In today’s time, application developers have innumerable frameworks to work with for developing mobile applications. One popular approach that they usually take is to use Apache Cordova like framework to develop hybrid mobile applications. But, due to hybrid frameworks replacing native UI with HTML, they find it hard to deliver native performance.
NativeScript is a framework that takes care of this issue and builds native Android applications and iOS applications in TypeScript, Angular, or JavaScript, without messing up with the user experience, eventually providing an even and consistent performance.
What else does NativeScript provide? When should you adopt NativeScript? Well, NativeScript is the perfect choice for you when…
1. You require an application with native performance:
There are a lot of frameworks available in the market offer developers to develop iOS and Android applications from a single codebase. But what makes NativeScript stand out is its ability to provide a superb user interface (UI) that most of the frameworks similar to Apache Cordova lack.
Where Cordova-based frameworks make use of WebView to display the UI in HTML, NativeScript renders native Android and iOS UI controls entirely. Using native UI components allows NativeScript developers to create fascinating UIs because this framework does not limit itself by the capabilities of the DOM in web applications. NativeScript works wonders for applications that require uninterrupted performance offered by native UI controls.
2. You want to have access to open source tools:
As NativeScript is a free and open source framework, NativeScript related projects comprise of numerous contributors across the core framework, documentation, and sample projects. Apart from this, almost all NativeScript plugins written by the community members are free and open source. As a result, if a developer wants to extend an application with native functionality, he/she can refer to various existing examples. Furthermore, if an enterprise is looking to create an app on an open tech stack that can be modified seamlessly, NativeScript covers that functionality as well.
3. You want an app running natively on Android and iOS, both:
Being a cross platform framework, working with NativeScript saves a lot of time as it offers developers to write native iOS and Android apps from a single codebase. NativeScript allows developers to code with familiar JavaScript, TypeScript, and CSS APIs, and renders the code into native UIs on Android and iOS, both.
The cost of managing two distinct codebases that require two different tech stacks is pretty high, even though you write an app in native code for Android and iOS, both. Often, separate teams with relevant skill sets are required to maintain each platform. Hence, NativeScript works best for writing applications that must run on both, Android and iOS.
4. You want to reuse current web development skills:
Every popular framework out there requires its own distinct programming language. For instance, native iOS apps require Swift or Objective-C, native Android apps require Java, and NativeScript makes use of JavaScript. The reason why NativeScript uses JavaScript is because of the immense flexibility that JavaScript provides, apart from being a popular language with users all around the globe. In addition, NativeScript uses NPM for package management, a subset of CSS for styling applications, Webpack for app bundling, and many other tools.
One of the most appealing features of NativeScript for web developers is that it can be integrated with the Angular framework.
5. You want to work with a framework with powerful corporate support:
Most of the companies rely on a framework that is supported by a well-established organization. Progress, a publicly traded company, backs NativeScript and provides various enterprise support agreements for companies that want NativeScript adoption on a huge scale.
Progress develops NativeScript tools as well. They recently released NativeScript Sidekick, a companion app that escalates the NativeScript development process effectively. NativeScript SideKick offers a range of tools and templates to get applications up and running swiftly.
That’s not all. When you develop an app in standard JavaScript, NativeScript supports it to make sure that framework-oriented skills are harnessed with no dependency on frameworks like Vue or Angular.
NativeScript is a powerful framework that all the Best Software Development Companies enjoy when creating enterprise applications for apps that they want to run natively on Android and iOS. Let us know in the comments about your experience with NativeScript and how beneficial was it for you!
Source: InfoWorld, Progress, Medium (@bryceoldham)
Rachit Agarwal
