It was a great pleasure for us to see so many people joining the webinar in August. The feedback we've got is great and I think we will be doing another webinar on NativeScript soon :).
For those that missed the webinar - you can watch the full recording here (soon it will be on YouTube).
Below I'm listing the most interesting questions that were asked during the webinar. If you have any other questions please write them in the form below and they will get answered by us.
Q: Can we use the same code base for both Visual Studio and CLI development?
Yes. AppBuilder and CLI tooling are using the same project files, so you are basically using the same thing.
Q: Is a text-editor component coming in 1.3?
There is a text input for single line and text input for multi-line texts, but nothing else is planned. I guess you are asking for a rich-text editor - this is not in the roadmap for the moment. You can reuse the rich text editors that are available for native iOS and Android platforms.
Q: Is there any plan to support Windows 10 devices?
Yes. The plan is actually to skip WP8, and to support directly the Windows 10 devices. This means that you will be able to create windows desktop apps with NativeScript.
Q: What animations are you planning to support?
We support all the basic animations - size, color, opacity and location. Combining all these you can create all the animations you need. The animations are already part of the master branch in Github so you can play with them. Please follow the links here. If you don’t know how to use the latest source code of NativeScript, please follow this documentation article.
Q: Will the samples from today be available
Yes - all the samples are available here - www.nativescript.org/samples
Q: Will Win Phone ever be supported?
As I mentioned above - we will directly support Windows 10 devices.
Q: I understand support for CocoaPods is coming. Will there be something similar for Android, like "Android Arsenal" or "jCenter"?
Yes. We will implement the CocoaPods support as a general third party package repo, so in the future you will be able to use other library repositories. For Android specifically we are also working to enable gradle builds, which will give you even more flexibility to use the latest and greatest libraries coming from Google and compatible with the Android Studio AAR format.
Q: Will the Native UI for NativeScript library be added to the platform subscription offerings at a particular level as the native for ios/android are?
Yes. It will be part of the Telerik Platform subscription plans.
Q: Has Unit Testing been addressed? What testing framework does NativeScript support? Thank you.
You can use any JavaScript unit testing framework. We are currently prototyping an additional level of support. You can check our progress here: https://github.com/NativeScript/karma-nativescript-launcher
Q: But LiveSync is not available for all versions?
As of 1.2 release LiveSync is available for all NativeScript tooling - both the CLI and AppBuilder.
Q: on my experience LiveSync requires to restart the debug session
Yes - this is currently a limitation that we are working to remove in the future versions.
Q: AppInspector - is that in place of FireBug type Web Browser Developer tool?
Yes. You can read more about NativeScript App Inspector here.
Q: Are there any plans to provide functionality equivalent to HTML5 canvas or WebGL for NativeScript?
Yes. We plan to enable Canvas APIs. This is one of the most requested features from the customers, so it is in the roadmap. Please read more here.
Q: What strategy will be used for offline database with Native script on Windows 10?
Yes. We have an internal spike using sqlite. This will give you one cross-platform way to store the date in iOS, Android and Windows. Also remember that you will be able to use any existing native library for this.
Q: any idea what the angularjs 2.0 timeline is???
This is a good question for the Angular team. We plan to support everything from their current offering in September-October timeframe. Please follow our progress with this native mobile app written in Angular 2.0 and NativeScript.
Q: Is telerik ui part of nativescript open source license?
No, Telerik UI for NativeScript is a commercial product. It will however contain free components like SideDrawer which will be available to everyone. Please read more in the announcement blog post of the suite.
Q: Will the Data Form allow custom display behaviour? ie. If Field 1 response = "true" then show Field 2
Yes we will support the so called “editor relations”. Please find more info here.
Q: when you say it will provide native performance, how much overhead is there calling the native component from nativescript?
