Image Credit: Nappy.co
Who doesn’t like to save money? That’s how the idea of cross-platform mobile app development was born, when you write the same app code and it will work on different operating systems.
The main goal of cross-platform technology is to provide developers with a tool to create apps for multiple operating systems simultaneously.
Approaches to cross platform development
If you have decided to order a cross platform app development service, you should know that the cross-platform approach in a project is needed not for the sake of user convenience, but to optimize the cost of app development and support. This solution allows you to write source code for multiple mobile platforms, but the result of each assembly will be separate executable files.
Cross-platform frameworks can be divided into two groups: Hybrid-Native (first approach, hybrid-native development) and Hybrid-Web (second approach, hybrid web development).
React Native
When you work with React Native, you develop your own control system, build a hierarchy, and think through every detail of the interface.
Flutter
Allows you to build apps in the Dart language. Flutter offers many interface elements that look native to the OS, but are not. In fact, it draws a window on the phone screen and outputs all the elements itself.
Ionic
This is a Hybrid-Web-type framework, where the app on the phone runs in a special shell (UIWebView for iOS and WebView for Android), and it already allows you to display HTML and run JavaScript. It turns out, the app works as if in a web browser 🙂
No deep knowledge of any of the frameworks is necessary. Ionic has a huge built-in library of common tools and many plugins and modules that provide access to native functions.
Xamarin
A relatively new cross-platform Hybrid-Native framework based on the principles of the Microsoft framework. Compatible with absolutely any OS. Xamarin allows you to create apps that are almost indistinguishable from their native counterparts.
NativeScript
This framework uses native rendering tools for every platform, providing a native user interface.
So what should you choose when contacting a company like https://omisoft.net/?
- Opt for React Native if you want mature community support, JavaScript development, and a time-tested solution.
- Choose Flutter if you’re familiar with Dart and want high performance.
- Choose Ionic if you need to speed up your app’s development and testing cycle with full cross-platform customization.
- Xamarin is ideal for those who want to write in C# (another language from the C-like family, C Sharp), get good performance, and experience the benefits of native tools.
- Use NativeScript for 100% native APIs that are provided as part of the toolkit.
We looked at five cross-platform frameworks: React Native, Flutter, Ionic, Xamarin, and NativeScript. But keep in mind that they are different and won’t be equally useful in all situations or in all of your contexts.
