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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Cross Platform Mobile Development
  5. NativeScript vs Sencha Touch

NativeScript vs Sencha Touch

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Sencha Touch
Sencha Touch
Stacks78
Followers90
Votes28
NativeScript
NativeScript
Stacks533
Followers1.1K
Votes516
GitHub Stars25.3K
Forks1.7K

NativeScript vs Sencha Touch: What are the differences?

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; Sencha Touch: The leading mobile web app framework based on HTML5 for amazing mobile apps. Sencha Touch 2, a high-performance HTML5 mobile application framework, is the cornerstone of the Sencha HTML5 platform. Built for enabling world-class user experiences, Sencha Touch 2 is the only framework that enables developers to build fast and impressive apps that work on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Kindle Fire, and more.

NativeScript and Sencha Touch belong to "Cross-Platform Mobile Development" category of the tech stack.

Some of the features offered by NativeScript are:

  • 100% Access to Native Platform API
  • NativeScript is free of charge as an open source project
  • Code with JavaScript. Style with CSS

On the other hand, Sencha Touch provides the following key features:

  • Built on HTML5 Technology- Sencha Touch 2, a high-performance HTML5 mobile application framework, is the cornerstone of the Sencha HTML5 platform.
  • Smoother Scrolling and Animations- Sencha Touch 2 provides a user experience unparalleled in HTML5. Fluid Adaptive Layouts- Sencha Touch’s novel layout engine leverages HTML5 in powerful ways to let developers build complex applications that respond, load, and layout in a snap.
  • Navigation View- The new Navigation View component makes it easy to make applications that feature beautiful animated transitions between screens as well as providing automatic back button management.

"Access to the entire native api" is the primary reason why developers consider NativeScript over the competitors, whereas "Structured code" was stated as the key factor in picking Sencha Touch.

NativeScript is an open source tool with 17.2K GitHub stars and 1.27K GitHub forks. Here's a link to NativeScript's open source repository on GitHub.

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Advice on Sencha Touch, NativeScript

Gabor
Gabor

CTO at momento.

Aug 23, 2021

Decided

As a startup, we need the maximum flexibility and the ability to reach our customers in a more suitable way. So a hybrid application approach is the best because it allows you to develop a cross-platform application in a unique codebase. The choice behind Ionic is Angular, I think that angular is the best framework to develop a complex application that needs a lot of service interaction, its modularity forces you (the developer) to write the code in the correct way, so it can be maintainable and reusable.

209k views209k
Comments
Lucas
Lucas

Jan 6, 2023

Needs adviceoniOSiOSVisual Studio CodeVisual Studio CodeTypeScriptTypeScript

Hello,

We're just brainstorming for the moment and we have a few questions.

We have an idea for an app that we want to develop, here are the prerequisites:

  1. cross-platform (iOS, Android, and website);

  2. as easy to maintain as possible / well documented / widely used;

  3. Visual Studio Code and Copilot compatible;

  4. Text to speech;

  5. Speech recognition;

  6. Running in background (screen off with TTS and speech recognition);

  7. could be using TypeScript;

  8. Monetized through ad and in-App payment for premium version;

  9. Display on lock screen (Android only I guess)

So what would you recommend?

I've been trying to review the options available, and I've considered:

  • NativeScript

  • React Native

  • Flutter

  • Any other?

Thanks in advance for your help, and I'm open to any comments.

371k views371k
Comments
audaine
audaine

Feb 16, 2022

Review

As the previous commentor said, Next.js or React Native + Expo may be a better option. There's also the options of AssemblyScript + React/Next.js, or NativeScript and Ionic, both of which give you mature ecosystems of tools and close-to-native experiences. Flutter, you're likely to have the same experiences you had with Swift and Kotlin. Flutter requires higher separation of concerns between platforms, doesn't have nearly the third-party support of any of the other options, and is fairly large in binary size. Still, it's a growing system and in the future it may actually outcompete the other options when it has a large enough ecosystem.

31k views31k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Sencha Touch
Sencha Touch
NativeScript
NativeScript

Sencha Touch 2, a high-performance HTML5 mobile application framework, is the cornerstone of the Sencha HTML5 platform. Built for enabling world-class user experiences, Sencha Touch 2 is the only framework that enables developers to build fast and impressive apps that work on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Kindle Fire, and more.