There is a minimal overhead. The component is instantiated from the native OS and after the initialization everything is handled by the native OS. Of course it vary from component to component. Some components need to be "fed" with data and if this data is coming from the JavaScript layer, then you may pay some penalty from the data marshaling between JS to Native. But you can of course skip this. For example the ListView that is coming as part of Telerik UI for NativeScript can fetch and manipulate the data entirely on the native stack, so there is no overhead at all.
It is a good topic to explain this in a separate blog post which we are currently preparing. We will also be able to share much more numbers.
I believe that the real metric is the user satisfaction, so my advice is to build your scenario, optimize it and check if there is any overhead. I believe you will be pleased with what you will see. Of course as everything in mobile (even with pure native app) you will have to think about how to implement the app in the most optimal way to reduce any overhead.
Q: What version of the android sdk do I need? Can I always use the latest?
Yes - you can always use the latest version. This is part of our 0-day support for new native operating systems.
Q: When are gonna be able to play around with the Calendar control?
We can send you an internal version of this immediately. Please who asked this question or anyone else interested open an issue and we will follow-up with you.
Q: Can you expand on the free nature of the SideBar and Chart components? Is the library a free trial and eventually will be a paid version? This is a bit confusing.
Let me try to explain. Currently this is a preview version of the component suite. It is still not official. Once it is official - at the end of September - it will contain both free and paid components. SideDrawer will always be free. The other components will be paid. In order to be safe and be sure that you will be satisfied with the component suite we are offering a 30-day fully functional trial period. Which means that you can download all the bits, play with them, contact us for support entirely for free for 30 days. If after that you decide that these components will be useful for you can buy a 1-year support package and use the components any way you want. More info on this can be found on the website. If you have any additional questions please do not hesitate to ask in the form below.
Q: The text-to-speech module is great! Is there or will there be a speech-to-text module as well?
This is probably a good idea for the community plugin.
Q: is is possible to use the beta of 1.3?
Yes the entire code is available on GitHub. Please read this article to understand how you can use the latest NativeScript source code.
Q: Great idea to add the UI components! I believe a generous set of UI components is the only way for NativeScript to compete with the heavily-pushed React Native and the increasingly popular Hosted Web App platform, in addition to PhoneGap.
Thank you for this feedback! We will be sure to adjust the pricing of these components. Probably to reduce the price we can split the suite into several smaller packages so that you can pay for only what you need. Please leave feedback on this below. More info to come in the autumn.
Q: How can you use livesync without restarting the debug?
This is currently a limitation which we will try to resolve in the future.
Q: Do the npm modules work the same from VS?
VS support is part of the AppBuilder environment. AppBuilder environment is a little bit behind at the moment, and you will be able to use the npm modules, but with 1.1 version of NativeScript. This will be fixed very soon (in a matter of a month or so) and we will have the 1.2 and the future latest {N} releases available in our cloud environment.
Q: Can you use livesync after adding new files, such as images or new node modules. Or would I have to restart LiveSync
Yes - there was a bug with 1.2 release regarding this functionality, but this is fixed in 1.2.2 version (coming this week) and you will be able to use new files and sync on demand.
Q: Have ALL the sample applications been updated to v1.2?
Yes - ALL the samples listed here - www.nativescript.org/samples are updated to 1.2.
Q: Hey guys, does telerik recommend a particular approach for storing offline data in a local database? (In the past I have used SQLite, but TJ just mentioned that some browser API's are not available in NativeScript)
Yes we have - you can look at our Telerik Platform SDK which enables you to very easily store data in the local DB and to sync with the cloud service. The other option would be to use any native library for this. Like Firebase.
Q: Are you going to release your own SQLite plugin
No at the moment. There is a community one created and we will work with the owner to help him with any fixes. Please log an issue if there is a problem with this plugin.
We are also working with Firebase to support it in NativeScript.
Q: Any plans for a NativeScript router that ties in with iOS deep links?
Yes - this is part of this issue - we need to enable particular AppDelegate events. After that you can navigate to the page deep into the application. This is already available in the master branch and it is coming with 1.3.
