How React Native from Facebook will change mobile apps
Alexander Sergeevwrote this on Май 15, 2015
Facebook has just launched their own open source framework for creating mobile apps React Native. It will allow developers to create apps in JavaScript, providing them a real native user interface. React Native will change the existing world of mobile development soon and it concerns everybody who has a “smart” device.
Armistice in a HTML vs. Native war
Mobile app developers had to make a really hard choice for a long period of time: whether to develop an app using native tools from Apple and Google or with the help of cross-platform solutions?
There’s an opinion that developers need native tools in order to create the best user experience. Apps work faster, look more neat and work as expected by the users of the platform. But the other side of the Moon is that it’s difficult to learn how to use these tools and the work takes a lot of time, especially if compared to website development. Native tools are also based on totally incompatible programming languages. It means that you’ll have to develop an app 2 or 3 times in order to launch it on iOS, Android and other platforms. It obviously affects the price and it’s the most painful headache of the industry.
Cross-platform solutions,on the other hand, are usually based on such web-technologies as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. All the mobile platforms may show web-pages which means that you may develop one version of an app with the help of web-tools and the working process will be really fast. That’s the theory.
As for practice, this approach is criticized for productivity and compatibility limitations, often for unsatisfactory user experience and energy consumption which heat devices and wear out their batteries. If you have ever been annoyed by a mobile app similar to a bright colorful page, that’s the reason.
React Native is a new tool which combines both the approaches. It allows developers to use JavaScript, a popular, available and compatible with all the mobile devices language. At the same time it realises user interface containing real native elements. It’s quite an appealing thing for JavaScript developers. Many of them dreaded the day they would have to learn more complex Objective-C, Swift or Java languages in order to get to the native app world.
Despite the fact the platform still has many things to prove, Real Native shows that we still will have to make a hard choice between HTML and user interface nativity of apps for a long time. A quality native UI is finally available for all the toughies — JavaScript developers.
More creative apps
If we go deeper, React Native is something more than just an access to native interfaces for JavaScript developers. Facebook presentation shows a completely new work process which allows to decrease the amount of time necessary for a big project and will give app developers more satisfactory production experience.
While web-developers can change the code and see the result in a web-browser, native app developers have to spend minutes to wait for their projects to compile and launch on a mobile device. It’s not just a waste of time; it kills creativity and experiments with new ideas. You have to create cheaper and faster so developers have to be content with average results as corrections and testing take a lot of time.
React Native divides a native user interface and control logics using a “reactive” approach. User interface works only on a mobile device while logics — wherever you need it, for example, in a browser or on a developer’s computer. It means that developers can use tools and web-development work process. Make a change, take a look at the result on a device or emulator — create apps faster or spend the time you have saved for new ideas.
It won’t make everybody use JavaScript and browser tools, but React Native can surely inspire developers to use various tools. Expectation for computers to compile the code and apps to launch really becomes outdated as industry of mobile apps is growing and developers’ working hours are highly demanded.
Inspiring open code base in a new mobile era
Facebook has shared React Native code. Now it’s free and available for everybody. We can expect that it will become a part of other tools and development platforms along with its ideas. The same thing happened with React.js, React Native predecessor, a framework for creation of user interfaces. It was a popular framework on its own and its ideas and conceptions affected other frameworks greatly.
What does it mean for a user? You can expect clear and fast-to-react apps in future years. High quality app development will become cheaper and developers will become more productive and creative.
App industry still suffers from the same problems which were in the beginning of smartphone spreading: double work on iOS and Android, complex tools and slow development tempo. But now the road to a new era is free due to Facebook — with the best tools, new ideas and an open source code.
