Chapter 13, 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 14, Kick-Starting React Native Projects, discusses how nobody likes writing boilerplate code or setting up project directories. React Native has tools to automate these mundane tasks.
Chapter 15, 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 lay out screens.
Chapter 16, 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 one screen to the next.
Chapter 17, Rendering Item Lists, demonstrates 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 18, Showing Progress, explains that progress bars are great for showing a specified 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 19, 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 20, 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 21, Displaying Modal Screens, explains that alerts are designed to interrupt the user to let them know something important has happened, while notifications are unobtrusive updates, and confirmation is used to get an immediate answer.
Chapter 22, 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 23, 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 24, 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.
