Telerik announced the beta availability of NativeScript, an open source framework enabling developers to use JavaScript to build native mobile apps running on all major mobile platforms, including Apple iOS, Google Android and upcoming for Windows Universal.
The NativeScript framework is designed to be familiar to developers who are comfortable with web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript, minimizing the learning curve for web developers interested in building native mobile apps. It also uses a method of exposing 100 percent of underlying native device APIs to NativeScript developers, including support for new APIs in new versions of iOS and Android.
Telerik expects the NativeScript mobile web and hybrid app development approach to provide similar opportunities that Apache Cordova and PhoneGap provide for cross-platform app development, allowing developers to continue to use JavaScript while gaining direct access to native APIs and UI built using high-performance, native platform UI components.
Available under the Apache v2 open source license, the NativeScript framework enables developers to write JavaScript that can directly access native APIs so that NativeScript apps have native performance and full API access, to provide functionality similar to apps created with native platform languages.
With the NativeScript framework, developers can write just one app that works on every platform. As a result, developers save development effort and don’t need to learn Objective C, Java and C# or have past experience with any native platform to use it. They can leverage their existing JavaScript skills to develop mobile apps. NativeScript support is also built in to Telerik AppBuilder, part of the Telerik end-to-end mobile application development platform, offering developers no-setup tooling for building NativeScript apps.
Here is a summary of the NativeScript platform capabilities:
- Build 100% native cross-platform apps, with a declarative UI, and the ability to implement platform-specific UIs.
- Share 100% of your code or use platform-specific APIs, depending on the app you’re building.
- Code in standards-based ECMAScript 5 JavaScript. ES6 support is coming soon.
- Use standards-based CSS syntax for styling.
- Use rich data binding and existing UI patterns to easily build complex user interfaces.
- Reuse any native library available in Objective-C, Java or .NET (for example Telerik’s native UI components - Telerik UI for iOS, Telerik UI for Android and Telerik UI for WindowsPhone).
- Reuse any JavaScript library that is not browser-dependent.
- Reuse the QA tools for accessibility automation to write tests.
- Use the latest native platform features to create an amazing native user experience.
- Code in any IDE of your choice to implement your applications’ code using the NativeScript CLI.
- Use the Telerik Platform, AppBuilder and the full Visual Studio integration to get a rich development experience. Paid support is also available.