Posted by Cross-platform development has been an alternative to native development for a long time. Cross-platform development offers the main benefit of reducing cost and time, as you can use the same code across both platforms. React Native application development is a thriving option today.
What is React Native?
React Native, an open-source framework by Facebook that uses JavaScript to build native mobile apps is a declarative programming paradigm. React Native blends the best of native development and React, a top-of-the-line JavaScript library to build user interfaces.
“Most mobile companies that use the native stacks currently must make compromises. Either productivity (develop the same product multiple times with different engineers on different stacks), quality (make low-quality applications,) or scope (focus on one platform). Inventing new mobile platforms, such as React Native, is the way to stop these compromises. Tal Kol, former Head of Mobile Engineering at Wix.com, in an interview.
React Native is a popular choice for many companies today. One can create almost all the code in JavaScript, share it across iOS or Android, and one doesn’t have to hire two developers to maintain two code bases.
Who uses React Native?
Facebook announced React Native in 2015.
Philipp von Weitershausen and Daniel Witte, both Facebook engineers, wrote in a blog post to the official Facebook Engineering blog that they were able “to ship Facebook’s first fully React Native application on two platforms with native look and feeling, built by the same JavaScript engineers.” Although not all engineers were familiarized with React at the time they joined the team they created an iOS app with the native look and feel in five months. We released the Android version of our app after three more months.
Today’s React Native version RN 0.633.4 / November 30, 2020, is the most current version. It has been a long time since there have been hundreds of updates, fixes, and additions to functionality.
It is a popular and easy-to-use solution that thousands of apps use. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest, Skype, Uber eats, or Bloomberg, many top-notch brands and applications are using its framework to gain a competitive edge in the market.
React Native App Development Benefits
We have listed the top reasons why React Native is the best choice for mobile app development.
1. Reusable code — Save time and money
It allows developers to reuse code for multiple platforms. Javascript capable for both iOS and Android. The ability to reuse code improves efficiency and lowers costs. The existing open-source libraries including UI libraries make it possible to significantly speed up the development of mobile apps.
React code can also reused if an existing web application is available for a company to make a mobile app.
2. Hot and Live Reloading — Fast Changes
React Native’s core features include live and hot reloading. This allows developers to make changes and fixes in real-time while the app loads. The live feature automatically reloads all of the apps after any changes have been made. Hot reloading only reloads one area of the change. It makes it easier for testing and development.
This makes the first point more logical. It allows for faster, more efficient, and intuitive application development.
3. Truly native feeling
React Native components can be mapped 1:1 to native development components. This allows developers to create interfaces more quickly, improve the app’s agility, and create a native-like experience that is impossible from native apps.
RN can also integrated with existing code and is compatible with native software. This makes it ideal for quick extensions of existing native applications.
4. Third-Party Plugin Support
React Native is still in development, so some components that could meet specific business requirements may not be available. It offers two types of third-party plugins to overcome this: native modules and JavaScript-based.
React Native allows you to link any plugin to a native module or third-party module, making it easy to integrate Google Maps into your application.
5. Support for the community and industry popularity
This is the most popular cross-platform platform. Developers have the greatest benefit from strong community support. As RN is an open-source platform, you can seek out community experts and access libraries of information to help you develop React Native-based apps. Reactiflux chat is available for any questions. React Native also has many tutorials.
React Native’s Downsides
The entire world of mobile software development was shocked to hear that Airbnb had worked on React Native. However, they concluded that the platform is unsuitable for their needs, despite all its many pros.
This is just one example that shows how even the most powerful programming tools can sometimes fail to handle certain business situations.
1. Partly poor guidelines
Incomplete guidance is a weakness of the open-source platform.
Stack Overflow contains over 95,000 questions on #react–native. This brings up some thoughts. While you may not concerned about missing an answer to a question you are interested in, it is possible to question the quality and reliability of the library. If something works well, will there be questions?
2. Absence of support for Android features & iOS
React Native doesn’t support all features on these platforms. Some modules are not available and will need to be developed from scratch. Developers will need to create new features for other features that may be missing or obsolete.
3. Performance is lower than native apps
JavaScript is notoriously slow despite its many advantages.
React Native and JS are the main culprits for the lower performance. The new bridge update will be released in 2021. This will change how native code communicates to JS. This will give RN a performance boost. Developers may also need to integrate TypeScript and Flow into their infrastructure. You can optimize your system with a lot of skillful programming.
4. Complex UIs are difficult to power
React Native is not the right choice if you require many animations, integrations, and lots of background processes in your app.
Developers may face difficulties creating screens that use complex gestures. This is because the Android and iOS touch subsystems can be too different for a single API.
React Native’s Popularity & Perspective
There are more JavaScript libraries and frameworks than ever before. Each year, new “killers”, which promise more performance, usability, and fewer bugs, are introduced. It is impossible to stop this process, but it must be monitored so you don’t get in the position where your stack becomes obsolete.
You have many options to track trends. To get a complete picture, you will need to use several tools.
You can see that React Native is the market leader in cross-platform mobile development as evidenced by the 2020 statistics.
This npm trends chart also shows that React Native has received about 400.000 requests, which is significantly more than Flutter.
Flutter leads according to the percentage of Stack Overflow queries. Based on the opinions of NIX experts, find out which one is better: Flutter vs React.
Questy App for React Native NIX Expertise
It is illustrated in a mobile application that allows quest players to play.
Two main features were required for the app:
Anyone can become an author, and create their quests using the app.
Download the app for all interested parties.
The NIX team suggested that cross-platform apps using React Native be developed to reach both iOS and Android users to get maximum user engagement and save client resources such as time and money.
Our developers encountered many challenges during the project that were specific to cross-platform development. However, they overcame all of them and delivered all the client’s requirements. We also offered extra activities and interactions that enhance the original idea. This was in line with the client’s goal of engaging people in the quest’s cultural culture.
Conclusion on React Native- When to Choose
It offers many unique benefits. Your business idea and whether you are a successful business guru or a start-up will determine which technology stack you choose.
React Native is a great choice for:
- Projects with simple functionality
- Attractive design and intuitive interfaces such as eCommerce and social media
- JavaScript mostly used to create apps
- Rapid development in a few iterations
However, React Native may not be the right solution for these situations:
- for complex visualisation;
- feature-heavy gaming;
- When building multimedia apps rich in multimedia, there are many background processes.
- platform-specific apps.
We hope that you will have fewer questions now that you’ve read this information. However, if you still have questions, please contact the Artoon Solutions experts for clarification.