Reasons To Believe In Ionic Hybrid App

Among the best hybrid mobile app development frameworks, Ionic is often referred to as first. According to Drifty, the company that develops and supports Ionic, over a million hybrid apps were developed with the help of their framework since its release in 2013.

Ionic is an HTML5 SDK designed to be a base for hybrid mobile apps creation. The framework is built using AngularJS, Apache Cordova (ex-Phonegap), and SASS. Moreover, it allows the creation of feature-rich mobile applications using web technologies exclusively. 

All aforementioned technologies are widely accepted standards, and this brings number of benefits to the development teams.

AngularJS, developed by Google, is one of the most popular JavaScript frameworks nowadays. Angular embodies all of the best, proven over the years JavaScript development practices, which allow to:

1) build applications with the exemplary architecture;

2) evolve the application’s architecture in a controlled way, easily changing the developers on the fly, if needed, with much fewer risks as compared to custom unusual app structure;

3) select the contractors out of the massive group of Angular developers and insert them into the development process smoothly and in the shortest possible term.

Apache Cordova is the open-source framework, which is supported broadly by the biggest players in the industry. Thanks to Cordova, common development tasks in Ionic are done in full accordance with the specific platforms’ guidelines, which, in turn, means that much less unusual techniques are used in the coding process, reducing chances for architectural mistakes, thus additionally facilitating the future evolution of the application.

Ionic’s major development assets are focused on building user interfaces that look and feel like a native, and actually, have little differences with latter. 

Let’s have a look at the main features and capabilities of Ionic, and then review the advantages of hybrid mobile app development with the Ionic framework.

 Ionic provides a considerable advantage for businesses, as it saves time and resources while building cross-platform apps with most of the benefits of the native ones. The retrenchment is achieved due to the ease of platform adaptation. A single experienced development team can release an app and adapt it to different platforms. When using Ionic, it is sometimes possible to release one application for both Android and iOS with the same resources as a native for a single operating system. Simply put, it allows the creation of hybrid mobile apps while minimizing adaptation to a specific platform.

Besides the benefits for business, it is worth mentioning the advantages seen by developers.

1. Well-known web technologies are used in development. Even new programmers have at least a basic knowledge of them, which greatly simplifies the mastering of the framework.

2. Advanced ecosystem. Ionic integrates with most of the plugins, add-ons, and modules for AngularJS and Cordova, in addition to its own quite extensive shop. Angular’s plugin repository currently contains over 2000 modules, which allow for integrating Ionic apps with popular web services like Twitter, implementing complex UI elements like a progress bar or system options like session storage. Cordova’s analog is similar, with the same amount and diversity of modules; and the list is ever-growing, as all three frameworks have active and prolific developer communities.

3. Ongoing evolution. Ionic is a dynamically growing and developing product. Following the AngularJS upgrade to the second version, Ionic 2.0 was released on January 26, 2017. It was significantly enhanced and improved compared to the first version. Ionic 2.0 is based on Angular 2.0, which promises greater efficiency, smoother work, and cleaner code structure, and has built-in modules for mobile apps creation. Angular 2 key differences from AngularJS are components and directives instead of controllers and scope, two-way props binding instead of one-way, dependency injection, JavaScript form validation, and dynamic module loading. Moving on, Ionic version 2 supports the latest JavaScript edition ES6 and TypeScript. This enables Java and .NET programmers to grasp the concepts of Ionic 2 development much faster, thus further enhancing the potential developers’ pool. Another advantage of Ionic v2 is its focus on components - they are classes with templates, which allow employing all the rich possibilities of object-oriented programming in UI design (e.g. constructors, prototyping, inheritance, etc.) And, finally, Ionic 2.0 has the new theming system which makes app styling much easier and more diverse.

If your business lacks developers that have experience in building Ionic apps or your enterprise does not employ a dedicated development department, there is always the option of outsourcing a team of developers. The key performance indicators that should be considered when choosing the outsource service provider are:

- Speed of reaction. The response of the prospective partner’s customer relationship department should be swift. Even a day’s delay can be evidence of a problem company.

- Cost estimation. The salespeople of an established company will ask many qualified questions about your case and provide well thought out detailed cost estimation.

- Technical expertise. The target team should be able to translate your requirements and requests into technical specs and be well versed in Ionic.

- Team management. Management should be easy to reach, open for dialogue, and experienced enough to help the rest of the staff solve your problems. You can also request the project manager’s and developers’ CV.

The Ionic app is definitely the right choice for those seeking to create the truly one-of-a-kind product and release it on several mobile platforms as fast as possible while maintaining competitive quality and design. Despite being a common framework, Ionic makes the creation of outstanding products with unique capabilities possible.

Overall, the main asset of Ionic apps is efficiency. In a challenging process of decision-making when selecting the very best product on the market, its popularity is one of the major aspects to consider. The framework’s wide acceptance in the developer community is obvious: as for January 2017, Ionic apps are featured by Apple, Google, and Amazon, and Ionic’s GitHub repository has over 27800 stars, while the total investments into Drifty exceed the impressive sum of $8,000,000. The numbers speak for themselves: Ionic keeps conquering the market, bringing revenue to businesses.

Originally Published at Kruschecompany.com