Hybrid mobile applications are built in a similar manner as websites. Both use a combination of technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. However, instead of targeting a mobile browser, hybrid applications target a WebView hosted inside a native container. This enables them to do things like access hardware capabilities of the mobile device.

Today, most hybrid mobile applications leverage Apache Cordova, a platform that provides a consistent set of JavaScript APIs to access device capabilities through plug-ins, which are built with native code. Apache Cordova is framework that allows building mobile apps using HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Application works in a built-in browser environment (WebView) on different mobile platforms (Android, iOS), can be downloaded from app store, has an icon on the home screen and is able to interact with smartphone’s hardware APIs (geolocation, camera, etc). At the same time the user experience is not as smooth as on native apps. Look and feel of the interface will be much similar to the website (300ms click delays, phantom clicks while scrolling, etc.). There are modules and frameworks that provide UI components designed to be similar to native apps but experience is not 100% the same.