Ease Into Mobile Development With the Ionic Framework
Today’s mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP) vendors give organizations the opportunity to enter the mobile space. MEAP vendors provide the capabilities to develop native-like (hybrid) applications through a “code once, deploy everywhere” approach, without the need for comprehensive technical experience with the target mobile platform.
The Ionic Framework is a software development kit (SDK) that builds on standardized web technologies (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). The framework focuses on an enhanced front-end user experience by providing predesigned components, typography, interactive paradigms, and base themes that are compatible with Android, iOS, Electron, and Progressive Web Apps. Its leverage of popular web libraries and frameworks, such as Angular, eases the learning curve for new mobile developers. Vue and React support is currently in development.
The Ionic Framework is a free open-source project. It’s released under the permissible MIT license, which enables organizations to use it for personal or commercial projects for free. This allows teams to experiment without the financial headaches of proprietary tools.
The Ionic Framework provides the bare-bones capabilities to develop hybrid applications, similarly to Adobe PhoneGap. Teams must then acquire the supplementary tools to complete the mobile development, testing, and deployment process. Ionic fills this gap with Studio (IDE), and Appflow (deployment pipeline) at an added cost. Additional development capabilities are enabled through Ionic Native.
Our Take
The Ionic Framework allows organizations to learn and experiment with mobile development using their web development knowledge, without the headache of investing in proprietary tools. However, the Ionic Framework only provides the bare bones, so supplementary tools and support are required. Organizations looking for advanced and high-performing applications will need to look at other MEAP products.
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