Alternatives to Native Mobile App Development

A look at five frameworks for building cross-platform mobile applications and how they stack up against each other.

https://auth0.com/blog/alternatives-to-native-mobile-app-development/

Ionic is perhaps the most widely known cross-platform mobile framework. It allows developers to build iOS and Android applications with web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Ionic is built on top of Cordova which enables access to various device features such as geolocation, push notifications, camera, and others. Ionic 1.x utilizes Angular 1.x, while Ionic 2, the latest version of the framework, utilizes Angular 2+.

PhoneGap is very similar to Ionic in many respects. It too allows developers to build cross-platform mobile applications with web technologies and is built on top of Cordova. PhoneGap is not tied to any specific JavaScript framework, so developers have more choice in how they build their applications. PhoneGap boasts an ecosystem comprised of a desktop app, mobile app, and a cloud service called PhoneGap Build for building and deploying an application.

Xamarin comes from Microsoft and takes a unique approach to cross-platform app development. Xamarin applications are written entirely in C#. Xamarin then compiles the C# code into native iOS and Android distributions. The underlying layer on which Xamarin is built on top of is Mono and this enables cross-platform development. The benefit of building applications with Xamarin compared to Cordova-based frameworks is that apps built with Xamarin make use each platform's native API's. This means that Xamarin apps compile down to native iOS and Android applications and behave as such.

Xamarin is not a code once, run everywhere solution. While you can achieve a high level of code shareability, you will more than likely need to write specific code for iOS and Android versions of your app.

Progressive Web Apps aim to make web applications behave like their native counterparts. This project comes to us from Google and presents a very interesting proposition. Progressive Web Apps aim to be reliable, fast, and engaging. This means that apps should load fast, present an engaging and fluid user experience, and support native features like push notifications or offline access. The PWA spec will add new features and functionality over time. Developers can then choose how many features they wish to implement, possibly making PWA the most flexible way to reach mobile users.

React Native comes to us from Facebook and presents a framework for building cross-platform mobile applications with React. React Native is comparable to Xamarin, wherein apps created with React Native are indistinguishable from native iOS and Android apps written in Objective-C or Java.

Cross-Platform Mobile Applications with React Native

React Native, an open-source framework from Facebook, builds on the popular React JavaScript framework, allowing developers to create cross-platform iOS and Android applications using JavaScript.

differs from other cross-platform frameworks that use JavaScript (such as PhoneGap, Titanium, etc.) because, although the application logic runs in JavaScript, the resulting application UI is 100% native. This means that you don’t have to deal with many of the compromises usually associated with managing an HTML5-based UI.

http://www.codemag.com/article/1701071

Authentication with Hybrid App Frameworks

Mobile applications present various user and identity challenges. Luckily, Auth0has your back. Our identity solution is platform agnostic and we have plenty of resources to get you up and running as quickly as possible. Sign up for a free Auth0 account, and then follow any of these guides to get user authentication for your app in no time at all:

• Ionic - Quickstart (Ionic), Quickstart (Ionic 2), Tutorial
• PhoneGap - Quickstart
• Xamarin - Quickstart, Tutorial
• React Native - Quickstart (iOS), Quickstart (Android)
• Progressive Web Apps - Tutorial