Why Cross-Platform Development Is Evolving: From Web Containers to Flutter

Mo Jue, product owner of Alibaba D2 Terminal Technology Conference’s "Cross‑Platform Technology" track, shares insights on the current state and future of cross‑platform development.

Since the early 1990s PC era, the rapid spread of mobile networks and the rise of IoT have introduced a multitude of devices—smartphones, tablets, watches, large‑screen terminals—leading to fragmented system types and screen sizes. Data shows the average user now owns five smart devices, and China’s IoT connections are expected to exceed 100 billion by the end of 2022, driving a surge in cross‑platform development demand.

Historically, hardware development was siloed: PCs for PCs, phones for phones, iOS for iOS, Android for Android. This duplication made a unified, all‑scenario solution inevitable, sparking the exploration of cross‑platform approaches.

Cross‑Platform Technology: Changes and Constants

1. Web Container Solutions

Browsers and WebViews follow W3C standards, allowing web pages to run on any browser or WebView with low development cost and a thriving ecosystem. However, web apps suffer from slower page loads, higher memory consumption, and poorer interaction experience. Enhancements like Hybrid, PWA, and PHA improve performance but still lag behind native capabilities.

2. Containerized Native Solutions (RN / Weex)

These solutions retain a JavaScript engine for front‑end ecosystem compatibility while leveraging native rendering pipelines for performance and experience. They combine the strengths of web and native but face challenges such as consistency, limited W3C support, developer experience, and ecosystem gaps.

3. Self‑Rendering Solutions: Flutter

Flutter builds its own rendering engine on Skia, offering high consistency and strong performance. It uses Dart instead of JavaScript, introducing a learning curve and requiring a rebuild of front‑end tooling, CI/CD pipelines, and ecosystem components, which incurs significant cost.

4. Multi‑Target Mini‑Program Solutions

Mini‑programs enable a “one‑code‑multiple‑targets” model, either by compiling business code into native DSLs (compile‑time) or by bridging runtime data updates (runtime). Numerous frameworks exist, reflecting a commercial compromise and technical trade‑off.

Despite the evolving solutions, the core goals remain unchanged: performance, delivery efficiency, and multi‑device consistency. The key is balancing trade‑offs while keeping business code, infrastructure, and development ecosystems stable.

Standardizing cross‑platform containers—making them interchangeable without affecting higher‑level code—mirrors how browsers standardize core components (WebCore) while allowing variations in peripheral parts. Alibaba’s practice aligns multiple business units around a subset of standards covering CSS, Web API, and bridge mechanisms, prioritizing performance and efficiency over full spec implementation.

Full‑spec adoption would strain performance, especially on IoT devices, and introduce legacy burdens. Current fragmentation leads to duplicated devtools, custom components, and inconsistent implementations across containers. Sharing a common core, akin to WebCore, would concentrate effort on business‑specific features and improve overall efficiency.

Ultimately, cross‑platform development aims for “write once, run anywhere.” Standardization is the path to higher developer productivity, cost reduction, and faster business growth. The D2 conference invites experts to discuss these topics and explore future directions.