Mobile Applications - what are they and how to create them with No-Code?

Hi, Kamil Tarczyński here. Welcome to another episode of our podcast Just No Code. Today, we'll talk about mobile apps. What these apps are, how they can be created, the types available, the platforms they're on, and what these platforms actually allow, their capabilities. Without further ado, let's get started.

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What are mobile apps?

So, what are mobile apps? Mobile apps are, of course, those applications that we can download from a store, for example, from Google Play or from the App Store. These are called native mobile applications. Native mobile applications are those that can utilize all, let's say, the capabilities of the mobile device they are operating on, such as the camera, its gyroscope, GPS, Face ID, Touch ID, etc., all those, you know, typical mobile app abilities or possibilities.

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Types of mobile apps

However, of course, native apps are not the only type of application, because we also have what are known as PWA apps. PWA stands for Progressive Web Apps, which are web applications that can be opened in, for example, our phone's browser. They will, of course, be properly scaled and will also be able to use some of those native functionalities. An interesting example is also so-called hybrid apps, because hybrid apps are a combination of a web application with a native application. What does this mean? It means exactly that a web application, which we as developers have prepared, can be somewhat extended by what it can do by placing it in a native wrapper. And what is this native wrapper? It's so that in this web application, we can communicate with those components or those capabilities of the device we are using.

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Creating apps with no-code

Can we build these mobile apps with no-code, or can we build all types, or what does that exactly look like? Generally speaking, you also need to remember another very important thing, that each of the platforms, whether iOS or Android, has its own language that needs to be written in; in the case of iOS, it's Swift, in the case of Android, it's another language we must use to write these applications. But various frameworks have been created that allow programmers who do not speak the specific language for a given platform to also write native mobile apps. I won't go into technical details here, as that's not what this podcast is about. However, there are such languages as React Native and Flutter. And these two languages, also these two frameworks, allow us to create native applications.

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No-code Platforms for Mobile Applications

And thanks to that, two solution platforms have emerged, allowing us to create native mobile applications using no-code. Let's talk about them in a moment. With no-code, we can also of course create PWA apps, because it's simply a web application that scales appropriately for small devices. And with no-code, we can also create hybrid apps, where we can simply place the mobile view in a wrapper, which we'll talk about in a moment, allowing us to have a native mobile app, a sort of pseudo-native app, this hybrid app. Let's start with those PWA or hybrid apps because such applications can be created on platforms like Bubble.io.

If we can create browser applications there, we can also make them responsive, meaning such an application can be opened in a browser on a mobile device. This is entirely possible with Bubble. Bubble does not offer any wrapper nor the ability to create a native app, as Bubble operates on plain JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, which are technologies strictly meant for browsers.

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Extending Application Capabilities with Bubble Developer Kit

However, we have access to a plugin called BDK, Bubble Developer Kit. This plugin allows us to place our Web App in a native wrapper and extend the capabilities of the Bubble platform to use functions such as Face ID, device camera, gyroscope, GPS, and several other functions that are intended only for native apps.

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Solutions for Mobile Applications

This is a great solution if we want to approach the topic seriously. For instance, if we already have a web application and now we want to make it native, wanting to use some native functionalities. It's an excellent solution for building the MVP of our mobile application because we'll do it quickly, in a more automated way, without having to expose separate endpoints for our native app, etc.

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Platforms for Creating Applications

Flutter Flow

The next platform that allows us to create native mobile solutions on various platforms is Flutter Flow. Flutter Flow is a platform that, as the name suggests, is based on the Flutter language. It's a superb platform because we have access to the code. So, if anyone of you has coding skills in Flutter, you'll be able to create three-quarters of the application without using any code at all. This platform also has many integrations with various third parties, such as Stripe, Google Firebase, Superbase, Brain Tree, Revenue Cat, etc. A really well-functioning platform that allows building excellent, highly efficient mobile apps.

Draft Bit and Other Platforms

Another solution worth noting is Draft Bit, and it is designed for those who are familiar with React Native, as it is based on this framework. It also has various integrations, not as no-code as in Flutter Flow; here, we need to have a bit more programming skill to build certain solutions or integrations, and access to the code and its export. So, we can also build very cool solutions that later, as a React Native programmer, we can tweak.

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Summary

That's all from me today in this episode, I hope I've introduced you to the topic of how we can create and what kinds of mobile applications we can create in the no-code world. That's all from me, until next time. Bye!

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