NativeScript vs OpenFL

Overview

NativeScript

Stacks533

Followers1.1K

Votes516

GitHub Stars25.3K

Forks1.7K

OpenFL

Stacks11

Followers15

Votes0

GitHub Stars2.1K

Forks475

NativeScript vs OpenFL: What are the differences?

What is NativeScript? Build truly native apps with JavaScript. NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

What is OpenFL? *Build games and applications for almost every platform imaginable *. It enables creative expression for the desktop, mobile and web. Enterprise applications and best-selling games are made with it, publishing native, Flash and HTML5 applications using one seamless toolset.

NativeScript can be classified as a tool in the "Cross-Platform Mobile Development" category, while OpenFL is grouped under "Cross-Platform Desktop Development".

Some of the features offered by NativeScript are:

100% Access to Native Platform API
NativeScript is free of charge as an open source project
Code with JavaScript. Style with CSS

On the other hand, OpenFL provides the following key features:

Vector Graphics
Seamless support for image, canvas and typed array pixel stores
Text Support

NativeScript and OpenFL are both open source tools. It seems that NativeScript with 17.7K GitHub stars and 1.31K forks on GitHub has more adoption than OpenFL with 1.42K GitHub stars and 331 GitHub forks.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Detailed Comparison

NativeScript	OpenFL
NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.	It enables creative expression for the desktop, mobile and web. Enterprise applications and best-selling games are made with it, publishing native, Flash and HTML5 applications using one seamless toolset.
100% Access to Native Platform API;NativeScript is free of charge as an open source project;Code with JavaScript. Style with CSS;Cross-platform UI abstractions;Shared business logic and data models	Vector Graphics; Seamless support for image, canvas and typed array pixel stores;Text Support;Sound Support; Batched tile rendering; Video rendering; Asset management; MovieClip animations
Statistics
GitHub Stars 25.3K	GitHub Stars 2.1K
GitHub Forks 1.7K	GitHub Forks 475
Stacks 533	Stacks 11
Followers 1.1K	Followers 15
Votes 516	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 75 Access to the entire native api 47 Support for native ios and android libraries 46 Angular 2.0 support 46 Support for javascript libraries 44 Native ux and performance Cons 5 Lack of promotion 1 Slower Performance compared to competitors	No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available	TypeScript Visual Studio Code Linux JavaScript ES6 IntelliJ IDEA Sublime Text macOS Windows Haxe

What are some alternatives to NativeScript, OpenFL?

Ionic

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

React Native

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

Xamarin

Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Framework7

It is a free and open source mobile HTML framework to develop hybrid mobile apps or web apps with iOS native look and feel. All you need to make it work is a simple HTML layout and attached framework's CSS and JS files.

Electron

With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Docker. The Electron framework lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It is based on io.js and Chromium and is used in the Atom editor.

Qt

Qt, a leading cross-platform application and UI framework. With Qt, you can develop applications once and deploy to leading desktop, embedded & mobile targets.

PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a web platform that exposes native mobile device apis and data to JavaScript. PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova. PhoneGap allows you to use standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development, avoiding each mobile platforms' native development language. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's sensors, data, and network status.

Expo

It is a framework and a platform for universal React applications. It is a set of tools and services built around React Native and native platforms that help you develop, build, deploy, and quickly iterate on iOS, Android, and web apps.