5 Key Factors that Make NativeScript an Ideal Mobile App Framework

With the advent of multiple mobile phone brands and subsequent introduction of separate app stores, the idea of choosing a cross-platform framework gained hype. But there were tradeoffs with the previously existing frameworks, if your app was to support all the devices with the same code base, you would have experienced slacky performance, or If you were on to the challenge to make your performance as good as that of native app you’ll have to write a significant amount of platform specific code to make it work that way.

NativeScript comes as a saviour to the developer’s nightmare. A cross-platform framework which gives you all the things required to make your app perform as good as any other native app. This post gives you 5 key factors that make NativeScript an ideal mobile app framework.

No Licensing Fee

First and the foremost reason to opt for NativeScript is that you don’t have to pay anything to get your app out in the store, not a dime. NativeScript is open source with Apache 2 Licensing. The Apache License allows you to freely use, modify, and distribute any Apache licensed product.

Unlike many other frameworks which give you limited access to create distribution builds or even put restrictions on test builds or altogether restrict you to use their framework until you pay the heavy fee. NativeScript app development framework allows you to freely use the framework in your projects and license your works in a way that makes sense for your organizational policies.

JavaScript and TypeScript Support

When with every framework you need to learn the framework specific language. NativeScript makes your life easy by allowing you to develop in one of the most widely used programming languages worldwide.

People already familiar with scripting languages like JavaScript will experience a very low learning curve, they’ll just be needing to explore the API. Whereas people with a background in more object-oriented, structured and strongly typed languages can work with TypeScript. Your code is 100% shared across the devices which reduces the development time by huge margins.

NativeUI

Probably if you have been using the earlier frameworks you must have witnessed an iOS looking app on Android. This is the tradeoff you will have to face with the other frameworks, this is because the lack of support for the native UI to be used. The only choice developers had was to either save time and let the app look exactly same on all the devices or invest time to write separate styles for different platforms.

With NativeScript you don’t have to worry about the native look of your app, it is the default behavior. The best way for your app to look native is to use the custom controls and that can be done by initiating native components of the platform on runtime, that sounds a bit geeky, but don’t worry NativeScript does the work for you. Developers use the controls provided by the NativeScript API and the native components are automatically created for them.

Platform Specific API access

Most likely you’ll be able to build your complete app with the provided API. But sometimes a time comes when you have to implement a feature for a specific platform, or the behavior of your control should be different on different platforms or altogether one platform supports the feature and the other doesn’t.

Cordova plugins, is what you have been using to access native platform specific APIs through your cross-platform app; which means another thing to learn. With NativeScript you don’t need to learn to build cordova plugins. You can use platform specific APIs directly from JavaScript.

For example you want to create TextView in android programmatically
var myTextView = new android.widget.TextView()

Just like that, this powerful feature immensely reduces the time as developers don’t need to learn the new frameworks or libraries to handle platform specific issues rather they can easily use their existing knowledge.

Extensibility

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, the world here is even more open. In addition to CocoaPods and Gradle plugins for iOS and Android respectively, there are a plenty of npm plugins that can be directly used in your NativeScript project. Telerik has provided a plethora of reusable controls to speed up your development.

With all those features available in a single framework, NativeScript is definitely the choice, when it comes to choosing between the cross-platform frameworks.