously, having a highly-customized, bespoke back-end will make your life even more difficult when it comes to inevitably migration or re-platforming.

Plus, if you stray too far away from commonly used theme and extensions that aren’t peer-reviewed or tested for usability, you’ll risk breaking your entire eCommerce environment.

If you opt for a closed source enterprise eCommerce solution, you can still build a custom site with the help of the software vendor or an agency, but it will be done within the limits of the software, avoiding breakage and future headaches. Plus, closed source platforms have a much healthier track record when it comes to security.

7. Magento isn’t for the IoT era

As more IoT devices emerge, online merchants have to ask themselves a critical question; how are we going to sell products and publish content on all these new channels?

The answer is through a headless commerce platform; which can headlessly deliver products, content and other assets to Amazon Echos, smartwatches, digital signage and everywhere in between.

Sure, Magento Commerce has APIs to help deliver content to a broad range of channels; but as previously mentioned, Magento is just an eCommerce solution — it was never meant to manage a brand’s omnichannel strategy across all touchpoints. So, at best, you’ll get an inconsistent experience because you’ll have to draft in additional technology to plug the gaps left by Magento. Hardly ideal when brands like Amazon are providing seamlessly enjoyable shopping experiences.

Consider your options before using Magento as an enterprise eCommerce platform We won’t deny that Magento is a stellar eCommerce solution; but will argue that it’s not the best commerce solution when you factor in things like.

5 benefits of applying DRY principle to your code

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DRY code Or wet

DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) is a software development principle, the main purpose of which is to reduce the repetition of code.

WET (Write Every Time) is a cheeky abbreviation to mean the opposite i.e. code that doesn’t adhere to DRY principle.

It is clear which one of the two should all developers work in. But hey! someone out there might say it is wrong.

In this article, we will look at the benefits of applying DRY principle to your code. First of all, let’s start with a simple example that illustrates the basic advantage of the DRY principle.

DRY – Simple example

Assume you have many places in your code that need to be executed based on the current user’s role. For instance, createPage() can only be executed if the user is an editor or an administrator, deletePage() only if the user is an administrator too.

Instead of spreading the logic of checking for a user’s role in both createPage and deletePage, we can use one function isPermitted() as below.

//get the current Subject
Subject currentUser = context.getSubject();

if (isPermitted(currentUser)) {
    //allow execution of deletePage
} else {
    //block execution
}

When you keep the logic of isPermitted() to one place, you avoid duplication and also enable re-use of the code. The added advantage is separation of logic i.e. createPage() and deletePage() don’t need to know how the permission is checked.

As always there is more than get to you every day.

Advantages of DRY

I- Maintainability

The biggest benefit of using DRY is maintainability.

If the logic of checking permission was repeated all over the code, it becomes difficult to fix issues that arise in the repeated code. When you fix a problem in one, you could easily forget to fix the problem in other occurrences.

Also, if you have to modify the logic, you have to copy-paste all over the place. By having a non-repeated code, you only have to maintain the code in a single place. New logic and bug fixes can be made one place instead of many. This leads to a robust and dependable software.

II- Readability

More often than not, DRY code is more readable. This is not because of the DRY principle itself, but rather because of the extra effort, the developer put into the code to make it follow certain principles such as DRY.

III- Reuse

DRY inherently promotes reuse of code because we are merging two or more instances of repeating code into a single block of code. The reusable code pays off in the long run as it speeds development time.

IV- Cost

If the management needs to be convinced regarding spending more time on improving the quality of code, this is it – More code can cost more. More code takes more people, more time to maintain and to address bugs. In addition, More time to develop and more bugs lead to a very unhappy customer.

V- Testing

We are not talking about manual testing; We are talking about unit tests and integration tests here. The more paths and functions you have to cover using the tests, the more code you have to write for tests. If code is not repeated, you just have to test one main path. Of course, different behaviors still need to be tested.

Caution

With all the advantages of using DRY, there are some pitfalls though.

  1. Not all code needs to be merged into one piece. Some times 2 pieces of code can look similar but with subtle differences. When to merge these prices of code into one and when to leave them separated needs to be thought over carefully.
  2. If the code is “over dried”, it becomes difficult to read and understand. I have also seen developers trying to apply DRY principle even when there is only one instance of a block of code. While I appreciate their thinking and foresight into making the code better and reusable, I wouldn’t bother to make the code follow DRY principle until the situation to re-use it is needed.
  3. Often missed, DRY is not to be limited to just the code. It is to be applied in equal measure to database design, documentation, testing code, etc.

Will Native Development be dead in 2020?

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Mobile-App-Development

With the advent of cross-platform toolings such as React Native and Flutter, does it make sense for companies to invest in multiple native development apps on iOS and Android?

In the mobile development space, there are many going all out with Flutter and React Native. Most of them claim that it could save up to 30–35% of your time (and thus costs) by working with Flutter or React Native. Let’s analyze as to how much of this is really true, and does this apply to you?

Long Version

There are more than 100 mobile applications are developed in the past five years, many of which have gone viral, got funded, and ranked in top #10 lists. In 2010 there were Objective-C in iOS and Java with Android and transitioned to Swift and, in recent years, to Kotlin.

