With every passing year, new additions are made to the world of app development frameworks. And this further adds to the dilemma of a mobile app developer of choosing the best one out of them. Every mobile app developer always has this lingering question of whether to develop for iOS or Android platform or which platform is best for mobile app development. Well, there is no definite answer as both are exceptional at their own level. Here, is where the cross-platform app development frameworks come into the picture and with so many in the tech world choosing the right one can get confusing. Let’s look at top cross-platform mobile app development frameworks in 2019:
Adobe PhoneGap
PhoneGap is perhaps the most popular, open-source cross-platform app development framework and allows developers to build applications using HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. It can deliver powerful and feature-rich applications with native functionality. In addition to developing apps for Android and iOS, one can use PhoneGap to develop apps for other major OS’s such as Windows, Blackberry, Ubuntu, etc. Some of the features of this amazing platform are 1) Ease of development 2) Multiple Platform compatibility 3) Extensive architecture 4) Rapid app testing and deployment.
Ionic
Ionic is another app development framework which tops the hybrid app development favorite’s list. Developers can develop apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript under this platform. Some of the features of this platform are: 1) Platform Independent 2) Default UI 3) Based on Angular JS 4) Utilizes Cordova Plugins
Xamarin
Xamarin uses a single shared C# codebase to build apps for iOS, Android and Windows. Xamarin allows to build apps using C# just like you would do using Swift, Java or Objective C. Some of the features of Xamarin are: 1) Native look and feel 2) API Integration 3) Huge Community 4) Reusable code 5) Fewer bugs
React Native
React Native is an open source platform and is considered to be one of the best mobile app frameworks out there and is developed by Facebook. It is a platform that is based on JavaScript and many well-known apps are built using React Native (Facebook, Walmart, etc.). Some of the great features of this platform are: 1) it has reusable components 2) It is open source 3) Super-fast 4) offers a lot of plugins 5) Powerful Performance 6) Compatible with iPhone and Android.
Corona SDK
Corona SDK is an open source platform, supported by Lua – a lightweight programming language which makes it 10 times faster than any other app development frameworks in the tech world. This platform codes faster but also maintains the quality of the apps. Some of the features of this platform are 1) Single Code Base 2) Lays more emphasis on design 3) It has a huge community 4) Dominant APIs.
jQuery Framework
jQuery is a feature-rich HTML5 based framework which is lightweight in comparison to other JavaScript frameworks. jQuery has simplified the way JavaScript is written. The main advantage of this framework is that a single code can be run on different Operating Systems – be it iOS, Android, Windows, etc. Some of the features of this platform are 1) Light weight 2) Easier to learn 3) Large development communities and offers a wide range of plugins.
Appcelerator (Titanium)
Appcelerator is an open-source development platform – an incorporation of both PhoneGap and Xamarin and is based on JavaScript. It allows development of native apps and is useful for both Android and iPhone App Development. Some of the best features of this framework are 1) rapid prototyping 2) web-oriented 3) Large and growing development community.