Finally Online

[Jeremy]

So I got some time tonight to experiment with NS. I've been weighing my options for platforms to develop cross platform mobile apps (I've looked some at PhoneGap, Titanium, etc.), and saw an article about NS. I was intrigued.

So far, I like the idea. It took some time to get a deployment to the Companion App working (primarily because I had to try three different QR readers, which is not a Telerik issue). But one newbie question I'd ask is whether you intend to have the JScript the same across deployment targets? For instance, in the blank app, the UI JScript is quite different. I'm hoping this is because of your comment:
"// Yes, looks ugly, but the UI TNS module is coming soon and you will not need to write such code any more."

So when the UI fmwk is released, the JScript to create UI widgets will be the same across devices and handled by the UI tns_module?

Thanks,
Jeremy

[Vlad]

Hi Jeremy,

Indeed this is our idea - to have as many as possible common code (NativeScript modules) but still provide the ability to access fully the underling native platform. We are working already on our UI layer proof of concept and I've attached screenshot from my AppBuilder project for more info.

Here is an example (TypeScript) declaration of a common Button class used in my project:

declare module "ui/button" {
    import view = require("ui/core/view");

    class Button extends view.View {
        android: android.widget.Button;
        ios: UIKit.UIButton;

        text: string;
    }
}

In this common class you have common property (text) and two additional properties (android and ios) which will help you to access the underling native class (UIButton and Android Button).

Currently our UI layer is very lightweight and we want to validate various important stuff like development friendliness, performance, layouts, etc. and once we have something stable we will push it regularly trough AppBuilder updates (upcoming months).

Stay tuned - your feedback will be greatly appreciated!

Regards,
Vlad
Telerik