Which is the best framework to develop cross platform application. Especially for android and iphone. I have been through the reviews present over the internet, but those seem to be pretty old. I believe both Titanium and Rhodes have developed much over the past couple of years.
One of the basic differences is the nativeness of the two frameworks. Both Rhodes Framework and Titanium claim to be native. Rhodes however is not really native i.e. it uses an embedded Web Browser to display the HTML-coded website. Titanium, however, takes your JavaScript code, and create real native widgets on the respective platforms.
So what's so important about native? Well, it makes the user experience a whole lot better.
Rhodes Framework is best described as a competitor to PhoneGap.
From my knowledge, Rhodes is best for enterprisey apps. I would generally recommended Titanium for most app developers.
Though I have not used Rhodes, I feel Titanium is better based on what I read about Rhodes. The JS syntax in Titaniums is also easy to ramp up on. But, from what I have seen, understanding the working of the native code is useful to understand and explain some of the behavior. There is one more comparison of the frameworks that I found recently here.
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For my company, I'm attempting to determine which of many mobile hybrid technologies we want to use going forward. If it matters, typically between 1 and 4 developers work on each project. We currently have about 10 mobile applications, and we plan to expand on many more.
Currently, we use Sencha/Ext for our "front end". We package with Cordova/PhoneGap to iPhone and android phones, with a MobileFirst back end to handle sessions, and auto-updates.
We'd like to replace at least the cordova and sencha part of our technology stack.
My question: Is it possible or even wise to use simple angular with react-native-renderer to create hybrid mobile applications?
Or, is it better to use a framework either separate from angular (e.g.: React Native) or in addition/built on to angular (e.g.: Ionic)?
My feeling is that using react-native-renderer with simple angular code will not provide us with many helpful features that the other platforms use. But I'd like to get insight from the stackoverflow community on this.
Thanks.
The answer to your question is yes - it is completely possible using the renderer you mentioned to utilize both features of both React Native and Angular to ship a hybrid technology. You are basically getting a React Native application in which an Angular 2 application runs in the JS thread with a custom renderer that uses the JS APIs to create a native UI.
But is it wise or a stable long term solution? The answer to that question is definitely no! This is essentially gluing two different technologies together which are both in developmental stages and will present plenty of bugs and difficulty in completing and publishing your apps unless you and your developers are very fluent in both angular and react native. Almost always it is better to stick to another framework entirely and in the future possibly integrate angular again.
Side note - run from Cordova/PhoneGap - it is not the smartest choice for any stability or consistency in development. User experience is also a downfall plus there is also serious doubt in how much longer it will be updated and maintained
I created many Ionic apps, using all it's versions, from 1.x to the latest 3.x
All along with cordova, and AngularJS, it's a great framework, with big community, it's getting better and better over time.
But it's still an hybrid working over a WebView ..
With my knowledge to AngularJS, should i move easily to NativeScript, or start over with ReactNative ? from what i've seen ReactNative has better community, and many big apps are in it's showcase.
So, for cross-platform apps, should i keep working on Ionic, go with NativeScript, or move to ReactNative ?
Its good to know you are interesting in joining to the cause of creating native apps using JavaScript. You are in the right direction, both Nativescript and React Native will guide you to your goal: Build professional applications for iOS/Android using Javascript, however there are some differences you should know at the time you decide which framework to use.
React Native:
Its a framework developed by Facebook, using React it renders true native views. It uses Flexbox to decorate the apps so if you never used it that will be a new challenge for you, it is not hard to learn. My problem with this is that there is no direct support from the developer team, and only the community is from where you get the help, and sometimes it is not quite accurate. To create iOS apps you need a Mac computer, otherwise you can only create apps for Android. As far as I know, some basic information you might need in your app, such like platform, OS version, portrait/landscape it is developed by plugins from the community, and this information is not coming from the framework itself.