There were satisfied with the tooling and didn’t pick up Hybrid Apps (built on Cordova or any Web layer) as they reduced the User Experience to a great extent. AngularJS (1.x) appeared in 2015 much before v1.0 was launched and then came along React - as it matured.

With React already being used in production systems and clients want to work in React Native. In Dec 2018 - Flutter was launched!

The approach that flutter took was different from React Native, and it held a strong premise of overcoming the pitfalls that React Native (and other Cross-Platform apps had in general). Thus, It’s time to debunk some myths and establish some facts around mobile app development.

  1. Your code can be 100% in React Native/Flutter Mobile applications these days can’t be an island; depending upon the product features, one will need to interface with a lot of third-party solutions to integrate within the apps - more so for cross-platform apps than native. There are different libraries for error tracking, performance monitoring to very specialized tasks such as video conferencing, and chat tools. Most of these libraries provide first-class support for Native libraries, and then, if they deem essential - create wrappers for cross platforms.
    Depending upon your approach, you will have to choose between writing parts of your applications in native code or in Flutter/React - at times, causing more pain than ease.
  2. Flutter is here to stay, now and forever Huge corporations such as Google will never have a single strategy, and it has a history of knocking down projects (some even successful by many standards) if it doesn’t live up to their expectations. Also, frontend libraries and frameworks are notorious for having a short life cycle.
    In early 2016, Microsoft acquired Xamarin for $500–600 Million - and in my opinion. Microsoft dropped Xamarin like a hot potato in recent years and has instead moved its focus on Machine Learning.
    Google’s beloved AngularJS, once considered revolutionary came into existence, got a lot of fanfare, adoption; and then criticism all within a span of a few years.
    Google is simultaneously also backing Kotlin; it can create not only cross-platform native apps (like Flutter) but also can work on Web (Flutter supports it too) and backend systems too.
  3. You will always save costs upwards of 30% while working with Flutter/RN Yes, there are cost and time savings when it comes to working with cross-platform apps - not just in development; but also in QA and Project Management; But these benefits are assuming that you don’t rely on too many third-party frameworks that have little to no support for your SDKs.
    There are some animation effects, gradients, and such which are not available in React Native despite it being in existence for a long time.
    So sometimes getting these to work with your apps can be a pain; but if you’re looking to build apps that aren’t heavily dependent on these services or if these SDKs form a minor portion of the app then yes; you will still save money working with Flutter/RN
  4. My Flutter/RN team need not know any native development It would be foolhardy to take a beginner, not knowing any native development to work directly on Flutter/RN. If you’re starting mobile development, learn Kotlin/Swift first - get a firm grip and then move on to Flutter/RN; also to know RN, you will first need to get acquainted with React - not a short learning curve, eh.
    Again, depending on your application, you could do away with this requirement, but if you need support ;  you will have to get your hands dirty in native code or get help from other native developers on your team.

And now, time for some facts!

  1. Your Flutter app will be as performant as a native app Flutter was built for performance, and our recent experience in building flutter apps has been a resounding success. We recently launched a Flutter app for the fifth-largest marine player in the world!
    The only downside you can see upfront is the size of the apps developed in Flutter; they are usually 30MB+ (though it’s not a deal-breaker for most considering increased bandwidth and internet penetration around the globe)
  2. You will be able to ship apps faster While it might look to a developer at a macro level that he’s spending more time than needed; sometimes while working with React Native/Flutter as opposed to native development - they do save time overall.
    With Flutter; you’re able to ship apps quicker, which means you can pack in more features in every sprint; so everyone’s usually happy.
  3. You can add Flutter to existing apps! With the launch of v1.12 of Flutter, the “add to app” functionality has finally gone mainstream; even within Solutelabs,  we have started pitching to clients about creating new features in Flutter.
    Adding Flutter to existing apps would mean that your native development team would have to reskill themselves in Flutter. This could be a deterrent factor for some teams and might not be for some.

If you already have a native iOS or Android app and don’t need many external SDKs; try adding flutter to the mix, it’s easy to learn, and there are some excellent tutorials on Flutter out there!

And if you’re starting from scratch; have a look at your app and see if it’s heavily dependent on SDKs that don’t have a Flutter/RN SDK. If not, and if you’re starting - go for Flutter.

The simple guide for SEO audit

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SEO

Doing a search engine optimization audit (SEO Audit) of your website is important for many reasons.

Before getting into the details on how to perform a website SEO audit, it is necessary to understand the meaning of it and what to expect as the end result.

What is an SEO audit?

An SEO audit is a process for evaluating the search engine friendliness of a website in a number of areas. The main goal of SEO audit is to help you to optimize your website so that it can achieve higher rankings in the search engine results.

The SEO auditor will manually review the website and come up with recommendations of what needs to be fixed (because it is wrong) and what needs to change so that the performance of the website in search engines is improved.

SEO Audit Checklist

Now after you are convinced that an SEO audit is very important for every website, thus let’s see how you can perform your own website SEO audit.

Our SEO audit checklist is complete and includes everything you need to know to perform a manual SEO audit.

Step 1: Check for Google Penalties

The first step is to check whether your website is penalized by Google or not.

If your website is under a manual or algorithmic penalty, your rankings will be negatively affected.

There are two easy ways to check for Google penalties:

The first way is to log in to Google search console and then select ‘Manual Actions’ from the left menu. If there is a manual action imposed on your website, you can see the reason(s) here.

