A good app is a complete app. As much as relatable low-code resources like Anima promise a lot of client-side capabilities like advanced design management, prototyping, and more, there is often a lot more to an application than just design-to-code generation.
Not convinced! Take this analogy for an example.
Imagine you need to draw a portrait but you only end up crafting the outline. Well, kudos for getting that far but will that be considered a complete draft? Not exactly. Well, that’s the issue with low-code platforms that offer a wide range of creative hacks but end up dumbing down the app value significantly.
This is where DhiWise comes into the mix by letting you play around with the designs and UI components, much like what Anima promises in the first place. And yes, the design-to-code concept is also adhered to, with DhiWise focusing on delivering production-ready and developer-friendly code. But that’s where the similarities with Anima end.
Confused as to what more is on offer by DhiWise?
Keep reading to know exactly why it is considered the world’s 1st 100% Developer-centric app development platform.
DhiWise Vs. Anima for Design to Code: Why Move From Low-Code to ProCode?
Low-Code is fun. And so is Anima. Yes, these are completely acceptable statements. But what about creating an app from a design that doesn’t always need you to cut down on the grunt work but requires it to be relatable to a specific framework, platform, or operating system? This is where you need ProCode.
A concept that lets you be flexible during design-to-code conversion, allows you to toggle between front and back-end with ease and even lets you make the web or mobile app more wholesome in every possible way.
Looking for specifics? Well here are the reasons why DhiWise hits the ball out of the park when app development is concerned:
Where DhiWise Excels Over Anima?: Development Hierarchy, Code Identification, Figma Synchronization, and More..
Let’s first address the elephant in the room which involves the actual app development schema. Also, you need to establish beforehand whether you really need a fully functional application or just the front end for the same.
Well, if you seek holistic app development, Anima often sells you short. While all that front-end glitz and glory looks great to the unversed, the real-app development starts once the front-end layout is ready.
On the other hand, DhiWise offers a more granular development hierarchy that starts basic and lets you take every aspect of app development into account, not just the design to code and layouts. Starting from, setting up actions, APIs to authentication, and more. DhiWise has every resource needed for holistic app development and a few of them are,
1. Auto-Identification of design components
DhiWise auto-identifies design components with high accuracy from the screen or pages it fetches from the Figma platform. Also, it identifies reusable components and allows users to change the component type and change their properties.
2. Modify UI and see changes in the real-time using live rendering
The preview option allows you to view your app UI changes in real time. This helps you to get accurate results on app UI customization for different devices and screens.
3. Figma synchronization
DhiWise enables you to synchronize the Figma design changes while using the platform. Whereas, Anima requires you to use both the Anima plugin and platform to get those design changes.
4. Set up actions and Integrate APIs
The platform support for Navigation, API Integration and management, Social Auth, and Pass arguments in Navigation.
Where Anima Excels Over DhiWise?: Layout Management and Detailing
Let us get into the space where Anima excels over most other app development platforms, i.e. layout management and detailing. While it supports designs sourced across a wide range of tools like Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD, it still leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to fine-tuning the components, prototyping, adding flexbox, and even breakpoints.
Anima plugin has the support of React component library, using which users can easily create, and edit components a Figma. It has the support of Ant Design, Material UI, Mantaine UI, React Bootstrap, Charts, and Google Maps.
The plugin has the support of something they called Advanced Prototype with features like:
- Adding hover effects on the elements
- Adding entrance animation for the element
- Submit button action with which Email of response is sent to the user or save the response in a downloadable spreadsheet.
- Submit button actions like navigation to the screen on success or error.
Anima does all right, as it can still turn static elements into navigable components, pack in live videos, and more. But where it lacks is the number of components that it can identify. At once, you can manage 5 to even 8 components before you need to migrate to a new project.
Things are different with DhiWise. Instead of being comparable with Anima in terms of layout detailing, it manages to identify close to 50 layout components to add every element and resource to the concerned application.
Tech Stack Support and Code Quality in DhiWise Vs Anima
Not let’s delve into the area where DhiWise excels in terms of Tech stack and Code quality, straight and simple!
Tech stack
As compared to Anima which lets you convert design-to-code in React, Vue, CSS, and HTML, DhiWise goes one step ahead and offers client and server-side specific technology to help you create some actual apps.
DhiWise lets you build apps specifically for React (TypeScript and JavaScript), Kotlin (Android), Flutter, and Swift UI (iOS). And on top of that, with DhiWise, you can even work with backend apps, courtesy of the Node.js framework.
Code Quality
Both Anima and DhiWise are great at offering a code view of the designs. But there is a lot more to this concept than what meets the eye. Firstly, the code presented by Anima is clean but not exactly a ProCode setup. Also, the auto-generated components by Anima need to be changed manually for readability.
This means, the developer will only get access to the design-specific aspect of the code, which would still need him or her to work on the app logic, APIs, readability, and other aspects, at the code level.
However, DhiWise, in reality, offers production-ready, readable, complete source code that encapsulates and presents the core functionalities of the application. And as a developer, you simply need to build on the logic by adding a few lines here and there.
Put plainly, DhiWise generated ProCode makes sure that the developer has to do fewer repetitive tasks while building the app.
The Final Truth in DhiWise Vs Anima Debate:
Are you ready to discover who emerges victorious in this clash of titans?
While these are some of the reasons why DhiWise comes across as a better app development platform than Anima for comprehensive app evangelists, there are a handful of other aspects like multifaceted authentication, better boilerplate utilities, improved code layout, and process collaboration that cut.
However, delving into each aspect of the comparison can be quite overwhelming for a typical app developer. If you fall into this category, it may be more beneficial to give both Anima and DhiWise a try and experience features and the enhancements offered by the latter.
