A Short History Lesson

Ionic is a framework for building hybrid mobile apps. A mobile app is hybrid when it’s built on a mix of web technologies (e.g., HTML, CSS, JavaScript) and libraries for accessing native-mobile functionalities (e.g., Cordova plugins).

Hybrid mobile app frameworks have a long history. The first of its kind was PhoneGap, created by the software company Nitobi. Nitobi was later acquired by Adobe, who donated the PhoneGap codebase to Apache. Adobe kept the PhoneGap trademark, but the donated software was renamed Apache Cordova.

Then Ionic came along.

Ionic isn’t a single framework. It’s an umbrella term that refers to the collection of tools that allow users to build hybrid apps. There’s Ionic Framework, which is a UI library. There’s Ionic Native, which gives access to native mobile functionalities, such as NFC, geolocation, and the camera. And there’s Capacitor, which compiles your web app into an Android Studio or Xcode project.

Originally, Ionic only supported AngularJS. However, in October 2019, Ionic announced support for React. Being an avid React fan, I decided to build a side project with the framework. However, I’m sad to report that my developer experience with Ionic React was disappointing due to the lackluster support and documentation for React.

#react #programming #mobile #ionic-framework #javascript #react native