The second way is to log in to your Google Analytics and then compare your Google organic traffic for the dates Google released an algorithmic change.

Step 2: Check the Domain Appearance by Search

The second step is to search for your brand name in Google and review the results.

Things to check:

  • Does your homepage come up first in the search results?
  • Does Google show site links along with your listing?
  • Are the descriptions below your homepage and other pages accurate as you insert?
  • Does Google show the knowledge graph entry on the right panel for your brand?
  • Are the name and the other information on your GMB page correct?
  • Are the rest of the pages listed on the first page of Google results relevant to your brand?

What to do if you don’t get the expected results?

If you don’t get a nice listing as explained above then this means that there are a number of issues with your website.

The best approach is to fix these issues before proceeding any further by:

  • Reviewing and optimizing your site structure
  • Review your homepage SEO
  • Claim your Google My Business page and make sure that all information is accurate and correct

Step 3: Perform a Technical SEO Audit

Technical SEO comes first because you need to make sure that search engines can access and index your pages without any issues.

Technical SEO Checklist

Is your website registered with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools?

If not, then this is a top priority.

Google search console is a free tool provided by Google which gives information to webmasters about their websites.

Everything that Google knows about your website is available in the various tool options and reports.

Here are some of these things:

  • Security or other indexing issues related to your website
  • Mobile usability issues
  • Did you specify a preferred domain in Google Search Console
  • Are your robots.txt file and sitemap.xml file optimized
  • Is your URLs SEO Friendly?
  • Do you activate the breadcrumb menu?
  • Is your 404 Page Optimized?
  • Do you have a canonical URL set for all your pages?
  • Is your website HTTPS?
  • Is your website fast enough?
  • Minify your CSS and HTML to make their size smaller
  • Use a caching plugin or page speed service to serve cached pages to users.
  • Remove unnecessary JavaScript from pages
  • Update to the latest version of PHP.
  • And many more…

Step 4: Perform an On-Page SEO Audit

Once you are done with the technical SEO audit and fixed all issues, the next step is to deal with the content of your website.

It is the most important part of the SEO Audit. In fact, many audits cover this part only but our approach, as explained above, is for checking other areas as well.

The main goal of on-site SEO is to help search engines understand the meaning of your content.

On-Page SEO Audit Checklist

As a website owner, your job is to provide search engine crawlers with the right signals through the use of keywords and other on-page SEO elements.

Check and Optimize your titles and descriptions

Are the titles and descriptions unique for each page and within the specified size?

Can the user tell from the title what the page is all about and is the description an advertisement of what the page has to offer?

Check your headings and text formatting

Make sure that you don’t just have plain text in your pages. In other words, Any text should be properly formatted using H1 (for the main title only) and H2 (for the main headings), bold and italics for the important parts, lists where necessary, etc.

Check your Content SEO

The content of your website has to be unique. You can use Copyscape to check all your pages for uniqueness and if you find duplicate content you have to remove or de-index these pages.

Use Google Analytics to find the most popular pages (both landing pages and with the most visits) and make sure that these have high-quality content (free of spelling and grammar errors, properly formatted, properly promoted in social media, etc.).

You also need to check the content length and content freshness.

If you have pages with little or no content or pages with similar content, then you need to merge them together using 301 redirects.

If your content is old or out-of-date, create a publishing plan and make sure that your website is updated on a frequent basis.

You don’t have to post daily but you need to maintain a steady posting scheduling.

Check your Internal link structure

Linking your pages together is useful to both search engines and users. Check and make sure that you are indeed linking related pages together

Check Image SEO

Images are useful for making a web page easier to read and more attractive to social media (especially Pinterest and Instagram) but they can work against your SEO efforts if they increase the loading time of a page.

In general, you need to check 3 things when it comes to images:

  1. Image filenames are descriptive of what the image is about. You can use the name of the page or post.
  2. All images need to have an SEO Optimized ALT text defined
  3. Minimize the images size by compressing them.

Check for broken links

Broken links are bad for the user experience and thus not good for an SEO perspective.

Check for proper use of banner ads

A few years ago, Google started penalizing websites that have too many ads above the fold; therefore if your ad implementation is not according to standards you have to remove or change the position of the ads.

Step 5: Perform an Off-Page SEO Audit

Off-Page SEO refers to methods and techniques you can use to promote your website on the Internet.

SEO Backlinks are considered by the Google algorithm as ‘votes of trust’ and websites with good quality backlinks tend to rank higher in Google search results.

Off-site SEO is important but if you are not careful about what you are doing and if you don’t know what exactly you are allowed to do and what not, it is also very risky.

Low-quality incoming links can be a very good reason for Google to penalize your website

Step 6: Perform a Social Media Audit

It’s difficult to survive online without having a satisfactory social media presence; it is as simple as that.

If you disrepair social media and depend on search marketing then it’s like putting all your eggs in one basket and your risk is higher.

To make a living online, you have to differentiate both your traffic and income sources and dependency on a single source (i.e. Google) is not the way to go.

Social media affects your SEO efforts both directly (in the form of links) and indirectly (more exposure which may create more natural links and direct visits), so it is a factor that can influence your efforts to have a properly optimized website.

