Math 101: How to calculate your highest common denominator

If you've picked up Alpha Five Version 11, you've already done it. Let me explain.

While we were working on Version 11, we were well aware of the criticisms and cautionary tales that have surrounded build-once-run-all solutions for years.

We knew that, traditionally, solutions founded on that concept rely on developing "lowest common denominator" applications.

As a result, these solutions are only optimized for low-performance platforms, and consequentially, sub-optimized for the best platforms.

Alpha Five does not do this. In fact, it enables the reverse -- making us the highest common denominator of application development. Does it take an incredible amount of work to get to that point? Yes. But it's work that we've done during the development and beta testing stages of Version 11 so you don't have to.

What distinguishes Version 11's approach to mobile from other platforms is that its components adapt to the platform on which they're currently running to produce the best user experience. A great example of this is our image gallery component. While incorporating its signature features such as pinch-zooming, swiping, and 3-D transforms, Version 11 identifies what browser it's running on and adapts automatically.

It also adapts to a desktop environment by using what it detects to exploit the computer's capabilities. For example, with the image gallery component, you wouldn't have pinch-zooming on a desktop. But because Version 11 is always adapting to produce the highest common denominator, you'll be able to do the same thing using the scroll wheel, as well as with momentum scrolling.

Version 11 also takes full advantage of the screen real estate on each device. You can, for example, define a single grid with one query definition that has different layouts and behaviors for desktop browsers, tablets, and smartphones.

So the formula is: Alpha Five Version 11 = the highest common denominator. And yes, there will be a test!