Companies that quickly deliver mobile apps across various device platforms can gain a significant competitive advantage, but it can be quite challenging.
Developers are often constrained by traditional mobile development approaches, a lack of skill sets to develop applications for each and every type of mobile platform - which results in slow time to market. Fortunately, there are some solutions emerging which aim to reduce (if not eliminate) the most common issues of app development for mobile.
Progress, for example, a provider of application development and deployment technologies, recently announced new tooling and capabilities for its NativeScript open source framework that should make native cross-platform mobile development easier and faster.
The announcement includes the release of
NativeScript Sidekick, a companion to NativeScript that offers starter templates, verified plugins, cloud builds and debugging capabilities. It also includes the release of augmented reality support for iOS 11 and Android Oreo, the NativeScript Marketplace and verified plugins, the release of free NativeScript UI widgets, and more.
NativeScript Sidekick is essentially a GUI client (available for Windows, macOS, and Linux) that enhances the power of the NativeScript Command-Line Interface (CLI). Sidekick, according to the Progress announcement, is designed to be an unobtrusive companion that complements a developer's preferred code editor, IDE, or source control system or other tools. SideKick offers iOS provisioning profile/certificate generation, improved LiveSync, and a preview of Visual Studio support.
"As the popularity of NativeScript has skyrocketed, with more than one million downloads this year alone, we've seen it evolve into something more than just an open source framework. Developers are embracing it as their choice for cross-platform mobile app development," said Todd Anglin, VP Product, Progress.
"The introduction of new tools such as NativeScript Sidekick demonstrates our ability to keep in lockstep with market needs and with the latest advancements in JavaScript development. giving developers everything they need to build the mobile apps of tomorrow from a single codebase, using their existing web development skills."