Chapter 12, Why React Native?, shows that React Native is React for mobile apps. If you’ve already invested in React for web applications, then why not leverage the same technology to provide a better mobile experience?
Chapter 13, Kickstarting React Native Projects, discusses that nobody likes writing boilerplate code or setting up project directories. React Native has tools to automate these mundane tasks.
Chapter 14, Building Responsive Layouts with Flexbox, explains why the Flexbox layout model is popular with web UI layouts using CSS. React Native uses the same mechanism to layout screens.
Chapter 15, Navigating Between Screens, discusses the fact that while navigation is an important part of web applications, mobile applications also need tools to handle how a user moves from screen to screen.
Chapter 16, Rendering Item Lists, shows that React Native has a list view component that’s perfect for rendering lists of items. You simply provide it with a data source, and it handles the rest.
Chapter 17, Showing Progress, explains that progress bars are great for showing a determinate amount of progress. When you don’t know how long something will take, you use a progress indicator. React Native has both of these components.
Chapter 18, Geolocation and Maps, shows that the react-native-maps package provides React Native with mapping capabilities. The Geolocation API that’s used in web applications is provided directly by React Native.
Chapter 19, Collecting User Input, shows that most applications need to collect input from the user. Mobile applications are no different, and React Native provides a variety of controls that are not unlike HTML form elements.
Chapter 20, Alerts, Notifications, and Confirmation, explains that alerts are for interrupting the user to let them know something important has happened, notifications are unobtrusive updates, and confirmation is used for getting an immediate answer.
Chapter 21, Responding to User Gestures, discusses how gestures on mobile devices are something that’s difficult to get right in the browser. Native apps, on the other hand, provide a much better experience for swiping, touching, and so on. React Native handles a lot of the details for you.
Chapter 22, Controlling Image Display, shows how images play a big role in most applications, either as icons, logos, or photographs of things. React Native has tools for loading images, scaling them, and placing them appropriately.
Chapter 23, Going Offline, explains that mobile devices tend to have volatile network connectivity. Therefore, mobile apps need to be able to handle temporary offline conditions. For this, React Native has local storage APIs.