NativeScript:
Its created by Telerik, a very strong programming company who has high quality developers and strong support for its products. It uses Angular as a option to create your apps and its very well documented. If you are a good CSS developer you will be fine because they uses CSS to decorate your app. Nativescript community has developed tons of plugins. Nativescript core team is creating a lots of tools to help you through the process. Recently they launched a tool called Sidekick, which allows you to build/livesync your app from the cloud, which means you do not need a Mac computer for create iOS apps (isn't that cool?). With Nativescript you can choose Javascript, Typescript or Angular+Typescript, all of them will end up creating native apps. For support, you can contact the core team directly, and they will give you the best answer you can have, this is one of their goals.
I hope I have answered your question.
Thanks!
I don't know about React Native, but we have a great community with NativeScript. Hop on our Slack channel and meet the fam!
I'm currently investigating the alternatives for crossplatform development for Android and iPhone (Windows 8 could be a nice addition). The app is basically a "map with an asociated app", and certainly not a game.
Searching here I see many outdated advice and tools from 2010/2011, but since then Apple has changed their policies and surely new things have appeared.
My current list and light research (might have facts wrong) is:
Monotouch/Monodroid: .NET (Mono) framework. Create "native" apps on both platforms. Requires rebuilding UI code (or similar things).
Appcelerator: Javascript framework to compile native apps.
Corona: Similar to Appcelerator.
Phonegap: Similar idea, but looks like it uses a wrapper to appify HTML5 content
SenchaTouch: Another HTML5 based platform.
Wink: Yet another HTML5 toolkit.
XVLM: Android to ObjC compiler, probably creating ugly iOS apps.
Unity3D: For games only.
Moai: For games only.
So, there are three main ideas, with some frameworks implementing each, it seems to me:
Have an abstraction layer over native iOS/Android code and build for each platform using the provided layer. (Monotouch, Unity3D)
Use HTML5 (coding in Javascript) and some kind of wrapper to "appify" the web content. (PhoneGap,Sencha,Wink)
Code using a framework that will output as a compilation pass (or similar) a native app for each supported platform (Moai, XVLM,Appcelerator,Corona)
The questions:
Is there a fourth idea I haven't yet found?
Is there any blatant mistake in my research for any of the specified frameworks?
Is there any known problem for map integration with any of these ideas or specific frameworks?
Only a partial answer:
Ad 2. Appcelerator / Titanium is more than just HTML5. I read this pretty extensive comparison between PhoneGap and Titanium the other day on Hackers News. I found it very informative. The link points to the HN comments, the link to the actual article is at the top.
My main experience is with Mono for Android and MonoTouch, so I can't personally speak much to the other options. I personally find it to be the best option there is, as it allows you to share a large amount of your code across the platforms (even extending to non-mobile platforms if you stick with .NET), while still allowing for a 100% native UI, which is extremely important. If you're looking for resources on getting started, I have this video which discusses approaches and libraries for sharing a lot of code across platforms, and also this book which covers the same thing, but also expands to talk about how to do things like store data, use maps, access the network, etc.
I also want to mention MonoGame, which is absent from your list. MonoGame is an open source XNA implementation that sits on top of Mono to allow you to target iOS/Android/Max OS X.
From what I have experienced, if you want to have a native app go Mono, if you don't need native go PhoneGap. Native is best of the UI is very important, ie games or fairly graphical apps. But from business type app, CRUD, Phone gap works well.
Got a problem, and I am pretty sure there is a solution for this.
Currently we have a Website that sells goods & integrates with a thirty party for shopping cart. The shopping cart integration is through standard web re-direct.
Product works well on desktop browser. Its not that bad on browsers on tablets. Not so great on phone browsers. The problem on mobile device is for obvious reasons, as the pages are optimized.
The standard approach we can do is go about optimizing for mobile browsers, and be happy. My team is flying with optimizing for mobile web, because they think apps will be very difficult to do.
If we choose to go the native app model, is developing a library or package for each platform the only way? I am thinking, no in current world with so much technology advancement. I am not a fan of browser view on device, not the smooth experience.
