Does D3.js support native mobile applications?

Question

I have found some questions regarding support of D3 for creating mobile applications viewed using the mobile browser. I would like to know if there is support from D3 in creating a native mobile application (for example on an Android device)?

If there isn't support for a native mobile application, what would be the best way to implement a native-like application on a mobile device using D3?

Otherwise, is there an alternative to D3 to create an native interactive visualisation application on a mobile device?

Thanks!

Answer 1

D3 is a library geared towards manipulating data and rendering it into an html DOM –– either via SVG, or straight up divs or perhaps a canvas. Of course there also needs to be a JavaScript engine that can run the code. Browsers provide all those things; native apps provide none of them out of the box.

However, there are ways to build native apps that wrap a javascript engine and DOM. PhoneGap is a commonly used framework for doing so. It essentially lets you develop as if things are going to run in a browser, but they're packaged into a native app. There's a performance hit to that: It won't run as fast as a native app, and often not even as fast as the same code would run in a mobile browser. But from the user's perspective, it's installed and launched just like any native app.

That's AFAIK the only way to use d3 in a native app.