Highlights of the news:

• React Native is an open-source mobile application framework, which is developed by Facebook.  It is one of the most popular sources to develop Cross-Platform apps for Android, iOS, Windows, etc.
• With its remarkable technology, React Native saves time in developing apps as compared to others. It reduces the expenses of app development by 40% to 50%.
• New updates include Accessibility improvements, a new start screen, CocoaPods for iOS, and more.

Recently, React Native, created by Facebook has announced the advent of its new version 0.60. Users are extremely excited and curious to see all the amazing features React Native has to offer. Before we dive into the new features, let us get briefly acquainted with the framework.

React Native is an open-source framework, which is basically distinct from the primary React version. It works in the background process, which interprets the JavaScript written by the developers.

With the arrival of new updates in the latest version 0.60, users can now optimize the existing features of the React Native 0.59 as well. Moreover, many issues with the previous version have also been corrected to give hassle-free experience to the users. Here are some of the updates claimed to be made in React Native 0.60.

Improvements in Accessibility

The 0.60 release ships multiple improvements on the accessibility APIs front for both iOS and Android. The list of improvements while wide, entailed elements like announceForAccessibility, and advancements in action support, roles, flags and more. The react native team is hopeful that with these changes it will be easier to be an A11Y (a numeronym for Accessibility).

New Screen

With the new release, comes the new app screen. It is claimed to be more user-friendly, as it shows useful instructions like editing App.js, Documents links, how to start the debug menu, and at last how to align with the coming website redesign. The new UI “Hello world” will introduce the users to the ecosystem in a better way.

Support for AndroidX

With the migration of React Native with the AndroidX (Android Extension Library), native codes and dependencies will also need to be migrated. Due to this shift, all of the React Native apps will have to use AndroidX themselves.  However, the React Native team has developed a temporary solution to this problem. It is called “Jetifier”, which is an AndroidX transition tool with a style compatible with React Native.

Auto-linking for OS

The React Native libraries often consist of native and platform-specific code. This new mechanism allows your project to discover and then use that code. React Native CLI team has introduced major advancements like this in auto-linking.

CocoaPods as a part of iOS

CocoaPods is an application-level dependencies manager, designed for Swift and Objective-C Cocoa projects. React Native now comes with CocoaPods in iOS by default. Developers are requested to open the iOS platform code by using “xcworkspace” file.

Lean Core Removals

The new changes comprise of the placement of Webview and NetInfo into separate repositories. They have been successfully removed from the React Native repository. Geolocation has also been removed, based on the community feedback.

Mark Zuckerberg, commented in 2012, and I quote, “The biggest mistake we made as a company was betting too much on HTML as opposed to native”. 

In light of the above statement, we can conclude that React Native framework is essentially better than the other choices. You do not have to take our word for it, as you can see it for yourself through the facts. 

React Native has gained its popularity for its performance. It is impressive that React Native app development reduces the app development time from 40% to even 90%. Moreover, apps developed for Android and iOS will remain the same across both platforms.   

For the foreseeable future, we can see a growing demand for React Native and its user-base is likely to increase as the years go by.

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