Lightweight Native UI Review

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Review of Lightweight Native UI powered by the Slant community.

Lightweight technology uses native code but renders the widgets itself instead of using native OS widgets. This is an old idea dating back to the days of smalltalk and was used on the desktop in frameworks such as Swing, QT, Flash etc.
In the mobile space the leading solutions in this field are Adobe Air, Codename One, Corona & QT.

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

What is the best approach to mobile app development?

Pros

Pro
Write once, run anywhere

The portability of this solution often exceeds even HTML5 since it isn't limited by browser fragmentation.

Pro
Native performance

Solutions often use low level graphics API's optimized for native games to produce the performance level of games while compiling the application to native.

Pro
Deep customization and control

These solutions usually allow the developers to customize every aspect of the app to the finest details since everything is rendered by the solution

Pro
Doesn't depend on OS whims

OS providers often change widget themes and behaviors on whims causing incompatibility and breaks in design/code. This isn't as much of a problem in such solutions.

Pro
Ability to access native functionality

Solutions in this space can still call native code directly and sometimes even embed native widgets in place

Cons

Con
Non-native look

Such solutions don't always have a 100% native look, these can range between not at all to "almost there". Some applications can provide a feel that's superior to native functionality.