As a software developer and one that works with mobile applications you may have heard about Ionic, today we are going to discuss Ionic framework and why you may want to use it.
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Ionic is one of the frameworks that we teach here at Softstack Factory, it is an HTML5 mobile applications development framework, it is free, open source and relatively new, the DriftyCo crew has been working on it for 2 years. It uses the existing HTML5 and CSS3 capabilities to deliver fast experiences and is focused mainly on the look and feel, and UI interaction of the app. One of the things that makes it so good is that it is not just another UI framework, Ionic is targeted at building hybrid mobile apps, which has many benefits over pure native apps, specifically in terms of platform support, speed of development, and access to 3rd party code.
Ionic is built on top of AngularJS framework from Google, Ionic utilizes it to provide the application structure, while Ionic itself is focused on the user interface. Ionic provides the connection between the power of Angular and the beauty of Ionic UI components. Ionic offers simpler building blocks that can be combined to deliver rich user interfaces.
It also comes with handy variables and mixins to extend the customized appearance and it’s packaged with its own open source icon library featuring over 440 icons to chose from.
All the functionalities that can be found in native mobile development SDKs are provided by Ionic. The apps can be built and customize for Android or iOS, and deploy through Cordova. As we said before, Ionic is not just another just another UI framework it is a complete ecosystem that helps you develop and build great Software.
SSF teaches Ionic to its students, because we believe that this tool and the complementary technologies provide a comprehensive set of knowledge needed to enhance their future as a software developer. “One of the biggest reasons we choose to use Ionic was that mobile is big and our students get to learn web technologies that are in great demand. This provides them two in high demand skillsets.” Says Harold Gottschalk, SoftStack Factory CEO.
Ionic is not for the development of desktop applications. Browser compatibility is not comprehensive and for example Ionic does not support IE9 and therefore the developer should be aware of the target audience when allowing it to be used on desktop. Ionic is focused on hybrid mobile apps that run natively on (Android, iOS, Windows phone, Chrome and even Apple Watch) using Cordova.
Check out some beautiful apps built with Ionic!