Blog

Learn about layouts in NativeScript and create great cross-platform UIs using a combination of XML markup and JavaScript.

Two weeks ago we kicked off the Summer of NativeScript, our program to get the development community excited about NativeScript, and adorned in some stylish NativeScript t-shirts.

And excited you are. In the last two weeks we've seen well over a dozen meetups scheduled spanning seven countries and five continents. (I'm looking at you Asia and Antarctica).

The camera sensor finds its place in more and more scenarios today. It’s not really just about taking the popular selfies or photos with friends, but also about serious business scenarios.

Today, I would like to introduce you to the cross-platform Camera API and demonstrate how you can effortlessly take photos with both Android and iOS devices using a single shared JavaScript code base.

Summer is a great time to get excited about building apps with NativeScript. Why this summer? Because if you run a NativeScript meetup in July, August, or September and let us know about it, we'll send you a NativeScript t-shirt and a pack of NativeScript stickers.

NativeScript 1.1 bits are live and you can start using them immediately! If you are updating from 1.0 - please read the update instructions. With this release we delivered three new fundamental featurenpms for the NativeScript framework - support for npmmodules, support for native iOS libraries and the initial version of NativeScript plugins. We also delivered a number of enhancements and bug fixes to the core framework - NativeScript is now more stable and faster.

If you follow closely the mobile space I’m sure you’ve heard the news coming from Google I/O conference. There is a new version of their popular mobile Android OS. With this preview version, codenamed “M”, they are shipping some really nice enhancements. You can download the latest SDKs here. In this sample app we are using the new fingerprits authentication APIs in NativeScript.

I’ve built a little calculator to mimic the calculator app that ships with iOS and thought I’d share the techniques I’ve used. Even though implementing a calculator is a pretty trivial task in itself, doing so is a good way to learn some concepts about a new technology. NativeScript is a fairly new technology that offers many extensibility points. By building a calculator in NativeScript you will learn these concepts and how these features work together.

HealthKit is framework that allows iOS apps that provide health and fitness services to share data. The user’s health information is stored in a centralized and secure location and every user decides which data should be available for your app. If your iOS app is designed to provide such services, the best way to do this is to use HealthKit.

The NativeScript framework already provides a fairly comprehensive set of standard UI controls that you need to build an app. But what if you want to build an app with the NativeScript framework using a 3rd-party library? We’ve got you covered. With the NativeScript framework you can effortlessly take a native iOS or Android library and start using it with JavaScript. As an example, let’s look at how to build a simple Seismograph app with the NativeScript framework and Telerik Chart for iOS. Here’s what the final result looks like: