Why open source is at the core of app development

Wed, 7th Nov 2018

FYI, this story is more than a year old

Progress announced the latest release of NativeScript, an open source framework for building native mobile apps with Angular, Vue.js, TypeScript and JavaScript. This new release comes as the framework hits a major milestone of 3.5 million downloads in under three years, since its original launch in 2015.

The NativeScript framework was created to ease the mobile app development process by leveraging developers' existing web development skills to create native mobile apps for iOS and Android. With its latest release, NativeScript has again improved developer productivity through capabilities including code sharing, hot module replacement, preview enhancements and more.

“In 2016, NativeScript 2.0 gave developers the ability to use Angular and NativeScript to create native mobile apps, but we wanted to take it a step further by enabling them to keep their code in one place and share business logic between web, iOS and Android,” said Brad Green, Engineering Director, Angular Framework, Google Inc.

“We've worked closely with the NativeScript team resulting in the NativeScript-Schematics that integrates with the Angular CLI, making the user experience for developing both web and mobile within a single project completely seamless.”

New in NativeScript 5.0:

NativeScript-Schematics – a joint initiative with Angular to create a schematic that enables the building of both web and mobile apps from a single project.
New “Instant Start” CLI workflow – begin work on native apps in five minutes with no up-front requirements to install iOS and Android SDKs.
Hot Module Replacement – instantaneous, stateful application updates, avoiding full page reload, significantly accelerating the app development and debugging experience.
Vue.js support – core Vue.js developer experience through a single file component in the NativeScript Playground.
Streamlined “Getting Started” experience – Easier development with Playground-compatible code samples available in the NativeScript Marketplace.
Android enhancements – increased animation scenarios and more material design capabilities.
Vector type support for iOS – enable a broader set of augmented reality scenarios for iOS.

NativeScript is a key technology in Progress' high productivity application development offering, enabling a unified cross-platform developer experience for truly native multi-channel, multi-platform apps.

“Today's release of NativeScript 5.0 brings an unprecedented level of ease, flexibility and productivity to the mobile app dev experience,” said Todd Anglin, Vice President, Product and Developer Relations, Progress.

“Not only have we improved the ability to kickstart a project for new NativeScript users, but we've also expanded key attributes important to developers more versed in our offerings. As we look to 2019 and beyond we will continue to be at the forefront by offering technology that enables our developer community to drive innovation and improve productivity every step of the way.