Biography

TJ VanToll is a senior developer advocate for Telerik, a jQuery team member, and the author of jQuery UI in Action. He has over a decade of web development experience—specializing in performance and the mobile web. TJ speaks about his research and experiences at conferences around the world, and has written for publications such as Smashing Magazine, HTML5 Rocks, and MSDN Magazine. TJ is @tjvantoll on Twitter and tjvantoll on GitHub.

Introducing NativeScript

NativeScript is a free and open source JavaScript framework for building native iOS, Android, and Windows Phone apps. But I know what you’re thinking: another way of building apps? What makes NativeScript special? Here are a a few cool things:

  • Direct access to native APIs—no plugins required. Want to create a file on Android? Run new java.io.File()—in JavaScript!
  • Completely native performance through the use of a JavaScript bridge natively available on all three mobile platforms.
  • Cross-platform libraries for common use cases. Need to call a JSON API? Run http.getJSON("https://api.mydomain.com/get").
  • Style native apps using CSS. Yep, that’s actually a thing.

Curious about how it all works? Come learn! Architectures will be explained; apps will be built; and fun will be had by all.