I’ve seen similar questions posted here, but I’d like the opinion of people who have switched to Ionic from other hybrid mobile frameworks. Have you developed with other hybrid mobile frameworks like OnsenUI, Framework 7, Sencha Touch, KendoUI, etc? How come? And why have you stuck with it (if you have stuck with it?).
I’ve started developing in Onsen and like the look and feel of the framework, but have found the community to be somewhat lacking. Am curious what other people’s experiences have been.
I’m developping the V2 of an app, and the V1 was developped in jQuery Mobile.
We decided to change of framework/technology because angularJS felt faster/more reliable, especially when we have to process 500-1000 lines lists.
I’ve been developping for 2 months and a half now, and I’m very satisfied now, as with the “easy programming”, or the reliability of Ionic/angularJS
But the short of it is: I used Sencha Touch, liked the look of Ionic but stuck with ST for the time being since I was invested into it, Sencha made a sudden unpopular decision to focus on enterprise customers and ignore the rest basically, so I switched to Ionic and couldn’t be happier.
As far as community goes, Ionic knocks it out of the park - both the core development team and general community are great.
I used to work with jQuery Mobile a lot. It was a messy time, but jQuery Mobile was the easiest solution. I tried Kendo UI/PhoneJS for a while, but I cut it short because of Ionic. I even played with Famo.us, but I want to forget it ever existed.
Now I’m working with OnsenUI and Ionic though I slightly prefer OnsenUI over Ionic.
I started with plain javascript + phonegap about 3 years ago, then try a little jquery mobile with phonegap but was too crazy and slow, finally I switch to ionic and I’m happy
Can I ask what you prefer about OnsenUI over Ionic? I’ve done some work in OnsenUI myself and like it, but I’m a bit of a noob and couldn’t always find tutorials to do the things I wanted to do or explanations in the community for the problems I was having. I was really impressed with how active the community here seems to be and was considering switching because of it.
I don’t like Ionic1/Angular1 routing system. It makes sense when used in desktop applications but not with mobile counterparts. On the other hand, OnsenUI shares page navigation almost similar to several older mobile frameworks like jQuery Mobile, Kendo UI, PhoneJS.
Page transitions work a lot batter on OnsenUI 1, where Onsen UI 2 has almost perfect transitions even on older devices.
List scrolling is horrendous on Ionic 1 (Ionic 2 is another story). Again OnsenUI 1 fares much batter, and OnsenUI 2 has almost native scroll feeling.
Ok, the first point is entirely subjective, so other may not share it. A second one is a partially fixable in Ionic1 with Cordova Native Transitions. And I never found a good solution for list scrolling performance in Ionic1 applications.
Technically, OnsenUI 2 has another point I like, its framework agnostic. So you can use it with any framework you like/prefer.
On the other hand, Ionic is a much better platform for novice developers. Tutorials and community offer a significant advantage. But after some time, you will learn that most Ionic1 problems/questions are Angular1 related. So it doesn’t matter if OnsenUi has a smaller community when you mostly need to worry about Angular1, which, on it own, has a much larger community than Ionic + OnsenUI community combined.
I’m currently building my applications with Ionic1, I’m still a slave to my habits. But I will switch to OnsenUI if my customer is demanding.
