In today’s tech-driven world, users expect a smooth experience from their apps. These apps need to operate on Windows, Mac OS, Android, and iOS. This makes cross-platform development a real challenge for developers. The best product could be made by coding in the native language for each platform (Swift for iOS and Java/Kotlin for Android), but writing code twice in two different languages takes a lot of time. Cross-platform frameworks have been created so that developers can use one framework to build an app that runs on several platforms, cutting down the effort needed to develop a multi-platform app.
If you’re wondering how to make an app, what’s the deal with cross-platform app development, or how to build a successful app, check out the top three cross-platform frameworks below.
React Native
React Native is the most popular and trusted mobile framework available. Its popularity is a strong reason to choose it, as you’ll benefit from more open-source community support and find it easier to attract other developers. React Native is also recognized for its fast performance and low costs due to high code reuse. Additionally, being written in JavaScript gives React Native an edge. JavaScript is one of the most widely used programming languages globally, so there’s a large community of developers working with it at all times. There’s nothing quite like searching for a problem online and quickly finding the answer on Stack Overflow! However, one downside of React Native is that developers still need some knowledge of native platform languages. While React Native is quicker than coding an app in multiple native languages, there may be delays if your developers are not familiar with the basics of Swift or Kotlin.
Ionic
Ionic is an open-source front-end framework which means it allows developers to alter the Ionic code to fit their own use cases. Ionic is based on Angular JS (unlike React, which is built straight from Javascript). Angular JS gives developers access to a large amount of HTML’s syntax which can help developers create more attractive looking features. Finally, the Ionic framework uses Cordova plug-ins that work with all the standard mobile APIs (camera, GPS, audio recorder, etc.). One disadvantage of Ionic is that its performance lags slightly behind native OS languages. While the slight drop in performance may not be an issue for most apps, Ionic is not recommended for the development of graphics-heavy applications such as 3D video games.
Flutter
Flutter allows developers to maintain the same UI and UI code across mobile platforms. This can make developer’s lives easier and promote a consistent brand for your mobile application. Flutter has a “hot reload” feature which essentially means that developers can refresh their mobile app to see any changes they’ve made instantly. This feature makes development with Flutter extremely fast. Finally, Flutter allows custom UI and animation at the same nuance of OS-native languages. This flexibility allows for nuanced feature development. One disadvantage of Flutter is its age. Being a relatively new framework means that there aren’t a ton of existing libraries to work from and developers may have to write libraries from scratch, which can be a big time-sink.