Mobile applications have assisted businesses to increase their profits exponentially. But choosing the platform out of iOS, Android or Windows turns out to be a subject of question. Designing apps for all of them is quite infeasible. So, a framework was created which allows you build apps that can be deployed on all platforms.
Ionic is a hybrid app development framework using AngularJS assisting you in simplifying the development of the front end. The open-source framework provides tools for developing apps using HTML5, Javascript and CSS. Using Angular, Ionic provides custom components and methods for interacting with them. Above all, Ionic is just more modern.
Reasons to why Ionic
- Optimized for AngularJS:
Ionic and AngularJS seem to complement each other for many reasons: The UI components used in Ionic are AngularJS Directives; multiple of them being provided making interface components easy to use. The framework controls the UI elements by use of delegates. Also, you can manage multiple history streams, enabling apps with non-linear navigation. - Excellent attainable styles:
Iconic is not just one more addition to the list of available frameworks. Unlike other frameworks all the CSS is generated using SASS making it easy-going for developers to make updations in an iterative process. There is no restriction to a 12 column layout and you can even vertically align content within each column. - Platform to build Cordova/PhoneGap applications:
You can use your HTML/JS/CSS skills to build cross-platform mobile applications for iOS/Android, and other mobile platforms. You can then carry out updations on existing codebase just once instead of maintaining distinct isolated repositories. - Focuses on performance:
Ionic is performance obsessed, with fast and consistent interface. It has hardware accelerated animations and minimal DOM manipulations. Despite of being just one year old it has gained a lot of appreciation in the hybrid & mobile development community. Ionic provides a range of utilities and it is pretty easy to do small customizations for iOS, Android, and the other operating systems.
WHAT ARE HYBRID APPS?
Saying to the bare bones, these are apps that are available in the app stores of various mobile operating systems and can be installed on your device. A recent reserch estimates that hybrid apps will have a share of more than half of all mobile apps by 2016.
Advantages of hybrid apps:
- These apps have native-like attributes making it virtually indistinguishable from a native app. Interestingly, the application looks like native but uses browser engine to run. Undoubtedly, a hybrid app is faster than a native app, but it’s way faster than a mobile web app. Unless the app requires large graphics, it will be fast. Due to no need of network communication there is no slowdown which can be one hindrance in case of web applications.
- Hybrid apps offer full device integration implying that it will work in accordance with camera, microphone, and address book.
- They exhibit cross platform affinity.
- Hybrid mobile apps use the device’s API to store some data offline. That’s a big plus point for customers who are watching data costs or are in poor connectivity regions.
Disadvantages of hybrid apps:
- Despite their native-like attributes hybrid apps depict limited or partial graphical abilities inadequate for absolute performance.
- Converting a mobile web app into a hybrid app demands understanding of the mobile framework increasing a level of complexity to the development process. Developer needs the skill for every platform and there might be issues of the CSS elements not getting executed by the Native UI.
- The user needs to be very conscious about memory usage, some CSS, javascript loops can seriously slow down the performance of the app. Also, not very good tools are available on-device to facilitate debugging.