Basically, what you have to check in this section is whether you have a proper presence in the most important social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest), whether it’s easy for people to find and follow you in those channels.

Why Web App Security Testing Critical to Build Secure Apps

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security-testing

There are a lot of ways that put websites and web app security at critical; however, the scale of threat varies as does the difficulty in hacking.

Imagine if it can be as serious as leaking of valuable information or personal images for a common user, how severe can it be for companies who protect the valuable data of millions of users; even large corporates or software service providers. It is way beyond one can imagine!

For hacked users, they take the extra precaution of changing passwords or using more secured firewalls; yet there’s no guarantee that they won’t face a similar calamity again. Hence arises the question, what security measures to take which can avert such breaches in the future?

What is Web App Security Testing?

Ever thought where lies the credibility of the websites who promise uncompromised security to their clients, when they cannot protect their own? The focus should be on finding loopholes in the application’s security during building it; rather than pondering over how to strengthen the firewall when the fortress has already been breached.

The amusing part of the story is that these bugs are usually critical mistakes by the developers. There lay so many cases of website hacking in front of us that make you question the immunity of sharing and/or storing data on the Internet and clouds. Some pretty recent incidents which have made headlines and become topics of big discussions have raised these security concerns.

Recently after attending a seminar with the OWASP team, I realized that although we think we are following the best Quality Assurance methods yet there are ambiguities overlooked on our part as developers and lead to disasters for the client at a later stage. It is time we hand down the necessity of best practices that are going unnoticed in most cases.

The below-mentioned list of vulnerabilities is the most common impact of coding carelessness, by the hands of developers. The list is long hence we will be covering a few critical ones here.

Injections

When the control plane data is injected into the user-controlled data plane thus modifying the control flow of the process; it results in the disclosure of useful and data-sensitive information. Injection issues occur mostly due to logic errors, caused either due to lack of knowledge or the habit of doing smart work when cautiousness is required. Amongst other threats caused due to injection problem, there is a lot of data, jeopardized authentication and loss of data integrity. It is broadly classified under these three categories:

1. Code Injection

Improper validation of data is the main cause of code injection; a code is inserted into the application which is later executed by it leading to loss of availability and/or accountability. Inaccuracy when validating data formats or the extent of predictable data leaves the gap for the hackers to tamper and use code injections.

Amongst the varied types of code injection, I have pointed out the major two here:

a) SQL Injection

The commonest injection in ASP and PHP, an SQL query is injected through the input data from the client to the application. An SQL injection can affect the performance of predefined SQL commands. It can lead to destroying data or making it unavailable; the hacker can even become the administrator of the database server.

b) HTML Script Injection

The hacker inserts their own content into the page using valid HTML values, often parameterized. The attacker creates a malignant content along with HTML codes and sends it to the user. The receiver takes it to be coming from a trusted source and clicks on it. As soon as the user fills in his username and password it reaches the hacker, thus causing a huge loss to the former.

2. Command Injection

Inserting the command injection in the host application is possible when the latter is passing unsafe cookies to a system shell. The motive of the hacker usually is implementing random commands on the operating system of the host. Although the hacker is unable to add his own code as is the case with code injection however, it points out that your application is vulnerable.

3. Broken Authentication and Session Management

For developers who often prefer to create their own session tokens; although most application development environment has the session capability; it turns out to be riskier. If your session identifiers and authentication credentials have not been protected with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), from defects like cross-site scripting (elaborated below), the hacker can easily break-in into a running session posing as a user.

4. Cross-Site Scripting

CSRF or Cross-Site Request Forgery makes the user execute undesired actions on a web application with the aid of social engineerings, such as sending malicious links via mail or chat. This must-have happened with many of you, here I will explain the reason why it happens even when you take the precaution of using a secret cookie.
In general cross-site scripting happens when a hacker sends malicious codes or links to the end-user, usually in the form of a browser side script. XSS can lead to some major issues like disclosing the data in secured files; sending out malicious links from the account of the end-user ultimately compromising the whole account; inserting viruses into the database etc.

Even your secure cookies will not be helpful in this regard since XSS code will have access to all your details, the only way is to perform a security review of the code.

Some Protection Measures

As goes the saying a stitch in time saves time, I would like to put forward these easy to adopt security tools and ethics for my fellow developers:

1. Headers

Using secured HTTP headers is one of the best practices for making safe your connections to the server. Applying headers in the web server configuration such as Apache, Nginx, etc; is helpful if you want to strengthen the defense mechanisms of your new applications.

For example, X-Frame-Options denies rendering within one frame; it does not render if the origins do not match but allow rendering when carried out frame by frame from the domain. The other secured headers that can be used are X-Content-Type-Options, Strict-Transport-Security.

2. Password Protection Measures

There should be no restriction on the password strength i.e. the size and complexity of characters. Moreover, the storage of passwords should be in the encrypted form; preferably in the hashed format because it is irreversible. The definite number of login attempts and informing the user of the timings of their logins as well as failed login attempts are commonly applied helpful secured practices.

3. Secured Session ID

Guarding your session transit with the help of SSL is amongst the best ways to save your day. The session id should ideally be never included in the URL; they should be long enough that makes them impossible to be guessed. Never accept a session-id suggested by a user!

