Today at F8, Facebook announced some cool things for developers working with React. In partnerships with Samsung and Microsoft, React Native apps can now be written for Windows, Xbox, smart TVs and wearables.
Microsoft is now supporting the React Native framework for use on the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). In a blog post, Microsoft said it “extends the reach of these native apps to a new market of 270 million active Windows 10 devices, and the opportunity to reach beyond mobile devices, to PCs, and even the Xbox One and HoloLens.”
Similarly, it gives those with apps already written for Windows access to React Native tools.
React Native is also coming to Tizen, Samsung’s platform for wearables and smart TVs. Facebook says Samsung is “building React Native for its hybrid platform,” though details are still sparse.
The Facebook SDK is also available for React Native iOS and Android apps starting today. That feature will give developers direct access to Facebook’s Login, Sharing, App Analytics and Graph APIs. It’s also hosted on GitHub, which is part of an ongoing open source effort on Facebook’s part.
If you need a primer on best practices for using React Native and Facebook’s various open source tools, the F8 app is a good place to start. Facebook built its app using React Native and some of its tools, and is making the app itself open source so developers can poke through it and get an idea of how to take advantage (and I must say, it’s a very decent app).
Good news for React native developers who want to build apps using open source frameworks for more platforms without re-inventing their wheel each time, but the more reach you extend with React to other platforms, the more you’re depending on support from large companies. Let’s just hope none of these new tools are deprecated quickly if the uptake is slow.
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