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.

Built on HTML5 Technology- Sencha Touch 2, a high-performance HTML5 mobile application framework, is the cornerstone of the Sencha HTML5 platform.;Smoother Scrolling and Animations- Sencha Touch 2 provides a user experience unparalleled in HTML5. Fluid Adaptive Layouts- Sencha Touch’s novel layout engine leverages HTML5 in powerful ways to let developers build complex applications that respond, load, and layout in a snap.;Navigation View- The new Navigation View component makes it easy to make applications that feature beautiful animated transitions between screens as well as providing automatic back button management.;Class System- Sencha Touch 2 builds on the class system from Ext JS 4. Developers can take advantage of powerful features like dynamic loading and mixins, all making it easy to create minified custom builds for your application.;Component DataView- The new Component DataView enables you to build beautiful interfaces based on a Model and a Store. It’s easy to create a template that has full featured components instead of simple HTML templates so you can bind, listen, and control components inside of a DataView.;Advanced List Plugins- Lists are one of the most popular components in Sencha Touch, and with 2.0 we’ve updated two of the most powerful plugins: Pull to Refresh and Load More. These plugins, activated with a single line of code, deliver a fantastic List experience out of the box.;Infinite Carousel- Carousels are a great way of showing multiple screens of information in a constrained space. In Sencha Touch 2 they get even more powerful, with a data-bound Carousel supporting an infinite number of items. No need to worry about performance, or memory — Sencha Touch manages it for you, so scrolling is consistently smooth.;Config System- Sencha Touch 2 has a great API thanks largely to its config system. Almost any configuration of any component can be changed at run time, with a consistent and predictable API.;AJAX - Sencha Touch provides full AJAX support, including CORS and JSON-P;DOM manipulation - Full DOM manipulation support available;Feature Detection - Automatically detects the presence of features like geolocation, canvas and orientation support;Geolocation - Provides a simple wrapper around geolocation on devices that support it;Icons - 300 icons included;Example apps - 8 full example apps included;Touch events - Provides a full range of touch events and gestures like tap, swipe and pinch
100% Access to Native Platform API;NativeScript is free of charge as an open source project;Code with JavaScript. Style with CSS;Cross-platform UI abstractions;Shared business logic and data models
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
25.3K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
1.7K
Stacks
78
Stacks
533
Followers
90
Followers
1.1K
Votes
28
Votes
516
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 8
    Structured code
  • 5
    PhoneGap intergation
  • 5
    Mvc
  • 3
    Customised Component
  • 2
    Rich Charting Components
Pros
  • 75
    Access to the entire native api
  • 47
    Support for native ios and android libraries
  • 46
    Angular 2.0 support
  • 46
    Support for javascript libraries
  • 44
    Native ux and performance
Cons
  • 5
    Lack of promotion
  • 1
    Slower Performance compared to competitors

What are some alternatives to Sencha Touch, NativeScript?

Ionic

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

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

React Native

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

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.

Apache Cordova

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.

Framework7

Framework7

It is a free and open source mobile HTML framework to develop hybrid mobile apps or web apps with iOS native look and feel. All you need to make it work is a simple HTML layout and attached framework's CSS and JS files.

Qt

Qt

Qt, a leading cross-platform application and UI framework. With Qt, you can develop applications once and deploy to leading desktop, embedded & mobile targets.

PhoneGap

PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a web platform that exposes native mobile device apis and data to JavaScript. PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova. PhoneGap allows you to use standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development, avoiding each mobile platforms' native development language. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's sensors, data, and network status.

Expo

Expo

It is a framework and a platform for universal React applications. It is a set of tools and services built around React Native and native platforms that help you develop, build, deploy, and quickly iterate on iOS, Android, and web apps.

Vue Native

Vue Native

Vue Native is a mobile framework to build truly native mobile app using Vue.js. Its is designed to connect React Native and Vue.js. Vue Native is a wrapper around React Native APIs, which allows you to use Vue.js and compose rich mobile User Interface.

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