What’s new in NativeScript

The framework that turns JavaScript, TypeScript, and Angular into native mobile apps adds starter templates, has direct Vue.js support

NativeScript, a framework for native mobile application development leveraging JavaScript technologies, now has Version 1.0 of its NativeScript-Vue open source project available.

Featuring a set of cross-platform abstractions and runtimes, open source NativeScript lets you  develop native mobile apps with JavaScript, TypeScript, or Angular. A NativeScript runtime translates between JavaScript, TypeScript, and Angular and the native APIs in Apple iOS and Google Android, letting developers write an application just once to support both platforms.

The features in NativeScript-Vue

NativeScript has the NativeScript-Vue Version 1.0 plugin that lets developers use the Vue.js JavaScript framework and the NativeScript mobile development framework together. Vue.js is a JavaScript model-view framework for building UIs.

Still in development for NativeScript-Vue is webpack-based template to enable code-sharing between web and mobile applications. Also planned is a new CLI tool for Vue.js, vue-cli 3, for rapid development.

New features in NativeScript

NativeScript itself includes starter templates to streamline the development process. The templates are among a series of enhancements being made to the platform. The templates are part of NativeScript Sidekick, a GUI client companion to the NativeScript command-line interface.Along with the templates, Sidekick contains plugins, cloud builds, and debugging support.

Other new and forthcoming improvements for NativeScript:

• Augmented reality (AR) is currently supported for iOS 11 and under development for Android. The goal is to enable development of AR experiences to work on both iOS and Android.
• Code-sharing between web and mobile apps is in development, to enable the reuse of source code from web apps in native mobile apps. The company estimates that about 80 percent of web code could be migrated.
• The new NativeScript Playground, a browser-based sandbox for experimenting with NativeScript and Angular, JavaScript, TypeScript, or Vue.js.
• The new NativeScript Marketplace of plugins for NativeScript applications, which includes a new class of “verified” NativeScript plugins that meet certain standards for high quality.

Where to download NativeScript tools

You can download the source code for NativeScript-Vue from GitHub.

Progress Software, the developer of NativeScript, offers Sidekick as a free download.