Developing native apps

One issue with some existing publisher apps is that they don’t make any provision for users with an existing institutional login, seeming only to cater for those who are willing to register individually and pay for access to the content.

One app that has allowed for institutional login is EBSCO’s. Users who have a genuine email address at an academic domain are sent an authentication key by email which gives them access to their institution’s subscription content through the app.

Building an app for each popular mobile platform used to be time consuming and resource intensive, but there are now tools which will help you build an app once for multiple platforms, or embed a widget in a “shell app”.

Examples of cross-platform app building tools