Designing for Portability
Restrictions imposed by supporting all platforms and translation requirements must be evaluated early in the design phase.
If an application is going to be deployed in multiple environments, it should conform to all of the Constraints for all of those environments. If it is going to be deployed only in a single environment, the application only needs to conform to the Constraints for that environment. Additionally, even a product that is designed to run on all platforms may have additional logic that only gets invoked on specific platforms. It is up to you as the designer to ensure that your application performs as expected on all platforms on which it is intended to be run.
About portability Examples
- Platform portability: the ability to deploy the same application across
platforms.
Example Develop on UNIX, deploy on Microsoft Windows
and Macintosh.
- Device portability (including variations in screen size and resolution,
as well as monochrome/color differences): the ability to develop and deploy
on the same platform, but different devices.
Example Develop on Microsoft Windows, deploy on
both Microsoft Windows large screen, high resolution and Microsoft Windows
small screen, low resolution.
- UI portability: the ability to deploy the same application on GUI devices.
Example Develop on Microsoft Windows, deploy on
Microsoft Windows and a VT220.
Related topics
About portability
About the porting process