Book Image

Getting Started with NativeScript

By : Nathanael J. Anderson
Book Image

Getting Started with NativeScript

By: Nathanael J. Anderson

Overview of this book

NativeScript allows you to build a fast cross-platform application that has a native UI. NativeScript is a true cross-platform framework that generates native speed applications using the native components of the host platform, all using JavaScript. Although NativeScript allows you to build your application in JavaScript, you have full access to the host OS from your code, allowing you to easily tweak or use new platform features instantly at native code speeds. Whether you have already developed multiple applications or zero applications, this book will help you to develop your next application in a cross-platform framework quickly, saving you a massive amount of time and money. This book concisely shows you NativeScript’s built-in framework that allows you to rapidly develop a fully-working compiled cross-platform application in just a few chapters. It starts by laying the foundation of NativeScript and working through the fundamentals to create a basic shell of the application. Moving on, you’ll see how to build a full-fledged application step by step. We’ll show you how to use plugins, and how to communicate with the native OS libraries easily so that you can customize your application as if your app was created in Java or Objective C. We then deal with the issues that arise from being cross platform and compensate for the different screen sizes, screen resolutions, and device abilities. Finally, we progress to testing and deploying your app.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Getting Started with NativeScript
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Layouts


I will cover the different Layout types that NativeScript offers. We have already covered StackLayout in the previous chapters. To keep things in one place for your easy reference, I will briefly cover StackeLayout again. In addition to the descriptions here, the Layouter program, containing a sample of each of these layouts, is included with this book or can be downloaded from https://github.com/GettingStartedWithNativeScript.

StackLayout

The StackLayout allows you to stack things either vertically or horizontally. It will only put a single item into each layout slot. The layout slot will be either the entire width of the screen or the full height of the screen. Each item can use as much height or width in the stacking direction. For example in horizontal layout, black needed way less room than light black. In the vertical layout, you can see shade 2 uses more height than shade 1. To choose the horizontal version, you need to set the orientation= "horizontal". By default, it will...