Developing a mobile application with Ionic
Ionic, what is it ?
Ionic is an open-source framework that allows you to develop mobile applications specifically for smartphones. As React Native, it is accessible to everyone and can be enriched and improved by the entire community of developers who use it. Ionic has a community of over 5 million developers worldwide, making it a tool and very well documented.
This framework offers tools and libraries of pre-coded components focused on the user interface, i.e. the front-end interface that users will see and be able to interact on (UI). The use of these libraries by developers allows to save time and efficiency.
Like React Native, Ionic is a hybrid technology that allows mobile applications to be developed on both iOS and Android with the same source code. It works on the different operating systems equally: the appearance and behavior of the application will naturally adapt to the OS.
To interact with the phone's native features and components (camera, GPS, vibrator, etc.), Ionic will use different libraries and plug-ins. The particularity of Ionic is that it can be coupled with a multitude of other technologies and platforms: It uses HTML, CSS and Javascript, as well as other frameworks such as Angular, ReactJS and Vue JS. Each Framework brings its own set of features, which makes Ionic a very complete tool.
In which cases we use Ionic Framework ?
Faster and less expensive to set up than React Native, Ionic will be favoured for projects mainly based on the mobile web (which allows internet formats to be adapted to the constraints of mobile phones).
Ionic allows to develop applications that need to be simple to use and intuitive, and that do not require constant and complex interactions with the phone components. It is particularly suitable for enterprise applications, for example, thanks to its simplicity and reliability of use.
Some of the things the team particularly likes about Ionic:
- Ionic is a hybrid solution. It saves time in development and allows you to focus on the important features of the application
- Ionic has a strong and active community
- Ionic can be easily integrated with other frameworks (React, Angular, Vue JS), which makes it a very complete tool