Are there other options available? I was looking at HTML5 hybrid applications, but can't put a finger to be sure that will work for what I am looking for.
Frameworks aside, often times you can use a stylesheet meant for mobile devices and hide everything that is not absolutely vital. You could also consider WML, but I think you could live without it IMAO.
Writing apps for the iOS will require an investment in Apple developer tools and training in Objective-C. Android will call for Java and Eclipse, to name a few things.
When it comes to "native apps", you will need to code for whatever platform you are depending on. The number of platforms you work with is entirely up to you, but yes, each new platform may require a different implementation.
Personally, I would add some specialized markup/styles to make as many browsers as possible happy. If you want to expand, try to see where your target audience really lies and reach out to them on any medium you can afford to build on. I would zone in on specialized applications if there are benefits really worth chasing down that road.
Hybrid applications is a good option, but probably the devil in a box.
The hybrid approach with HTML5 fits your developer, because they will still use HTML, CSS and JS (e.g. with PhoneGap), but on the other hand you will get an medium satisfying UI (what you said you are not a fan of).
Pure native applications is probably a bit too much of all good, if your web app runs fine in a browser.
A way could be to go with compiled hybrid and cross-platform compatible solutions like xamarin or appcelerator, especially appcelerator uses JS, which is an advantage for you. This could result in a native UI (implemented in JS) and shared business logic code. So there are two benefits for you; first, just use JS, second, shared business logic code -> less work.
Other alternative would be to go with responsive or adaptive websites, realized with the help of CSS.
If you are looking for developing a hybrid app (phonegap + angularJS + backend), I would like to recommend Monaca. I've just recently discover it. It is very cool since it has phonegap inside its framework and its own backend. Moreover, it also has a fast and lightweight UI framework called OnsenUI which is based on Topcoat and AngularJS.
Even it is a hybrid app but it will give users the native application feel since it also provides native components to use in your hybrid apps. What is impressive about it, you don't even need to build and install your app to your device every time during development. That's what I love the most about this.
I hope it helps since I think it is just like what you are asking for. I'm just a novice developer and I find it is very easy to use.
Over the last couple of years( or maybe less ) a number of different mobile application development frameworks have come up that promise you the ability to create cross platform( in some cases ) mobile applications without native device SDK programming. Some of these are OpenPlug, Redfoundry, Appcelerator, PhoneGAP, RhoMobile , Ansca-Corona
This list is steadily becoming bigger so it’s a bit of a challenge to know which are the good ones from the not so good and bad ones out there. Anyone in this group has any good/bad/ugly experience with any of these these ? If you've used any of these , are these really good enough to build real world applications ?
I'm just getting into rhomobile (Rhodes 3) and finding it very very good, mainly because I'm a Ruby/RoR developer and I am not having to face learning yet another development language and I'm finding this to be a thoroughly enjoyable experience although a little confusing to start with.
I'm tending to shy away from rhohub and develop on my local machine which I find a lot simpler to do for many reasons.
I previously had a play with buzztouch but it didn't produce a native looking app, however it works very well if you don't want to do anything too complex (functionality is quite limited)
I guess the best advice I can give you is to try out the different platforms starting with the platform that covers the language you prefer and see how you get on
We have used Phonegap to develop many cross platform applications. PhoneGap, also known as Apache Cordova, is a technology that lets programmers build a mobile application and then wrap it in the PhoneGap framework that can be installed as a native mobile application across multiple mobile device platforms easily.
Our experience with this has been very good in relation to the kind of data driven apps we have built.
If you are web programmer proficient in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript then PhoneGap brings you new opportunities! You can build native mobile apps using the web technologies that you know and love: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Applications that are developed using PhoneGap are hybrid applications. Parts of the application – mainly the UI, the application logic, and communication with a server, is based on HTML/JavaScript. The other part of the application that communicates and controls the device (phone or tablet) is based on the native language for that platform. PhoneGap provides a bridge from the JavaScript world to the native world of the platform, which allows the JavaScript API to access and control the device (phone or tablet).