Expo
| Private | |
| ISIN | 🆔 |
| Industry | Software |
| Founded 📆 | |
| Founders 👔 |
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| Headquarters 🏙️ | , , U.S. |
Area served 🗺️ | Worldwide |
| Members | |
Number of employees | |
| 🌐 Website | expo.io |
| 📇 Address | |
| 📞 telephone | |
| Footnotes / references | |
Expo is a software development platform for developers to build universal native apps that run on Android, iOS, and the web by writing them in JavaScript. Expo is open source, free, and uses the React framework.
The Expo team is headquartered in Palo Alto, California with developers worldwide and develops the Expo platform. The team provides developer tools and services, contributes to related open-source projects such as React Native, and is active in front-end technology communities and conferences.
History[edit]
Expo was founded in October 2013 by Charlie Cheever and James Ide to improve mobile software and its development. The company started with research and prototypes of using JavaScript to program native mobile applications more easily, an uncommon technique at the time.
The first version of the Expo development client was released for iPhone in May 2015 soon after the release of React Native earlier that year. The Expo development client for Android followed in December 2015 after the later release of React Native Android.
Expo participated in Y Combinator in the summer of 2016[1]. The source code to the Expo client apps was released as open source. Over the year, the platform gained many features, such as WebGL-compatible graphics.
In March 2017, Expo changed its name from its prior name, Exponent[2]. At the same time, Expo released Snack, an online code editor for creating and sharing small demos that run in the Expo client app. The first version of Create React Native App, a collaboration between Expo and Facebook to make it easier to get started with React Native, was also released that March.
Web support for Expo was first released in March 2019[3]. This enabled developers to create progressive web applications from their Expo projects, in addition to Android and iOS apps.
Features[edit]
Expo lets developers make universal applications that run on Android, iOS, and the web using the native user-interface components and features of each platform. Expo projects feature a single codebase and are written in JavaScript. Each step of creating an app, from starting a project to submitting apps to the App Store and Play Store, is supported by Expo. While working on a project, developers may share their work with others with Expo development clients installed, helping them iteratively improve their project more quickly. The Expo platform is free and open source, in part to make mobile development more accessible and to lower the barriers to using Expo. Developers use any text editor of their choice to write JavaScript code, which runs in development clients and production apps.
Native Functionality[edit]
Developers have access to the functionality of the native Android, iOS, and web platforms in JavaScript with the Expo platform and custom Expo modules. The Expo SDK includes JavaScript functions and React components to access the device's sensors, display maps, play audio and video, and render advanced graphics, for example. Expo also provides React components for native user-interface elements such as views, images, and text fields. It also includes the Yoga layout engine to visually arrange them consistently across all platforms.
Deployment[edit]
Developers publish their projects using the Expo developer tools. Others with an Expo development client may load a published project and run it on their own devices, making it easy for developers to share their work with teammates. Expo development clients download the latest version of a published project, allowing developers to re-publish their projects and collect feedback quickly.
Expo also runs optional standalone-app builders for developers to create standalone Android and iOS apps. The standalone-app builder service produces APK and IPA files that the developer may upload to Google Play and the App Store, respectively.
Services[edit]
The Expo company offers services for building standalone apps, delivering updates, sending push notifications, and other common needs of deploying and operating apps. Expo's application services are a streamlined option for developers who prefer using managed services instead of compiling apps on their own computer or writing and hosting their own update servers.
Open Source[edit]
The Expo company contributes to open-source software and developer communities. The Expo runtime and libraries are open-source under the MIT License[4]. Engineers working on Expo regularly contribute code to open-source projects and many members of the Expo team speak at technology conferences and teach workshops on Expo development.
Many Expo developers participate on the Expo forums, where community members help each other and provide advice. Several share their projects and support to fellow developers on the forums and social media platforms such as Twitter.
References[edit]
- ↑ Constine, Josh; Matney, Lucas; Mannes, John (22 August 2016). "All 44 startups that launched at Y Combinator S16 Demo Day 1". TechCrunch. Retrieved 1 May 2020.
- ↑ Cheever, Charlie. "Exponent → Expo". Retrieved 1 May 2020.
- ↑ Bacon, Evan. "Expo CLI and SDK web support beta". Retrieved 1 May 2020.
- ↑ "Expo platform license".
External links[edit]
This article "Expo (platform)" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Expo (platform). Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
