Is your head full of app ideas that can go trending like the forest fire, but learning mobile development tricks often seem like a task?
Drive away all the factors that limit you to set new milestones in the industry. How? Well, it is quite simple these days with the use of certain app frameworks that allow you to transform your app ideas into reality even if you are not having any prior knowledge about the native development.
You can simply start with the very basic knowledge of HTML, JavaScript and CSS. The matter of the fact is that mobile applications designed using web technologies can support multiple mobile platforms.
Listing few tools that can help you build mobile application easily and quickly:
Ionic
It is one of the most popular frameworks and possibly the first preference of the development professionals. It offers a CSS portion that can be utilised for developing designs that look like the native ones. But if you want to exploit the full potential of this framework, it would be best to combine it with Angular JS. An added advantage that you can reap with Ionic is the command-based interface that comes with plenty of remarkable features including a Cordova-based app packager and integrated emulators.
To sum up, the pros that you can experience with Ionic are – predefined components, command based interface comprising multiple useful features, and wide community. The only limiting factor could be acquiring knowledge of Angular JS especially if you are doing something complex.
Framework 7
The most exciting thing about this framework is that it doesn’t have any external dependencies like React or Angular. It won’t be wrong to call it framework agnostic. But, it still manages quite well to design apps with native look and feel, having appropriately aligned components and animations. Anyone having the basic understanding of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS can build an app without complicating the coding structures. This framework doesn’t include any additional tools for app packaging and emulating so there is a need for combining it with PhoneGap or Cordova.
Putting in a nutshell, the advantages you get with Framework 7 is simplicity in usage as it requires basic knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, exceptional performance and compatibility with almost all the JavaScript frameworks. The only downside it has unavailability of Cordova/PhoneGap builder. But it works well with both of them.
Famous
This framework employs a unique approach for mobile as well as web development. It utilises the combination of DOM tree and WebGL and displays everything on the screen just like HTML gaming engines. This innovative technique authenticates framework to run the apps in 60 fps (frames per second), which is as swift as any native app. Unfortunately, no further development action is taken in this project and there are no good reference docs for it.
To summarise, the advantage of using this framework is that you can experience native-like performance. The drawbacks are incomplete documentation, relatively small community and no further development improvements have done.
Onsen UI
It is an open-source framework that leverage developers an ease to create apps with the combination of native-looking components. It’s quite simple to use, flexible to work with and without Angular JS. It possesses strong documentation that involves plenty of examples and layouts reflecting the most common structures of the app. Currently this framework offers only iOS theme, however, the latest version promises support to Material design.
The pros you can enjoy with this framework are excellent documentation supported by examples and availability of predefined components. The missing factor of this framework is – no material design support.
React Native
As the name itself expresses, the purpose of this framework is to create proper native apps rather than developing hybrid ones that execute in the Web view. However, development is still entirely done through React and JavaScript. This framework isn’t specifically designed for the newbie development professionals, but on a good side, there is a large community working behind the scenes to guide you at every step. Recently the framework announced support for Android that allows you to have actual cross-platform apps.
The advantages of this framework are – support from a large community and performance like native apps. The downside of this framework is that its development tools support only OS X till now. Also, its sharp learning curve holds it back.
Now that you know about the best frameworks for mobile app development available out there, no single app idea of yours will go vain.
