CODEWITHSUNDEEP
reactjsresponsive-designarchitecture
Aviran Katz
Aviran Katz

Reputation: 761

Should I create two seperate frontends - desktop and mobile?

We're facing a new react project, which should run on desktop and mobile. Some of the desktop features won't be available on mobile.

We're debating whether we should create two separate front-ends or a single, responsive front-end.

Could you elaborate on the pros and cons of each approach? Which one would you use instead of me?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1401

Answers (2)

lipp
lipp

Reputation: 5926

IMHO one can reach 90%-99% with a single site / PWA depending on the application. To reach 100% a company has to invest heavily. So, I think for many companies this boils down to:

  • Do we have the resources?
  • Do we want to pay the price (initial invest)?
  • Do we want to pay the price (maintanance, new features, etc)

My recommendation is to start simply with a web app. Make a good separation of concerns at the backend (split api/business logic from presentation layer etc). If you are successful and want to reach the 100%, invest in further options.

There are many examples (news sites for instance), which abandon the approach of having two separate implementations.

Upvotes: 1

Rounin
Rounin

Reputation: 29463

Should I create two separate frontends - desktop and mobile?

No.

For a well-written web-app, a single, manageable codebase ought to suffice for all hardware:

  • Desktops
  • Laptops
  • Tablets
  • Touchphones

Build a single, responsive front-end. Where features on larger screens and smaller screens don't match exactly, use a combination of:

  • graceful degradation
  • progressive enhancement

This is simply best-practice, efficient, future-proofed project management, using DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) as a philosophy to work by. [1]

  1. Rather than WET (Write Everything Twice).

Upvotes: 1

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