AppBuilder Visual Studio Multi-Device Hybrid Apps

Question

What is the pros and cons of using either Telerik appbuilder or VS Multi-Device hybrid app and what could be the advantages of using appBuilder over VS or vice verse?

Answer 1

For me the decision of which to use hinged on one thing - TypeScript (TS). At the time (around May or June) the TS support in AppBuilder (AB) was weak - very weak! You can technically do it but its a real pain in the butt cause Telerik left out a lot of IDE features that could make the experience much better.

Such as you don't get any intellisense support, TS classes are not visible to each other and simple things like being able to configure your TS project to use AMD or commonJS were left out (along with numerous other features I can't think of right now).

And the exact opposite is true for Multi-Device-Hybrid-App (MDHA). MDHA has great TS support and for me coding in TS is heaven compared to having to code in vanilla JavaScript (JS).

But if you don't mind coding in JS then AB is a pretty good platform to use and you won't be disappointed. It's just for me personally I hate JS, so when MDHA came along and I saw the strong support it had for TS, I dropped AB like a bad habit and never looked back.

Answer 2

AppBuilder is more than just a set of IDE options (of which there is a web-based IDE, native Windows client, Visual Studio extension, CLI, and Sublime Text package). AppBuilder is also:

• Cloud-based build service (no managing SDKs, you can build an iOS app from Windows, etc - can't do that with VS Multi-Device)
• Best in class device simulator, access to native emulators, plus the ability to use LiveSync which does a live reload of your apps in the simulator/emulators/physical devices. And yes, you can also debug on those devices as well using the familiar Chrome dev tools.
• Ability to publish directly to the iOS app store (essential if you are on Windows)
• NativeScript integration - which will allow you to develop truly native apps using JavaScript!
• AppBuilder Companion Apps, which let you distribute apps and test on real devices without going through the iOS provisioning hassles (and LiveSync works with this as well)
• Full support for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8.

And it's important to remember that AppBuilder does have an extension for Visual Studio. If you're not happy with the TypeScript support (which IMO is much better than it was in May) you can use Visual Studio and still take advantage of our simulator, cloud-based builds, etc.

Disclaimer: I am the Product Manager for Telerik AppBuilder!