We get a wholesome aggregation of AngularJS, Angular services, UI Router, Angular directives, mobile focused CSS styles and JS utilities with Ionic Framework. Its fairly easy for cross-app platform developer. But before plunking into Ionic App Development, let’s see where it fits into development stack.
What is Ionic app development?
Ionic is an HTML 5 mobile app development framework which was built with a simple idea that HTML 5 will rule the mobile app development over time.
Simply get started straightaway as you already have knowledge of HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Ionic is a front-end UI framework those handgrips all outward aspects look and feel of all the user interactions required by the application to be able to persuade the users.
It can be thought of as “Bootstrap for Native”, in addition to providing a broad range of common native mobile components, crafty animations, and delightful designs. Layouts with native SDK and Mobile UI elements in native style adorn Ionic app development framework.
Ionic will empower you to build your forthcoming mobile applications in a way so that you will overshadow the existing HTML5 development frameworks.
Ionic is, in essence, an open source mobile app development framework, as it has a permissive open source license and also it cultivates a strong community around the project.
How is Ionic app development different from Native app development and Hybrid app development?
Ionic v/s hybrid v/s native is one of the most discussed topics on the internet these days. And you must be reading a lot many articles comparing the cost of building apps on various platforms. Do we actually need to compromise or just reframe our requirements according to the need of the hour? Well let’s have a look at the actual scenario:
You’ll always get same conclusions – with a decent budget you can go for native apps, with a little lesser budget you can go for a hybrid or ionic ones. But instead of selecting an app this way, you should check your requirements before selecting your app type.
When we say that Ionic is an open source SDK framework that is used to construct hybrid mobile applications for all the major platforms – iOS, Android, and windows etc. This does not essentially mean that web or ionic applications are low-cost solutions with limited quality.
Hybrid apps can be understood as miniscule websites that run in browser shell with access to native platform layer. With a keen focus on native or hybrid apps instead of mobile websites, factors like – support for the platform, access to third-party code and speed of development account for the superiority of hybrid apps over native ones. What’s more?
A native wrapper like PhoneGap or Apache Cordova is required with Ionic if it has to access native mobile functionality and has to run like a native app. It then becomes possible for your ionic application to access your device’ GPS, accelerometer, camera and all other applications.
Some famous examples of hybrid apps – Amazon, Netflix, Evernote etc
Some famous example of native apps – Google maps, Facebook, Linkedin etc
Reasons for choosing Ionic app development
A web or ionic application is primarily constructed with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and development process can be made quicker and efficient by the help of some web app frameworks like MeteorJS, React and Angular and sets of tools.
What used to be perceived as a low quality and low-cost solution are being accepted universally as having great potential; Must have heard about Starbucks PWA? With more of progressive web apps coming on the scene along with native apps, former is fast becoming a major deployment target.
PWA’s are designed in a way such that they make a user experience, native-like experience through the mobile web browser. Read more here
You can have web apps for weather, news, e-commerce, social media platforms, currency converters, expense managers, software organizations etc.
The mobile web apps can prove to be a perfect solution to deliver a handy experience to users if there is a ready website. Adjusting backend and controlling front end of the web app a little can make the app ready to be placed in user’s hands. Ionic app development can be called a reasonable solution for simple applications without a complex frontend.
This can work wonders in creating a minimum viable product to satisfy early customers and to make them aware of how the actual application will perform. This practice can help in producing cost-effective and efficient applications in minimal time.
Ionic App Development Features: A quick review
- Open Source / Free of Cost
- Supports Cross Platform application development
- Native looking User Interface
- Built on top of AngularJS combines best features of mobile as well as web applications
- It makes use of Cordova plugins that allows accessing Geolocation data, camera, battery and many other features.
- You’ll get awesome support from Ionic app development Just write down your interrogatives and even the community founders will pitch in with their expertise.
- Easy to conduct simulator testing on Android and iOS apps built in ionic frameworks with help of Cordova commands
Wrapping up
Now that you have an understanding of what Ionic is and why it exists, you can start with your Ionic mobile app development and can appreciate the exceptional performance delivered by the applications on both platforms. Ionic is instrumental in easing out cross-platform application development with the shared code base and open web standards. With AngularJS, Cordova, NodeJS, and SASS it has become easy to dynamic and customized web apps that are scalable and flexible.
3 golden rules that fallout as a result of Ionic App Development:
- Improves browser capability
- Develop once, deploy anywhere
- AngularJS embedded with Ionic creates robust applications