4. Avoiding Hidden Components

Authentication of every component with the other is highly important; applying strong procedural and architecture mechanisms prevents the misuse of site architecture as it progresses over time. Using no-cache tag deters from going back to the login page using the back button and obtaining the resubmitted user credentials.

These are simple measures if taken will keep you on the safer side.

Top 5 Cross-Platform App Frameworks

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Top-5-Hybrid-Mobile-App-Frameworks-For-Cross-Platform-App-Development

There are a number of cross-platform app frameworks out there, each with their own set of pros and cons, however, as per the following trend where we have picked the most competitive and top-performing frameworks available in the market today.

  1. Xamarin:

Loved by Developers, Trusted by Enterprise

Xamarin was launched in 2011 as an independent cross-app development framework but was later acquired by Microsoft in 2016, thus lending it more credibility than before.

It is an open-source framework that was launched to solve the problem of disjointed native technology stacks, which made mobile app development a difficult and expensive affair.

Pros of Xamarin

  1. Xamarin app development uses C# for coding, meaning that it works seamlessly on an array of platforms (including Android and iOS).
  2. Xamarin has a strong community of over 60,000 contributors from more than 3,700 companies.
  3. Share more than 75% of your code across platforms, for “write once, run anywhere” ease.
  4. A single tech stack for faster development

Cons of Xamarin

  1. It is expensive for enterprises. Xamarin is a framework that comes free for individuals and startups.
  2. Xamarin is not recommended for apps that demand heavy graphics because each platform has a different method for visually laying out screens. A UX/UI-rich application is advised to be executed natively.
  3. It also offers limited access to certain vital libraries that the app developers need for mobile app development. Also, since the core of its user-interface conception is not mobile, creating the UI is time-consuming.

Apps Made with Xamarin Cross-Platform App Framework

  • Fox Sports
  • Alaska Airlines
  • HCL
  • American Cancer Society
  • BBC Good Food
  1. React Native:

Learn Once, Write Anywhere

React Native is an effort by Facebook launched in 2015, and it did cause a wave in the market for hybrid frameworks. Within a few years of its primer in the market, it is already one of the most popular ones and the most trending one we discussed here.

Pros of React Native

  1. Up to 80% of a codebase can be shared across platforms, depending on the difficulty of the app.
  2. Apart from code reusability, it allows you to preview results right away, besides offering readymade elements, thus shortening the developing time significantly.
  3. “Hot reloading” feature enables developers to see changes made in code within seconds not minutes as when using native technologies.
  4. React Native emphases on UI to a great extent rendering a highly responsive interface.
  5. It also gives you access to certain great native functionalities like accelerometer and camera. The result it renders is a high-quality native-like user interface.

Cons of React Native

  1. React Native is not fully a cross-platform app framework. To use some functions like a camera or accelerometer you have to use native components, so there will be a separate code for Android and iOS.
  2. Since the framework is not built in conjunction with iOS or Android, it lags behind the native platforms at times. This is one of the reasons that led Udacity to stop investing in React Native for new features.
  3. React Native lacks consistency when it comes to releasing the updates.
  4. React Native improves the speed of development, but also increases the duration of the debugging process, especially on Android.

Apps Made with React Native Cross-Platform App Framework

  • Instagram
  • Bloomberg
  • Pinterest
  • Skype
  • Tesla
  1. Flutter:

Beautiful Native Apps in No-Time

Flutter is another open source and free cross-platform framework for creating native interfaces for Android as well as iOS. Google announced Flutter in February 2018 at Mobile World Congress and released its first version on December 5th, 2018, and this makes ‘Flutter’ in this list of cross-platform app frameworks.

Flutter is a cross-platform app framework and Google maintained it.

In the Developer Survey Results, 2019 Flutter is amongst the top 3 most loved frameworks and it add another complexity to the existing popularity of the Reactive Native framework.

Pros of Flutter

  1. “Hot reloading” feature enables developers to see changes made in code within seconds not minutes as when using native technologies.
  2. It is an ideal framework for MVP development. Instead of spending extra money and time on two separate apps, you can build a Flutter mobile application rapidly that looks native on both Android and iOS.
  3. Flutter is based on Dart, an object-oriented programming language that developers have found rather easy to acquire the skill for.
  4. Flutter has a full set of widgets in Google’s Material Design and in Apple’s style with the Cupertino pack.
  5. Many ready-made solutions for native Android and iOS apps enable you to work with Continuous Integration platforms like Travis and Jenkins.

Cons of Flutter

  1. There is limited TV support with apps built on Flutter framework i.e, Flutter offers no support for Android TV and Apple TV.
  2. Though by the virtue of being developed by Google, there are several libraries with ready-to-implement functionalities, Flutter still lacks with respect to native development.
  3. Since Flutter-enabled apps use built-in widgets and not platform widgets, therefore the size of the app is usually bigger. Currently, the smallest possible app made with Flutter can weigh no less than 4MB.

Apps Made with Flutter Cross-Platform App Framework

  • Alibaba
  • Google
  • Google Ads
  • Tencent
  1. Adobe PhoneGap:

Build amazing mobile apps powered by open web tech

PhoneGap was previously known as Apache Cordova and  Adobe owned it. It is a simple cross-platform app development framework that uses HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript.

