What mini apps are not
Before I go into more detail on the developer experience of mini apps, I want to briefly mention and set apart two technologies that come up in the context of mini apps, H5 and Quick App.
H5
H5 apps (or pages) are commonly seen as the predecessor of mini apps. What people mean by H5 is essentially a well-designed mobile web app (or page) that can be shared easily on chat applications. H5 is a reference to the HTML5 umbrella of technologies that includes responsive design, snappy CSS animations, multimedia content, etc. The Chinese Wikipedia actually redirects from H5 to HTML5. A good example of a representative H5 page experience is the WeChat H5 boilerplate project's demo.
Quick App
Quick App is an industry alliance consisting of the following members:
- vivo open platform
- Huawei Developer Alliance
- OPPO open platform
- Xiaomi Open Platform
- Lenovo Open Platform
- Gionee Open Platform
- Meizu Open Platform
- ZTE Developer Platform
- Nubian Open Platform
- OnePlus Open Platform
- Hisense Open Platform
- China Mobile Terminal Corporation
While the technology of Quick App is comparable to "regular" mini apps (see Building blocks and compatibility), the discovery of Quick App is different. They are meant to be listed in stores, which come pre-installed on devices of the manufacturers in the alliance, but can also be shared by means of a deep link (see the Quick App showcase). They do not run in the context of a super app, but launch as seemingly self-contained full screen applications that feel deeply integrated into device. What happens in the background is that they are opened in a full screen view rendered by the operating system that provides the JavaScript bridge.
Acknowledgements
This article was reviewed by Joe Medley, Kayce Basques, Milica Mihajlija, Alan Kent, and Keith Gu.