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Introducing React Native [video]

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Re: Introducing React Native [video]

#161

Post by marknutter »

Glide wrote: post #145
marknutter wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't overestimate users either. It's very easy to build for other geeks rather than the General public. Netflix apps are almost all built using web technologies and it doesn't seem to bother most users. I think there's been an overemphasis on pixel perfect UI and on UX in general but people don't want nice UI's, they want useful apps.

For Netflix, the interface can only get in the way. People are there to watch movies and that's basically it. You can't "nail" the interface like you can with applications you interact with more. It feels like there is a bias against web based apps in general because I usually have a bad experience with them or stop using an application when I get annoyed with the user experience. I'm sure it's possible to create a g…

> For Netflix, the interface can only get in the way.

I would argue that for most apps, the interface can only get in the way - Facebook included.

Re: Introducing React Native [video]

#162

Post by rpwverheij »

rattray wrote: post #21
jessep wrote: post #2

Here's the moment in the video where it's announced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVZ-P-ZI6W4#t=1341

And just as a heads-up to those who haven't watched, implementation details and code samples are coming tomorrow. But basically the tl;dw seems to be that you can write JavaScript React code that runs efficiently on mobile and renders native primitive components instead of dom primitives ( instead of ). It also introduces the idea of "Learn once, write everywhere" instead of "Write once, run everywhere", which I thin…

Is 'tomorrows' video online yet? Can't seem to find it, or has it not been tomorrow yet? :)

Re: Introducing React Native [video]

#163

Post by lomnakkus »

cromwellian wrote: post #95

We just demoed something similar at the GWTCreate conference, an Angular-like library called Singular ( http://daniel-kurka.de/talks/gwtcreate15/singular.pdf ) It differs in that it uses the same techniques as Google Inbox to run native code. We cross compile to Objective-C with j2objc, and cross-compile to JS via GWT, the data binding, controllers, are shared code on all platforms that run full speed native, while t…

> We cross compile to Objective-C with j2objc, and cross-compile to JS via GWT, the data binding, controllers, are shared code on all platforms that run full speed native, while the UI templating language on each platform is platform native (e.g. angular directives directly in Android XML files)

Honestly, this sounds like quite a technical achievement, but...

WHY? WHY? Why... are we still forced to go through these extraordinary lengths just to get pictures and interaction on a screen?

Re: Introducing React Native [video]

#164

Post by DAddYE »

k__ wrote: post #138
DAddYE wrote: post #24

I think this can be really amazing as is react js now. -- I had to build a simple at first but very complex under the hood. I wrote that app in a weekend with react and was a ton fun and most important worked well since day one. I have been out from the web development since like 1.5 year, but yeah IMO react is the best thing happened to javascript since ... ever. Thanks again guys!

> react is the best thing happened to javascript Why?

Because when you deal with complex code react make it easier to read and as said in the talk more confident when making changes. On a large codebase we all know that you have to be a good JS dev to keep it well organized well readable etc...

Re: Introducing React Native [video]

#165

Post by mike_hearn »

cromwellian wrote: post #113
eyko wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading through your presentation, I have to say Singular does not look at all similar. And it's Java, so different audiences I guess. Angular in Java is not a bad idea though.

Similar in this sense: 1) it uses templating (in our case, HTML, Android XML, and XIB) 2) it is cross platform, runs everywhere, even server 3) it produces native apps It's different in this sense: 1) it doesn't do DOM diffing, it does two-way data-binding 2) it's statically compiled to native code, it doesn't try to run JS in native platforms, and doesn't require any async seems between between the native platform (…

The core engineers behind J2ObjC were those who built Swing at Sun. We're pretty sour on the idea that write-once run-anywhere UIs are possible

That's an odd conclusion. They're clearly possible, perhaps you mean they don't provide some notion of excellent UI. But even then, web apps are rather a big counter-example ... web apps have never looked native, never been consistent with each other, they don't even try, yet many of them are very popular.

The nativeness of UI is something that seems to matter to developers more than end users. Users react strongly to polish and strong design, but if that is totally inconsistent with the platform only a vocal minority seem to care.

Re: Introducing React Native [video]

#166

Post by megaman821 »

bobajeff wrote: post #32

I wish they'd go into more detail on why they can't make an app like paper in the browser environment. They mentioned something about Web Workers being crippled and later on explained how their framework puts JavaScript in it's own thread by default. I'm also wondering why in their experience no one ever comes close to native widgets when imitating them in a Web apps.

Isn't that exactly what Famo.us did, http://vimeo.com/86664858 .

Things are still being figured out. There are lots of experiments to make layouts render faster and motions more fluid; Virtual DOMs, JavasScript layout managers, canvas, WebGL, GPU accelerated CSS transforms.

Re: Introducing React Native [video]

#167

Post by squeaky-clean »

sheraz wrote: post #120

Wow. I've been struggling to teach myself objective-c, never getting beyond the simple tutorials. So I'm happy to try this out. I currently have an MVP in ionic framework and would love to port this over to react. Though I should say that Ionic is amazing in its own right. Also, I tend to agree with some of the comments in this thread -- regular Joe user can't really tell the difference. Ionic on an iPhone looks damn…

Same situation here, using Ionic, but this seems extremely cool. I'll definitely build something with ReactNative as soon as I can. We're only making a news app, but Ionic feels completely native once we optimized it correctly and use the latest beta features.

As for Android being slow does that include 4.4 devices, or just older version of Android? If it's older devices, you should try the new Ionic beta with Crosswalk integration (you'll need to install/enable Crosswalk, but it's very easy to do). Sadly, it'll add about 25mb to your .apk, but on phones earlier than 4.4 the performance boost is at least 10x if not more.

Re: Introducing React Native [video]

#168

Post by guscost »

donw wrote: post #51
themgt wrote: post #48

Well, my money is on this (concept if not implementation) being the future of client-side development. Absent horrific performance/robustness problems, which seem pretty unlikely from this team, this is sounding like the droids we were looking for, the holy grail ring to unite us all, web and native. And did even Steve Yegge ever see this next big language coming?

Having spent the past six or so months working with React and Flux, I sure hope so. For the first time in my technical career, I've actually enjoyed working in Javascript. The real power of React isn't just the virtual DOM -- it's being able to leverage Flux and an immutable, single-source-of-truth app state. Pretty much every time I turn around to build something, this combination has made what used to be an exercis…

> I sure hope so.

It's looking more and more likely. And I agree, if React + Flux/etc becomes the de facto portable standard for the next generation of web and mobile development, we will be in pretty darn good shape. I've only done some tutorial apps and experimental stuff so far, but they're definitely on to something.

Re: Introducing React Native [video]

#169

Post by davedx »

roccod wrote: post #124
arasmussen wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, you've got the gist of it. We render the app in JS, React creates this view hierarchy (still in JS), this is serialized and sent over the bridge (asynchronously) to the native engine who then creates the equivalent native view hierarchy and renders it. The source code for the iOS native engine (and the JS infra, and some examples) will be given to attendees of React.js Conf tomorrow (Jan 29). The iOS and Android…

Is this native engine still html based (eg blink engine or webkit) or is it using the platforms drawing engines? We are currently building user interfaces for STB platforms using a a js platform mapped to a native canvas running on v8. If we could use the react protocol it would be great.

Hey, our team is using React to build STB interfaces. Would love to chat about your experiences, drop me an email? davedx@gmail.com :)
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