Pros of Adobe PhoneGap

  1. It allows you to share the application with the team to garner their feedback.
  2. It also offers a cloud solution in case you want to create your app directly.
  3. Features like access to third-party tools, a large community (the one behind the free and open-source Apache Cordova), and a large number of plugins, make it better than its competitors.
  4. It uses an intuitive desktop as for mobile app development and then serves the app created on the desktop to mobile devices connected to it.

Cons of Adobe PhoneGap

  1. PhoneGap is not recommended for high-performance applications and hardware intensive apps like gaming apps due to its poor performance and lack of UI Widgets.
  2. PhoneGap is dependent on iOS SDKs to build an app and downloading these SDKs requires a Mac.
  3. Apps built with PhoneGap to incline to go a little low on performance as related to native apps

Apps Made with PhoneGap Cross-Platform App Framework

  • Wikipedia
  • TripCase
  • FanReact
  1. Ionic:

Make App Creation Lightning Fast

Ionic is an open-source cross-platform app framework and licensed under MIT. It uses HTML5 for translation. Very similar to AngularJS in design and structure. It also inherits a few design elements from iOS as well as Android. It allows you to build native-like hybrid apps for Android and iOS as well as progressive web apps. Ionic has introduced Ionic React: One codebase. Any Platform. Now in React.

Pros of Ionic

  1. Ionic is based on a SAAS UI framework designed specifically for mobile operating systems. It provides numerous UI components for developing robust applications.
  2. The Ionic framework allows you to ship continuously. From automated native builds to live updating and CI/CD, Ionic App flow addresses the entire mobile
  3. DevOps
  4. A vibrant community of more than 5M developers in over 200 countries back Ionic.

Cons of Ionic

  1. The knowledge of AngularJS becomes almost a necessity if one wants to go beyond basic apps.
  2. Designing in-app navigation is complex because of its not-so-easy-to-use UI-router.

Apps Made with Ionic Cross-Platform App Framework

  • IBM
  • ING
  • SAP
  • NASA

Cross-Platform App Development in 2023

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Cross-Platform-App-Development

As it stands true in today’s ever-evolving mobile app development world, where 2.5 and 1.8 million apps exist on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store respectively. Apps on the Apple Store is expected to see an increase of 181.1%.

In such a situation, businesses wouldn’t risk missing their presence on either platform. Costing, however, is usually a matter if businesses go for native apps. This is why cross-platform app development has arisen as the unbeatable choice of businesses that aim for a presence on Android as well as iOS.

Before we move ahead let’s find out where these frameworks stand in 2023:

What is Cross-App Platform Framework?

At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Mark Zuckerberg said:

“The biggest mistake we’ve made as a company is betting on HTML5 over native.”

Indeed, the world of software has transformed a lot since Zuckerberg made that statement in 2012. Today, the future is in the hands of cross-platform app frameworks.

Cross-platform app development frameworks allow developers to create mobile applications that are well-matched with more than one operating system, i.e. iOS and Android. It provides us the ability to write the code once, and then use it anywhere on other platforms too. Therefore, enabling to release a product/software faster, safer, and with better quality.

The Difference Between Native and Cross-Platform App Development

Native vs cross-platform is a never-ending debate that has kept the tech community divided for years. There are a few experts who prefer native apps over cross-platform apps, on the other hand, companies like Uber are coming up with their cross-platform app framework—Ribs.

Both native and cross-platform app development technologies are in a continuous state of progression. This varying nature of technologies signals that these subjects should be revisited from time to time to check which of these options is currently leading the game.

  • Native app development eschews the complexity of creating a sustainable product that spans multiple platforms and instead focuses on generating a competent design that stays close to the target platform–Android, iOS, etc.
  • Cross-platform frameworks pursue to produce apps that reach out to as many followers of your brand as possible by covering a wide number of end devices during the programming and creation process.

The Benefits of Cross-Platform App Development

  1. Code Reusability
    Ease of code reusability is one of the biggest upsides that hybrid app development offers. Anyone can use the code for multiple platforms. So, it’s half the effort and time as compared to native app development.
  2. Cost-Effectiveness
    It offers a relatively lower cost of development as compared to native app development since the code is written once and used for both (or more) platforms.
  3. Consistency in UI Components
    Cross-platform apps offer a decent extent of consistency in native UI components of the device. The look and feel are uniforms.
  4. Easy Hosting
    It is easy to host on respective app stores once all the requirements have been fulfilled.
  5. Cloud Integration
    Integration with the cloud environment is easy. You can even integrate them quickly with enterprise-grade plugins thus offering universal compatibility.
  6. Fewer Technical Barriers
    Developers encounter fewer technical barriers as there is no need to learn specific languages like Objective-C or Swift. Proficiency in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS3 suffices for cross-platform app development.

Top 5 Cross-Platform App Frameworks

There are a number of cross-platform app frameworks out there, each with their own set of pros and cons, however, as per the following trend where we have picked the top-performing frameworks available today.

  1. Xamarin: Loved by Developers, Trusted by Enterprise

Xamarin was launched in 2011 as an independent cross-app development framework but was later acquired by Microsoft in 2016, thus lending it more credibility than before.

It is an open-source framework that was launched to solve the problem of disjointed native technology stacks, which made mobile app development a difficult and expensive affair.

