Going Native from Hybrid, with NativeScript
You want to develop a best in class mobile app. One of the stumbling blocks you will come across will be to decide whether you want a native app or a hybrid one? As we know that a device can have only 1 operating system and access to only 1 app store specific to the device, terms like native, c ross-platform and hybrid have come into play. A Native app is built for a specific operating system and can be accessed from the relevant app store only. A Hybrid app is based on write-once-run-anywhere approach that creates crossplatform mobile applications that works on multiple devices. Both Native and Hybrid apps have advantages and disadvantages of their own. Choosing any 1 must be based on the project requirement, performance, device features, speed, ease of maintenance, and so on.
Why Upgrade Hybrid App to Native? Hybrid approach is newer when compared to the native. It, however, has now become stable and attracts a large community of enthusiasts. Hybrid applications solve many drawbacks of mobile application development . But they also introduce new ones that did not exist with the native. Due to this reason, developers either tend to take the native track altogether, while the ones
determined to enhance enterprise mobility solutions, will upgrade hybrid apps to native.
Hybrid applications fall short in mainly 2 areas:
Performance in a web view – Devices, platforms, and operating systems process the web view differently leading to an i nconsistency in performance.
Plugin availability and development – In hybrid apps, it is difficult to access native features that do not exist as plug -ins, and writing your own plug -ins is although not impossible, but difficult.
This leads Hybrid web development to be unsatisfactory in scenarios related to mobile game development, media and animation rich applications, applications with heavy amount of data, and those applications that require native features, but have no plugins.
Why NativeScript? NativeScript is a cross-platform framework for building native applications with JavaScript, CSS and XML markup. With NativeScript, you can choose to develop either with JavaScript or Angular 2, which makes the framework more formidable with the angular features. Other features such as, two-way data binding between JavaScript objects and native UI components, and CSS implementation for native apps clearly gives an upper hand to NativeScript. A great strength, in addition, lies in its giving direct access to native platform APIs that allows access to native features without requiring plug-ins. Also, NativeScript doesn’t incorporate web view due to which the Document Object Model does not exist. Without the DOM, HTML is removed from NativeScript. This gives NativeScript a better performance. Hybrid web applications and native applications, each of the two have differences and advantages of their own. Performance is one of the key fac tors why native is still more preferred. And angular 2 boosts its performance further. Taking your hybrid mobile application to native with NativeScript seems ideal for the best in class mobile apps.