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Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

engineering.shopify.com

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Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#521

Post by JaviFesser »

artsr wrote: post #514
s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It emulates the UI, so the fake is noticeable, and it will be hard for them to maintain perfect 1:1. RN on the other hand bridges the native UI w/ your code via a JS bridge. The downside is the bridge can be a bottleneck so you have to be careful how much you congest it. The result is being able to expose every native functionality and abstract it anyway you want using React extensions. Flutter plans to target deskto…

Don't know why you're being downvoted. These all are perfectly reasonable concerns. I've seen many GUI frameworks fail because of a mix of these reasons.

Can you downvote in this website?

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#522

Post by bsaul »

scarface74 wrote: post #518
bsaul wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think you also forget that many people buy ipads because of apps created by developers ( in my case, i believe my app is the direct reason for the sale of my customer's ipad pro). and that developpers need to buy apple hardware to build and distribute on the store. those 30% come in addition to all the revenue generated by hardware sales, because of independant app developers.

So your customers are willing to pay at minimum $799 for an iPad Pro but don’t value your product enough for you to charge enough to make it a sustainable business? Just maybe it’s a product market fit issue?

Over the life of the ipad, they'll have paid me more than the ipad. But it'll be over a few years. It's a market with a few hundreds potential users (maybe a thousand) per country, not more.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#523

Post by greatjack613 »

freehunter wrote: post #152
npo9 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that like writing plugins is hard or undesirable.

That's what I don't understand when people criticize frameworks like React Native... "I didn't like that I had to build 15% of the app in native code, so I ditched RN and now have to write 100% of the app in native code, but twice and in two different languages"?

It is a heck lot easier to stick to 1 language with no plugins, then 3 languages with plugins for every native feature

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#524

Post by greatjack613 »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #431
davidwparker wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flutter has a larger number of "star" on Github. It also has more issues and more pull requests. React Native has 3x more followers on Reddit. So I guess it depends on your definition of community.

Flutter is only in beta for desktop and web. And it's emulated UI, not true native UI. RN is ready now and today for all platforms, including Window via react-native-windows. Microsoft is choosing React, I wouldn't go w/ Flutter. Why would you choose a Google only language and framework... unless you like rewriting code when it dies. Also, w/ React you can use TypeScript or JS, you don't have to learn a new language.…

As much as I hate that google kills stuff often, the above comment is missing the fact that facebook also kills stuff often, they just never had any adoption in the first place so you don't notice

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#525

Post by bytesmith »

ksec wrote: post #516
bytesmith wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a major re-architecture of React Native underway[1]. See Lorenzo Sciandra's excellent conference talk for an explanation of what the current limitations are in React Native and how they are planning on addressing them in the near future [2]. [1] https://github.com/react-native-community/discussions-and-pr... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gm0owyO8HU

I just speed read though it, So basically Everything is changed? I am not even sure if that is like a re-architecture, it is more like a a rewrite, literally every apart of the stack, all the way to Javascript Engine. All aiming for 2020 release. At least the whole stack have many large companies'vested interest in it now so it is unlikely RN will fade out anytime soon. Will be interesting to see how all these played…

They will probably slowly introduce the changes one feature at a time in a backward-compatible way in a similar manner to how core react architectural changes are introduced (eg fiber, suspense, hooks etc).

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#526

Post by willyt »

pennaMan wrote: post #146
phreack wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't be overstated how many apps are absolutely dependent on working push notifications (all chat for example) and can't be replicated as websites. And that's not yet implemented for iOS so we're all at Apple's mercy until it is, which may never be.

Apple will never give in and implement webpush on mobile safari because that would affect their precious app store. How will they extort developers then? That's also the reason mobile safari is so limited in other features.

Is it possible that they haven't figured out how to sandbox the little bit of code that handles the notification from the rest of the webpage? Maybe this is solved already by the webpush standard but some websites are a ridiculously overcomplicated hot mess of javascript ads which make my phone heat up, I don't want them waking up my phone all the time and draining the battery.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#527

Post by vincnetas »

reaperducer wrote: post #330
divbzero wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten years ago Facebook fought this battle and lost. [1] [2] [3] [1]: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/using-ht... "Using HTML5 Today" [2]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/11/facebook_admits_h... "Facebook admits HTML5 not competitive with Cocoa Touch" [3]: https://techcrunch.com/2012/12/13/facebook-android-faster/ "Facebook Speeds Up Android App By Ditching HTML5 And Rebuilding It Natively…

Ten years ago Facebook fought this battle and lost. That was ten years ago. Phones and web sites have changed a lot since 2010. If the battle was re-fought today, I'm not sure the winner would be all that clear.

You still cant crawl through all the local contacts with mobile HTML app. Contrary to native app. So thats a no go for FB from the start i guess.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#528

Post by jinglebells »

newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

And what happens when I don't have any signal? Writing an offline-first mobile website is INCREDIBLY hard. Where are you going to store the data? How are you going to detect the network connectivity without polling and hosing the battery because the radio doesn't timeout? Geo-fencing events?

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#529

Post by on_and_off »

koheripbal wrote: post #243
divbzero wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten years ago Facebook fought this battle and lost. [1] [2] [3] [1]: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/using-ht... "Using HTML5 Today" [2]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/11/facebook_admits_h... "Facebook admits HTML5 not competitive with Cocoa Touch" [3]: https://techcrunch.com/2012/12/13/facebook-android-faster/ "Facebook Speeds Up Android App By Ditching HTML5 And Rebuilding It Natively…

It strikes me that, more than anything, it is the lack of an efficient "Add to Home Screen" flow, that has doomed mobile websites. ...and it's intentional. By having an app store, mobile OS distributors know that they have control over a massive revenue stream.

that's factually untrue since there have been ways to add web apps to the home screen for while.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#530

Post by fredgrott »

Let's see directly couple UI front end to OS updates...yeah that will really speed up cross mobile platform development won't it?

Or one could decouple completely which is Flutter's main mission as a front end framework

Sounds like some CTO-type in over their head

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