Looking back at 2023 brings an overwhelming sense of gratitude to our innovative and caring community. To think that on January 6th, the year began with an illustrious workspace demonstrating Angular, React, Solid, Svelte, TypeScript and Vue apps all living peacefully in a single workspace sharing creative SwiftUI animations to fast forward to December seeing NativeScript premiering a jaw-dropping lighting industry app in Las Vegas is an understatement to what happened in between the start and end of the year.
We saw how to render JavaScript view templates as images to using exciting Jetpack Compose components seamlessly in our projects alongside seeing how the community can create plugins from any platform SDK out there. Additionally we learned how to achieve natural iOS list behavior matching the platforms own Mail app as well as making silky smooth swipable rows on Android. Sure that's neat but what makes it special is how we acknowledge innovation.
NativeScript left no one behind this year, bringing together innovative communities just like it brings together native code and JavaScript.
How about using React Native on StackBlitz via Open Native? There's an elevated sense of developing when barriers fade away. Particularly when being able to combine platforms with single JavaScript primitives to achieve things like singular scroll events for helpful UX animations to achieving consistent list behavior between iOS and Android with a single <Pager /> primitive not to mention changing layout types in a flash. Talking about an elevated developer sense of options, we can also use React Native Modules across Angular, React, Solid, Svelte and Vue on iOS and Android all from your web browser using StackBlitz.
We can even use React Native Notifee with NativeScript projects so we can enjoy the entire industry we deserve by even tapping into SwiftUI if desired.
The integration surprise of the year may have been jQuery support but hey it actually works!
We look forward to more advancements from the Flutter team in celebrating usage from diverse NativeScript projects with @nativescript/flutter. Talking about advancements we also bid a cheer to Capacitor in continually seeking to advance capabilities including constant improvements like Ionic Portal support with Live Updates using App Flow.
When open source communities speak up, NativeScript listens and responds whether it's an independent author or the biggest tech companies in the industry from Google to Meta to Microsoft in championing TypeScript since it's infancy or just celebrating innovation across the JavaScript ecosystem from Vue to Svelte and beyond.
Even WinterCG took a focus and will shape a lot of what's to come in 2024 with sweeping standardizations passes.
Being involved with exciting emerging technologies is always welcome whether via YouTube stream about Solid or giving a Svelte talk in Japan to a Callstack podcast.
Shared Element Transitions released just this year with @nativescript/core 8.5. Whether you're doing slick music player style interactions or even just fun platform visual effects, new features delivered this year allow developers to push boundaries, even unlocking usage of Swift Package Manager with our projects.
NativeScript 8.6 landed with Vision Pro support premiering first class SwiftUI App Lifecycle support and our complete suite of automated tests passing on an entirely new platform.
We absolutely love our target platforms so naturally we also enjoy embedding NativeScript into our admirable hosts where purely native development can drive the entire project whilst allowing all mindsets (web and native) to thrive and work together. You can even learn how to create a Home Widget on iOS as well as enable Drag/Drop from outside your app!
Digging deeper into how natural platform development is with NativeScript, we can bring iOS delegates to life right from TypeScript as well as express neat iOS Swift effects in TypeScript if we so choose.
Even Apple's WWDC gets a spotlight in our mindset, where we get a peek into a week full of innovation. If that doesn't leave you lost in the Matrix, just try an iOS API from your web browser. Or you could always get all your work done at your desktop.
If platforms are our yin, the web is our yang. NativeScript HTML came into being this year mapping NativeScript to the DOM. Building upon Happy DOM as a thorough DOM/HTML polyfill, it reimagines NativeScript as a first-class HTML framework, with all web APIs filled in. This means that event handling, UI manipulation, and more, all match 1:1 to allow web developers to adopt NativeScript seamlessly.
Not to miss out on the best of the Web, the Shared Element Transitions feature release this year is headed towards the View Transitions API to allow more flexibility in transitioning between UI states. And, by popular demand, even jQuery got support!
Contributor Osei Fortune has evolved @nativescript/canvas to new heights providing for a lot of eye-opening development possibilities. We're excited about v2 in 2024.
We've all had our eyes on Mason, a library bringing Taffy layout to NativeScript, where surprises may be in store for 2024 here.
Another contributor Ammar Ahmed even made an alternate take on DOM in NativeScript for further testing and benchmarking, blending in Yukino Song's DOMiNATIVE.
It's important to maintain peace of mind with those beginning their journey into building NativeScript apps for the first time. When beginning to deliver an app to your audience, it's also insightful to learn usage behavior by tapping into great solutions to improve upon user satisfaction. Learning anything new can be a challenge but our community brings helpful DX points all the time like framework agnostic granular TypeScript types for NativeScript apps built with Vue 3, Svelte, React, Solid & more. And of course it's important to have fun along the way like making credit cards bounce around! With understanding abound you may even decide to teach.
Once beyond that learning bubble and spreading your wings wide, diving into rich animations with Rive can really spice up your app's design and feel. We encourage all developers to learn how to rock out with Rive.
With all this development happening though, don't forget to test with Maestro and understand your components deeply with Storybook.
Once you're confident with the app's behavior you may finally ship your app like our community did this year using a multitude of popular mindsets including one from our Norwegian friends.
We also understand that sometimes prior to shipping apps, it can be helpful for teams to try recreating popular patterns like this Uber Eats sample or this Pokedex example, however even studying a canvas example demonstrating identical UX on both iOS and Android can be helpful. But what about adding web into the mix? There are examples of doing Web, iOS and Android altogether as well.
If security is on your mind, you may benefit from giving your app a Secure lock screen!
Then came December 12th, NativeScript's 9th birthday!
It's reassuring that we respect differences of opinion in our core values. Particularly at a time where advancing technology often bets on the death of another. That notion just doesn't apply here.
Peering into the wild yonder, just imagine using Expo with NativeScript.
If 2023 proved that NativeScript is underrated, just wait til 2024 -- Cheers!