Apps Made with Xamarin Cross-Platform App Framework
  • Fox Sports
  • Alaska Airlines
  • HCL
  • American Cancer Society
  • BBC Good Food
  1. React Native: Learn Once, Write Anywhere

React Native is an endeavor that Facebook launched in 2015, and it did cause a wave in the market for hybrid frameworks. Within a few years of its introduction in the market, it is already one of the most popular ones.

Apps Made with React Native Cross-Platform App Framework
  • Instagram
  • Bloomberg
  • Pinterest
  • Skype
  • Tesla
  1. Flutter: Beautiful Native Apps in No-Time

Flutter is an open-source and free cross-platform framework for creating native interfaces for Android as well as iOS. Google announced Flutter recently in February 2018 at Mobile World Congress and released its first version on December 5th, 2018, and soon ‘Flutter’ in this list of cross-platform app frameworks.

Flutter is a cross-platform app framework maintained by Google, the very same organization that develops the Android Native Framework.

Apps Made with Flutter Cross-Platform App Framework
  • Alibaba
  • Google
  • Google Ads
  • Tencent
  1. Adobe PhoneGap: Build amazing mobile apps powered by open web tech

PhoneGap was previously known as Apache Cordova. It is a simple cross-platform app development framework that uses HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript.

Apps Made with PhoneGap Cross-Platform App Framework
  • Wikipedia
  • TripCase
  • FanReact
  1. Ionic: Make App Creation Lightning Fast

Ionic is an open-source cross-platform app framework and licensed under MIT. It uses HTML5 for translation. Very similar to AngularJS in design and structure. It also gets a few design elements from iOS as well as Android. It allows you to build native-like hybrid apps for Android and iOS as well as progressive web apps.

PS: Ionic has introduced Ionic React: One codebase. Any Platform. Now in React.

Apps Made with Ionic Cross-Platform App Framework
  • IBM
  • ING
  • SAP
  • NASA

Conclusion

Cross-platform solutions are effective; however, they did not gain enough mileage since their birth due to division in mobility platforms. Now that the mobile app development world is largely divided into two large platforms— Android & iOS—cross-platform development is expected to experience much more advancement very soon.

The question is which out of mentioned cross-platform app frameworks should you choose? The straightforward answer: it depends.

Facebook Adopts Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code for Development

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Facebook-moving-to-Visual-Studio-Code

Facebook is adopting Visual Studio Code for all of its software engineers and is currently in the process of finishing the migration from its mix of Nuclide and Emacs for internal development. As part of the partnership with Microsoft, the company will also help improve remote development extensions; which is ultimately going to benefit many more developers around the world.

Facebook has a long history of partnering with Microsoft on different projects; such as a recent one focused on deepfake detection algorithms that could help big social platforms prepare for a world where everyone with a computer; and internet access can create photorealistic videos that can get viral before we even realize they’re not the real thing.

Now, the social giant has announced that it’s making Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code the default development environment for its engineers moving forward.

The company had been planning to use Visual Studio Code since late 2018; when it sent an internal memo to its employees about the intention to move all development to the new environment. Since then; Facebook has been working on migrating key Nuclide features to Visual Studio Code in the form of internal-facing extensions; which most Facebook engineers are currently using despite being still in beta.

Facebook says the main reasons for using Microsoft’s solution are cross-platform availability on Windows, macOS, and Linux, as well as a well-documented extension API.
Since a lot of development is done on dedicated servers from Facebook’s data centers, having the ability to use; and contribute to the development of remote development extensions factored in the decision to migrate to the new tool.
This is good news for Microsoft, who has pivoted to focus on the cloud; and productivity tools that can be used on almost any platform. The company has seen a surge in usage for tools like Teams; and having one of the largest companies in the world, let alone a developer-focused company like Facebook; use Visual Studio Code isn’t going to hurt either.

How to Get B2B Mobile Commerce UX Right

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B2B & B2C

Since the B2C expertise is superior, it’s pushing businesses to boost their B2B aspect still. With B2B customers on the move, it’s imperative for businesses to boost their mobile client expertise.

If you’re not puzzling over up your B2B uxor, you should. Your competitors are most likely finished the design and already getting rid of your customers and profits.

Steps to Get B2B Mobile UX Right:

Enhance client Satisfaction

Your business’s longevity depends on the satisfaction of your customers. Your business will solely be as sturdy as your client retention rates.

Avoid Negative Reviews

Easy Search

A B2B app normally offers expansive product catalogs, which makes robust search capabilities an essential feature. You should allow customers to go beyond the basic SKU-based searches, and search products based on price, availability, etc.

Develop a Well Thought out Navigation

Poor navigation will certainly value you, customers. Here are some ways to create higher navigation:

  • Card kind will assist you to analyze your visitors’ expectations to find product or pages
  • Use familiar words
  • Put the pushcart within the top-right corner.
  • Navigation ought to be simple enough to faucet on a mobile device (not too tiny for fingertips)
  • Use breadcrumbs —your customers mustn’t feel stranded on a page with no thanks to going back to
  • Navigation ought to be unbroken as consistent as attainable from page to page

Purchase History

You should give your customers access to their previous purchase information; it will facilitate them to place new orders quickly. You must additionally modify your customers to edit their orders: change quantities, dynamical shipping addresses, etc.

