What you missed at JSMobile Conf
Last month, Peter and I ventured out to Boston for Telerik’s jsMobileConf, developer-focused event all about mobility and the world of JavaScript. For two days, more than 25 founders, engineers, designers, and others delivered inspiring workshops that got us pretty excited about what’s to come in the mobile-development arena. From new cross-platform development capabilities to adapting to a mixed-reality user experience, the evolution of the technology we get to work with this year is becoming more and more fascinating.
If you didn’t make it to the east-coast conference in October, here are are a few major takeaways we found most important from the sessions:
Improvements to NativeScript
Our open-source framework of choice for cross-platform development has released a new version, NativeScript5, and we’re excited about a few updates in particular.
First, the app preview. By running the ‘tns preview’ command in the terminal, the CLI will generate a QR code that you can scan with the new Playground and Preview apps. This allows you to get a quick preview of the app on your device, rather than running it through xcode.
Second, we’re also psyched about enhanced code-sharing with Angular using NativeScript Schematics. I was previously playing around with Xplat, which seemed to be the best solution out there for cross-platform code sharing. Now we have the option of just using schematics within a NativeScript project to create shared code and platform-specific code for web, iOS and Android all from one codebase.
Finally, the long-awaited hot module replacement (HMR)! Have you ever wasted a ton of time reloading an entire app, just for one minor change? HMR uses Webpack to swap out pieces of code while your application is running. This will give us the benefit of fast development cycles with minimized application restarts and no lost state. This is going to be a huge time saver.
(Device-agnostic) Responsive Design Standards
Web designer Ethan Marcotte (aka the guy who coined the phrase “Responsive Design”) gave a compelling keynote on the current and future states of responsive design. He discussed transitioning from pages to patterns and designing for priority over layout, keeping in mind that people don’t browse the web the same way. He also stressed the importance of organizations creating design templates and style guides, as documentation because communicating how to adapt to changes is the most difficult part of design. I’m looking forward to implementing some of his strategies into our business.
Device-agnostic design was an important concept for the entire conference as well, as not everyone browses the web the same way. A key takeaway was that we have to design for mobile and for mixed reality; Macy Kuang, a game engineer and Google Developer Expert who previously worked on the Google Glass team, gave a fascinating talk called “Design for the Mixed Reality World” where she covered how UI and UX have changed over the years from 2D and 3D applications to VR, which demands products to integrate with our reality. As an electromechanical engineer, Macy let me try out a VR game that she made to help educate others on building circuits. It was a really neat way to learn about future applications of this technology.
NativeScript has an AR plugin that taps into ARKit APIs, to allow developers to add AR functionality into their own apps. I tried playing around with it. Here is a basic tutorial, if you want to check it out yourself.
Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
Machine learning (ML) was a major theme at the conference this year, with a number of presentations dedicated to integrating ML into mobile applications. There were some live demos of mobile apps using TensorFlow.js and ML Kit with NativeScript apps, and some of the talks also reviewed how machine learning is being used all around us. It is becoming more accessible than ever to start incorporating it into our own applications. Check out this example of a Mortal combat game built in HTML Canvas, JavaScript and ML technologies.
There are some really cool technologies that we can’t wait to start messing around with. If you attended jsMobileConf, tweet to us and let us know what your big takeaway was from the event!
