5 Best Javascript Frameworks That Support Cross-Platform Mobile Apps

logo_500
Adamo Software
  • Date Published
  • Categories Blog
  • Reading Time 5-Minute Read

Using Javascript frameworks for mobile app development is on the rise because of their increasingly advanced libraries and standards.

Developed in 1995, Javascript is a multi-paradigm programming language that allows the creation of dynamic content on websites or apps. They can be any element moving or changing on the screen without reloading the site manually. It means while HTML is for building the structure and CSS is to customize the interface, Javascript is used to make the site dynamic.

In this article, our best app developers share some top Javascript frameworks, which are the most supportive in the sector of cross-platform application development.

Angular

Angular is the most popular Javascript framework 2020 for its power and efficiency. It provides a client-side solution with declarative templates, end-to-end tools, and dependency injection. As a product of Google, Angular assures stability in terms of performance and productivity during the full development process.

This Javascript framework supports developing Single Page Applications (SPAs), which allows connecting with the backend without reloading the webpage. It also extends the HTML using Directives into the application and performs data binding with Expressions. Besides, the protractor runs the scenario tests in a faster and more stable way.

In terms of animation, developers can create complex and high-performance choreographies, as well as timelines of animation. All needed is little code through the intuitive API of Angular.

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova is the best Javascript framework among the most popular cross-platform Javascript frameworks list with the technology stack of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This Javascript mobile framework is also known as the open-source version of PhoneGap.

A compliant API works as a wrapper for each native code for the Cordova application. It helps to access the capabilities of each device consistently.

Apache Cordova comes with a variety of plugins, which are a fundamental part of the ecosystem. The Core Plugins offer native components that enable the cross-platform mobile app to access each device’s capabilities, for example, file system, camera, GPS, contacts, etc.

In addition to the set of Core Plugins, other third-party Cordova plugins are available. Developers can also build their own plugins by following the Plugin Development Guide of the framework.

Apache Cordova does not offer MV* frameworks or UI widgets but only the executing runtime for them. It’s necessary to include those in the application when you need to use them.

Node.js

Node.js is a JavaScript backend framework support for open-source cross-platform mobile development. Its environment enables server-side development. Node.js based applications are proved to be inherently efficient and highly responsive.

The reason why Node.js is a top javascript framework is that it is built on the Chrome V8 Javascript engine, so the code execution is impressively fast. All its APIs are asynchronous. It means servers do not need to wait for the data coming back with APIs. They call an API then move on immediately to the next one. The serves get responses from the earlier API by a notification mechanism.

Node.js makes use of the event looping functionality with a single-thread model to smoothly deliver functioning applications. The event mechanism makes the server scalable on account of non-blocking responses.

The applications do not buffer data but output them in chunks. As a result, Node.js helps significantly cut down the audio and video file processing.

React

React (as known as ReactJS) is a JavaScript mobile app development or library that is created and maintained by Facebook. The code is readable and easy to debug due to its declarative views, also being considered as the fastest Javascript framework.

Among the Javascript framework 2020 list, the React framework rapidly gained popularity as creating a dynamic user interface for websites and applications with high traffics. Each visual part of the application covers a component or a self-contained module, which defines the interface and interactions in the application.

The framework uses virtual DOM (Document Object Model) that it is more straightforward to integrate the same with any application. The application architecture named Flux controls the one-way data binding workflow, while React updates the View to users. Virtual DOM then will help to compare the original and new data for automatically updating.

The event system of the W3C object model is fully compatible with React. Hence, the event system has a pool of objects, which helps to reduce memory.

NativeScript

NativeScript is another Javascript mobile framework development choice to build apps for Android and iOS with a beautiful native UI design. Developers only need to define once then the NativeScript apps will adapt to run on any platform. NativeScript also allows software developers to customize the UI to particular screens or devices.

Besides, NativeScript provides free access to native iOS and Android APIs so that additional knowledge of native development languages is not required.

This free Javascript mobile app development offers an exclusive performance to run animations to 60 FPS. When it comes to a cross-platform application, it’s indeed a great result.

Interestingly, NativeScript can work with other Javascript mobile app frameworks for programming purposes, such as Vue.js with a special plugin or Angular directly.

Conclusion

If your future application is required to cover all platforms including Android, iOS, Windows Phone, macOS, Linux, etc, using Javascript mobile app frameworks can be the potential solution. Most popular javascript frameworks are top real players for cross-platform mobile app development.