Apache Cordova vs UIkIt

Overview

UIkIt

Stacks791

Followers417

Votes262

GitHub Stars18.5K

Forks2.3K

Apache Cordova

Stacks686

Followers892

Votes218

GitHub Stars955

Forks345

Apache Cordova vs UIkIt: What are the differences?

What is Apache Cordova? Platform for building native mobile applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. 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.

What is UIkIt? A lightweight and modular front-end framework for developing fast and powerful web interfaces. UIkit gives you a comprehensive collection of HTML, CSS, and JS components which is simple to use, easy to customize and extendable.

Apache Cordova and UIkIt are primarily classified as "Cross-Platform Mobile Development" and "Front-End Frameworks" tools respectively.

Some of the features offered by Apache Cordova are:

Cross-platform (CLI) workflow
Platform-centered workflow
Hundreds of plugins

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

LESS - UIkit is developed in LESS to write well-structured, extendable code which is easy to maintain.
Components - A collection of small, responsive components using consistent and conflict-free naming conventions.
Customizer - UIkit's very basic style can be extended with themes and is easy to customize to create your own look.

"Lots of plugins" is the top reason why over 31 developers like Apache Cordova, while over 25 developers mention "Complete GUI" as the leading cause for choosing UIkIt.

Apache Cordova and UIkIt are both open source tools. It seems that UIkIt with 14.6K GitHub stars and 2.1K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Apache Cordova with 762 GitHub stars and 327 GitHub forks.

Die Coder GmbH, BetRocket, and Dial Once are some of the popular companies that use Apache Cordova, whereas UIkIt is used by Dyn, AskNicely, and Nedwave. Apache Cordova has a broader approval, being mentioned in 96 company stacks & 45 developers stacks; compared to UIkIt, which is listed in 45 company stacks and 9 developer stacks.

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CLI (Node.js)

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Advice on UIkIt, Apache Cordova

Daniel

Frontend Developer at atSistemas

Jun 10, 2020

Needs adviceon

New Relic

Next.js

React

I'm building, from scratch, a webapp. It's going to be a dashboard to check on our apps in New Relic and update the Apdex from the webapp. I have just chosen Next.js as our framework because we use React already, and after going through the tutorial, I just loved the latest changes they have implemented.

But we have to decide on a CSS framework for the UI. I'm partial to Bulma because I love that it's all about CSS (and you can use SCSS from the start), that it's rather lightweight and that it doesn't come with JavaScript clutter. One of the things I hate about Bootstrap is that you depend on jQuery to use the JavaScript part. My boss loves UIkIt, but when I've used it in the past, I didn't like it.

What do you think we should use? Maybe you have another suggestion?

1.07M views1.07M

Comments

Aleksandr

Contract Software Engineer - Microsoft at Microsoft-365

Dec 23, 2019

Review

What is `Proguard`?

ProGuard is the most popular optimizer for Java bytecode. It makes your Java and Android applications up to 90% smaller and up to 20% faster. ProGuard also provides minimal protection against reverse engineering by obfuscating the names of classes, fields and methods.

How to use it in `Cordova` app?

I didn't find any plugins for it. So I've implemented it by myself and shared it on GitHub.

Feel free to use!

119k views119k

Comments

Aleksandr

Contract Software Engineer - Microsoft at Microsoft-365

Dec 23, 2019

Needs advice

I've done some Hybrid Mobile apps with both technologies Apache Cordova and React Native and described my experience in my blog.

In a few words, I would suggest to use each technology in accordance what what is your current code base and what do you want to achieve.

React Native is a great option if you need that extra edge in performance with multi-threading and native UI rendering. Or you already have a web app based on React which you want to port to mobile.

On the other hand, if you have an existing web application code and you want to reuse some or all, including the ability to use web third-party libraries, then Cordova is the best option.

429k views429k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

UIkIt	Apache Cordova
UIkit gives you a comprehensive collection of HTML, CSS, and JS components which is simple to use, easy to customize and extendable.	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.
LESS - UIkit is developed in LESS to write well-structured, extendable code which is easy to maintain.;Components - A collection of small, responsive components using consistent and conflict-free naming conventions.;Customizer - UIkit's very basic style can be extended with themes and is easy to customize to create your own look.;Responsive - With the mobile-first approach UIkit provides a consistent experience from phones and tablets to desktops.	Cross-platform (CLI) workflow;Platform-centered workflow;Hundreds of plugins
Statistics
GitHub Stars 18.5K	GitHub Stars 955
GitHub Forks 2.3K	GitHub Forks 345
Stacks 791	Stacks 686
Followers 417	Followers 892
Votes 262	Votes 218
Pros & Cons
Pros 39 Complete GUI 29 Easy modify 27 Practical 24 Functional 24 Easy to learn	Pros 48 Lots of plugins 35 JavaScript 26 Great community 25 Easy Development 18 Easy to learn Cons 2 No native performance 1 Hard to install 0 Hard to install

What are some alternatives to UIkIt, Apache Cordova?

Bootstrap

Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.

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.

Foundation

Foundation is the most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world. You can quickly prototype and build sites or apps that work on any kind of device with Foundation, which includes layout constructs (like a fully responsive grid), elements and best practices.

Semantic UI

Semantic empowers designers and developers by creating a shared vocabulary for UI.

Materialize

A CSS Framework based on material design.

Material Design for Angular

Material Design is a specification for a unified system of visual, motion, and interaction design that adapts across different devices. Our goal is to deliver a lean, lightweight set of AngularJS-native UI elements that implement the material design system for use in Angular SPAs.

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.

Related Comparisons

Some of the features offered by Apache Cordova are:

Cross-platform (CLI) workflow
Platform-centered workflow
Hundreds of plugins

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

LESS - UIkit is developed in LESS to write well-structured, extendable code which is easy to maintain.
Components - A collection of small, responsive components using consistent and conflict-free naming conventions.
Customizer - UIkit's very basic style can be extended with themes and is easy to customize to create your own look.

"Lots of plugins" is the top reason why over 31 developers like Apache Cordova, while over 25 developers mention "Complete GUI" as the leading cause for choosing UIkIt.

Apache Cordova vs UIkIt