Why choose web apps over desktop apps?

The debate over the web apps and desktop apps seems to be unending. You’ll see the developers, business and users split into two camps and each one trying to outsmart each other. For many this debate is pointless with each having its set of pros and cons. In some cases, desktop apps may function efficiently, but the need of the hour are web apps. With the advent of the technologies like Node.js, the importance of web apps have increased. 

Here is a look at the some of the reasons why you should go for web apps over desktops apps whether you’re using Node.js or any other technology:

• Web apps don’t need to be downloaded by the users. This helps you to easily convince people using them. 
• You don’t need to ask the users to upgrade the app when a new version is released. Just update your app on the web and let customers enjoy the features of the latest version.
• The web apps have fewer security issues and if any discovered the bug fixes are easier compared to desktop apps. Just fix your web apps and launch it, while in the desktops apps it depends on your users whether they have upgraded the bug free version or not. 
• Web apps can be accessed from anywhere as you just need an internet connection to access it. Desktops apps stay on your device therefore you can access it from everywhere.
• Whether users are available on Android, iOS or some other platform, web apps can be accessed from anywhere. But with desktop apps you have a platform dependency. 
• Building web app is a quite cost effective process instead of getting individual apps for different platforms. 
• With a single application, you can make better use of Analytics to find details about the common usability issues and how you can improve them.  

The accessibility and ease in update and cost are the major factors that has made web apps quite popular. But the ultimate decision is up to you based on the unique needs you have. 

How eBay developed their first Node.js application?

eBay is known all over the world for how ardently it supports the Java and its counterparts. Therefore, it becomes a question of great curiosity that how the company decided to get some applications build using Node.js. Well, the story began with a hackathon project named “Talk”. Some engineers from eBay were participating in this competition when they found out that JAVA was not suitable for the requirements. This is when they started to explore Node.js and found out it to be a great solution. 

The two major reasons why Node.js was selected:

• The main focus was to make the application as real time as possible. It was necessary to maintain live connections with the server and Node.js was the way to achieve this functionality. 
• The second requirement was to handle I/O bound operations as a large number of eBay services are required to display information on the page. For this operation, JAVA was consuming more resources than expected. Therefore switching to Node.js seemed to be the right option. 
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The aim was to develop a minimum boilerplate Node.js server that could be scale up and down as per the requirements. The team at eBay was not interested to bloat the entire application using any framework. Mongo DB was used for data persistence as it offered an easy way to do so. The front end servers of the eBay were pointed to Node.js servers and then the coding part was started. 

Once the app reached a stable phase, the next task was to look into the deployment of Node.js stack. The deployment process of the Node.js turned out to be very simple. You can build the application and deploy it anywhere. 

Currently, the Node.js is supporting some of the great front end features including the management of resources, tracking, and L10N. It’s like a dream come true for the front end engineers bat eBay. 

Building Mobile Apps with Node.js

Node.js is a popular development platform to create the web and mobile applications. The main reason behind is that allows to develop both server side code and client side code using a single language. No longer are organizations needed to maintain separate teams of the back end and front end developers. The other major advantages including having over 110, 000 modules in the NPM repository. These pre-built libraries play a major role in reducing the overall development time of Node.js mobile apps.

Node.js work very well for creating responsive web applications that can be accessed via a web browser. Several top notch companies around the world are using the platform of Node.js to power their web-based mobile apps. But in many cases it becomes important to create an installable application for iOS, Android and Windows that helps to take advantage of the app marketplace. To achieve these developers keep the entire business logic on the server and the mobile app just acts as a user interface.

There is a glitch in executing Node.js apps on mobile operating systems. As Node.js is built on Google’s V8 JavaScript engine, you can run Node js powered apps on Android. But running Node js on iOS is not possible. As iOS does not allow the JIT compiling, Node js cannot be deployed native on iOS. Still without supporting iOS, Node.js has managed to create its niche in this  competitive mobile app development platform market.

Few days back a project named JXCore was released which has opened up the opportunities to create apps that can run on iOS too. It is a great breakthrough and on completion of the project the popularity of Node.js will increase many folds.

Why Node.js is the right development platform for your business

Choosing the right programming platform is never easy, yet, certain platforms like Node.js have added benefits for which they are always popular. Below are the three reasons that will prompt you to choose it as your platform-

• Allow time to market: The basic advantage with Nodejs is that it is lighter and there are no such complexities involved in deploying a project with this technology. As a developer, you will just have to write the codes and freedom implement it immediately. It is easier to receive feedback on this platform on a quick manner and it contributes to customer oriented faster development. Moreover, you can have access to the various reliable tools and instructions released by the JS community to make your development process effortless. One such example is NPM (a node package manager) available with a number of libraries which you can use while writing your codes. Nodejs is a leading platform for the SAAS providers and with their libraries, you can easily integrate your Node backend to their APIs.
• Easy to learn and code: There is no such specific technology associated with Nodejs. As a developer, all you have to brush up your JavaScript knowledge and .NET to work with Nodejs. You just need to revise your existing skills to work with Nodejs. Node.js gives you the ability to share the same language in the backend and frontend side. One of the leading payment providers, Paypal has chosen Nodejs because of the simplicity and effortless development associated with it. Another thing that makes Node.js popular is its performance. Icing on the cake is the microservices architecture that Node.js support, a software style, that supports a lighter development and can easily be rewritten.
• Active community support: Nodejs has an active community and offers many libraries and frameworks, which helps to carry out any development process easily. Due to this, Nodejs has been adopted by many leading companies across the world. Many senior developers have adopted this platform because of its scalable nature, indirectly helping the community to grow. 

If you are looking for a reliable Node js app development company, then contact us. We are an agency specialized in developing the web and mobile applications using this futuristic technology. Our team consists of skilled Node.js developer with several years of experience.

Needless to speak, it is coming as a better alternative to carrying out software development process in current days.