How to Developed Mobile App With JavaScript?

Juned Ghanchi
The IOT Magazine
Published in
5 min readJun 10, 2021

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JavaScript frameworks are widely popular for building sophisticated mobile apps with cutting-edge features. From a lower learning curve, established trust among developers, available resources to the maturity of front-end and back-end technologies, several positive attributes favor the JavaScript frameworks for mobile app development. No wonder most mobile app projects now find JavaScript frameworks as irreplaceable from their technology stack.

When you want to create a mobile app from scratch, you have several different JavaScript frameworks to choose from. Despite the core language being JavaScript, these frameworks radically differ from one another in terms of capabilities, feature set, development cost, learning curve, popularity and cost factors. This is precisely why we are here to compare the leading JavaScript frameworks for mobile app projects.

React Native

Launched by Facebook way back in 2015, React Native is the leading open-source JavaScript framework that is widely used for developing cross-platform mobile apps. The best thing about React Native is that the apps built with this can reuse maximum code across both iOS and Android while the app offers a pretty native look, feel and performance.

Pros

· React Native ensures 85% reusability of the core codebase to guarantee superfast app development.

· React Native provides a truly native user experience on Android as well as iOS.

· React Native comes with a load of instantly usable templates and components app projects.

· React Native is widely popular and has been used in a multitude of successful app projects.

· React Native comes with a robust pool of testing and debugging tools and hot reload features to ensure easier development and updates.

Cons

· React Native is actually a library and hence doesn’t offer a clear framework-like pathway for developers.

· React Native uses as much as 25% to 30% native code, which is why developers need to be versed with native technologies.

· React Native relies too much on third-party APIs to incorporate different app features.

Ionic

Ionic is an extremely lightweight, functionally focused JavaScript framework for web and Hybrid mobile app development. Embracing the ‘Write once, run anywhere’ principle builds apps that can run on multiple platforms.

Pros

· Ionic can be used for developing platform-independent apps without compromising the app performance and user experience.

· Ionic uses a very simple user interface and capacitor to easily allow access to native platform SDKs and APIs of every OS platform.

· Just because it uses widely known web languages such as JavaScript, HTML and CSS, there are the least requirements to rewrite code across every platform.

· Ionic is highly scalable and can stack up capacity to maintain consistency when required.

Cons

· In spite of many plugins, Ionic may not guarantee to deliver every kind of feature like native apps.

· For example, ionic lacks the Hot Reload feature, and so for effecting changes, the app needs to be refreshed.

· Ionic lacks native performance, particularly in the case of apps dealing with real-time features.

jQuery Mobile

jQuery Mobile is a highly popular JavaScript-based user interface framework. However, the true strength of the framework is its small footprint size, powerful theme engine and easy-to-use API for building powerful Hybrid apps and web apps.

PROS

· jQuery Mobile provides completely platform-independent app performance across all platforms, including iOS, Android, Windows and web.

· jQuery Mobile ensures a highly responsive look and feels by addressing different screen sizes and screen resolutions.

· In addition, it allows creating custom themes by using the tool ThemeRoller that involves writing not a single line of code.

CONS

· jQuery Mobile only works great for a simple app user interface or with the default themes or themes created using the ThemeRoller tool.

· In addition, this works only as a basic JavaScript framework and doesn’t fit cross-platform native development attributes.

Apache Cordova (PhoneGap)

Apache Cordova, also known as PhoneGap, comes with a robust JavaScript front-end library and a powerful back-end development tool, ensuring fast-paced app development at a quick pace. In addition, it perfectly fits low-budget app projects as it doesn’t require additional skills.

Pros

· Cordova comes with a single robust library for developing cross-platform mobile applications.

· It comes with both front-end and back-end libraries for app development.

· As a result, Cordova apps are easy for rolling out updates as a single change is simultaneously reflected across platforms.

· In addition, it is highly cost-effective technology as an app project can save engaging a lot of native and platform-specific resources.

Cons

· Cordova allows cross-compilation of code, and this makes the hybrid apps built on Cordova slower.

· However, Cordova lacks compatibility with different plugins across platforms.

· Some plugins only work with Cordova when they are modified and forked properly.

Angular

Angular is a robust and most evolved JavaScript framework widely used in a web app and mobile app projects. Framework. Coming with the MVC and MVVM architectures can develop high-performance Native apps that can run on multiple platforms.

Pros

· It allows fast-paced app prototyping.

· Least complicated development on a guided path, unlike JavaScript libraries such as React, Backbone, and Knockout.

· Maximum code reusability.

· Out of the box testing tools and debugging features.

· Dependency injection help.

· Two-way data binding to help data streaming.

Cons

· Angular, when used in building complicated apps, involves a considerable learning curve.

· Many of its features are very complex. New developers consider it difficult to work with concepts such as values, factories, and DI.

· To make use of the scopes can be very easy, but it is difficult to debug the same.

· Angular documentation is not extensive and precise.

· Angular directives are considered very difficult to manage and operate.

· Angular offers a very limited number of router connections.

Conclusion

From the above description, it is clear that every JavaScript framework has its own set of pros and cons, and none is perfect. But it would help if you chose a JavaScript framework for your app project based upon your feature requirements, project size, budget and developer resources.

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Juned Ahmed is an IT consultant by profession and is working with IndianAppDevelopers, a leading Android app development company.