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NativeScript

Stacks292

Followers415

+ 1

Votes410

Polymer

Stacks318

Followers301

+ 1

Votes151

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NativeScript vs Polymer: 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 Polymer? A new library built on top of Web Components, designed to leverage the evolving web platform on modern browsers. Polymer is a new type of library for the web, designed to leverage the existing browser infrastructure to provide the encapsulation and extendability currently only available in JS libraries. Polymer is based on a set of future technologies, including Shadow DOM, Custom Elements and Model Driven Views. Currently these technologies are implemented as polyfills or shims, but as browsers adopt these features natively, the platform code that drives Polymer evacipates, leaving only the value-adds.

NativeScript and Polymer are primarily classified as "Cross-Platform Mobile Development" and "Front-End Frameworks" tools respectively.

"Access to the entire native api" is the top reason why over 55 developers like NativeScript, while over 48 developers mention "Web components" as the leading cause for choosing Polymer.

NativeScript and Polymer are both open source tools. Polymer with 21.1K GitHub stars and 2K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than NativeScript with 17.1K GitHub stars and 1.26K GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Polymer has a broader approval, being mentioned in 41 company stacks & 30 developers stacks; compared to NativeScript, which is listed in 10 company stacks and 23 developer stacks.

What is NativeScript?

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 Polymer?

Polymer is a new type of library for the web, designed to leverage the existing browser infrastructure to provide the encapsulation and extendability currently only available in JS libraries. Polymer is based on a set of future technologies, including Shadow DOM, Custom Elements and Model Driven Views. Currently these technologies are implemented as polyfills or shims, but as browsers adopt these features natively, the platform code that drives Polymer evacipates, leaving only the value-adds.

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Why do developers choose NativeScript?

Why do developers choose Polymer?

57
Access to the entire native api
37
Angular 2.0 support
37
Support for native ios and android libraries
36
Native ux and performance
35
Support for javascript libraries
30
Backed up by google and telerik
27
Typescript support

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50
Web components
30
Material design
20
Backed by Google
14
HTML
13
Components
11
Data Binding
5
Open source

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What companies use NativeScript?

What companies use Polymer?

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What tools integrate with NativeScript?

What tools integrate with Polymer?

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What are some alternatives to NativeScript and Polymer?

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.

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.

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.

React

Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.

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.

See all alternatives

Decisions about NativeScript and Polymer

leonardo silveira

Software Engineer at Casa Magalhães · a few seconds ago | 2 upvotes · 26.2K views

Vue.js

Apache Cordova

NativeScript

So, i am preparing to adopt NativeScript.

For years my hybrid projects used Apache Cordova.

"Let's avoid to maintain two teams and double the deliver velocity".

It was good for a few years, we had those september issues, (i.e. apple broke some backward compatibility) , but for the last years, things seems to be losing the grip faster.

Last breaking changes, for instance, seems to have a workaround, however that growing feeling that simple things can not rely on so fragile webviews keeps growing faster and faster.

I've tested nativescript not only on it's "helloworld", but also on how do they respond on issues.

I got tweed support. I opened an github issue and got answers on less than 10 hours (yes i did it on another timezone and very close to a weekend). I saw the faulty docs get corrected in two days.

The bad news is i only can adopt nativescript on newer projects, since there is no budget to revamp the current solutions.

The good news is i can keep coding on Vue.js , without vou router, but that's ok. I've already exchanged vanilla html for real native app with background magic enabled, the router can be easily reproduced.

Related Comparisons

Interest over time

Reviews of NativeScript and Polymer

Valentin Stoychev

Telerik

Review of

NativeScript

It is using the native components to build the UI and offers the best skills reuse story. All you need to know is JS/TS and CSS. Angular 2 is also supported which leads to even more code reuse across web and mobile.This is also the best way to access the native platform APIs directly.

Sebastian Witalec

Review of

NativeScript

NativeScript allows you to reuse your JS skills to build Native mobile apps without any sacrifices. It takes a bit to learn about all possible features, but each time you discover a new one you can't help but get more and more excited.

How developers use NativeScript and Polymer

Ana Phi Sancho uses

Polymer

In process of Learning Technics- Studing to know more. I was introduced in a Google event.

Polymer is another Google offering that focuses on Web Components, an up-and-coming collection of technologies that provide web developers with the ability to create customer HTML elements.

Badge List uses

Polymer

Polymer is super future-focused and really great to build in. The biggest plus for us is how its component-focused approach keeps things modular and maintainable. It also makes it really easy to implement material design.