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Planning out a long-term strategy for your web project can really pay off. We were recently reminded of that when we were asked to create a mobile app (iOS and Android) for a web-based platform we designed and built several years ago. The platform is Coursabi, a learning platform that ensures growth at each milestone for everyone on your team. You can check it out at https://coursabi.com.

When we created the technical strategy we knew that a mobile app was a likely roadmap item. So we chose ASP.NET Blazor as the core platform technology. It allowed us to build a web app that felt like a single page app (SPA). And it gave us several hosting models: server, WASM (WebAssembly), and hybrid mobile. The most intriguing aspect of the Blazor Hybrid model is that unlike hybrid apps of the past, there is no web server running on the mobile device. Instead, all the C# code is compiled to native .NET code, and the web view (an embedded web browser) is only used to render the user interface. So the app runs as a native mobile app!

We knew that some features of the platform would have to be altered, since the mobile app has no web server. For example, Coursabi supports the SCORM format for external learning content. And due to security restrictions, they needed a host with a trusted root certificate. So moving that out of the platform and handling the routing changes were both necessary, but totally doable.

Another benefit of a mobile app version of the platform is that in many ways it also simplifies the security model, since the app is only running on the local device, whereas a hosted app needs to manage user state, among other concerns.

If you have an ASP.NET-based web application, you can still leverage Blazor Hybrid to turn it into a mobile app. It just needs to first be migrated into a Blazor app. I'd also recommend reviewing your web app for opportunities to make it as mobile-friendly as possible. You don't want your mobile app to look or feel like a website. But those changes not only get you a great mobile app, they also improve how your app looks and feels in a mobile web browser. So you get twice the value.

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