Personalization

Personalization is a very important tool for making a loyal client base. you can do it in the following ways:

  • You can send personalized deals and offers to your customers to encourage them to stay shopping for you.

create the cargo efficient and straightforward for your customers by providing integrated and automatic shipping. Hassle-Free shipping expertise can gain you the customer’s trust and can convert them into loyal purchasers.

Source: Netsolutions

Why B2B Mobile Commerce is Going the B2C Way?

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Why B2B Mobile Commerce is Going the B2C Way

The B2B online marketplace is getting increasingly competitive; but competition is good because it pushes you to get better by trying new things, thinking up new strategies, and taking risks. Sometimes you may even come up with something that becomes a big trend. Competition forces you to sit up and take notice.

Here are 5 reasons why B2B mobile commerce is going the B2C way:

1- The rise of the mobile

It’s the age of mobile, and it’s gradually becoming the age of a mobile-first strategy in both B2B and B2C marketplaces. With the rise in mobile usage, B2C companies have already been leveraging mobile and rising in the m-commerce realm; lately, B2B companies have also started being inspired by the strong numbers B2C companies are achieving.

Mobile commerce has obviously existed in the B2C realm for much longer than it has in B2B. For mobile solutions, B2B suppliers have so far been using legacy solutions only, such as a barcode scanner, or other expensive proprietary hardware.

But in the last few years, B2B buyers have also started offering their clients a way to place orders on a mobile device, although it is relatively new for them. The suppliers going in this direction are able to seize enormous opportunities because B2B buyers are enjoying the ease and speed of order, which they experience as B2C buyers.

B2B buyers are no different than B2C buyers. Business buyers possess an on-the-go nature and this makes it necessary for them to have access to a robust app experience on their mobile devices, in addition to desktops.

Below are some statistics that show why B2B businesses are following the B2C m-commerce trends:

  • 80% of B2B buyers are using mobile at work.
  • 60% of B2B buyers report that mobile played a significant role in a recent purchase.
  • 70% of B2B buyers increased mobile usage significantly over the past two to three years.
  • 60% of B2B buyers expect to continue to increase their mobile usage.
  • 50% of B2B queries today are made on smartphones. The figures are expected to grow to 70% by 2020.

2- B2C has changed the B2B buyer

The typical B2B buyer is changing; With this change in buyer behavior, businesses are also changing their sales process.

B2B buyers also expect multi-channel ordering experiences so that they can purchase from websites and mobile apps.

A millennial B2B buyer prefers the same seamless, personalized mobile experience that they have on B2C platforms as consumers.

B2C best practices that are being adopted by B2B:

  • High-quality product images and videos
  • Robust onsite search with visual merchandising
  • Social proof in the form of reviews and ratings
  • Flexible shipping options and order updates
  • Personalization based on past purchases
  • Meant-for-mobile storefronts
  • Online catalogs for easy browsing
  • Real-time product and stock availability
  • Customer service via chat and phone support

Mobile can fast-track time to purchase by 20% through facilitating efficiencies in decision-making and enhanced team collaboration, particularly with more complex purchases.

Millennials spend more than six hours a day on their phones, twice the time spent by people over 45 years old.

With the right platform, B2B companies can completely transform the way they do business and drive more long-term sales.

3- B2B buyers open to new opportunities

B2B merchants are adjusting their business models to accommodate m-commerce/e-commerce because it’s the need of the hour.

It cannot be mentioned enough that B2B buyers are the same people who make purchases as consumers. It’s a simple truth that cannot be overlooked anymore.

As people have increasingly started shopping online, they have become accustomed to a certain level of the online experience. Those expectations are still there when they put on their “B2B buyer’s hat.

The stats below show that B2B merchants are incorporating online selling into their business:

  1. 78% of survey respondents that sell online have done so for at least two years.
  2. 41% of B2B retailers expect B2B online sales to grow more than 25% in 2018.
  3. Payment options are a vital part of the B2B e-commerce sales process.

The rise of mobile apps and marketplaces like Amazon clearly shows that B2B retailers are quickly moving from early experimentation with m-commerce/e-commerce channels to full-fledged omnichannel sales approaches.

In short, B2B retailers are no longer novices in the online selling process.

4- An improved B2B CX leads to new customer acquisitions

B2C companies are using a variety of acquisition channels; therefore, B2B merchants are doing the same. The good thing for B2B is that everything has been tried and tested by B2C companies and all they have to do is pick the things from B2C that will fit into their B2B business.

A few of the businesses that had websites were more of portals and they only served as online catalogs. The idea was not to replace customer service reps with online technology. Only the existing customers were served, which means, no online strategy for new customer acquisition.

Social media also plays an important role in bringing in new customers, which again highlights the shift in B2B buyers’ behavior as it moves toward a more B2C-behavior path.

5- The success of other B2B online sellers

Grainger is a Fortune 500 industrial supply company and it perfectly exemplifies the emerging overlap of B2C and B2B. Once logged into their account, buyers are navigated to a homepage that mirrors any popular B2C site. Similarly, their product pages also bear all the major B2C hallmarks.

There are many B2B merchants who are leading the way for others, who are still new to this mirroring of B2C UX, or who are in the e-commerce development stage. But it is evident from all the above points that B2B is benefiting a lot by becoming more like B2C.

Source: BCG, 2017