Ionic for mobile web apps

ionic-v1
1

Hello everyone,

I 've experimented with ionic the last few days and I must admit I 'm extremely pleased with it. It’s been some time since a framework made such a good impression to me.

Although Ionic is being built with hybrid apps in mind I found no problem at all to use it for prototyping of a mobile web app on both Rails and Node/Express. So, my question is whether Ionic is a good choice indeed for mobile web apps. Did it suit me by chance or by design? Are mobile web apps something the team and the community will have in mind in future versions etc?

By they way, has anyone here put such an app in production?

Thanks alot!

2

Ionic is focused on building native/hybrid mobile apps rather than mobile websites.

We may think about making ionic work for desktop, but right now, its not the goal of ionic.

3

Well, by definition, a Hybrid App is a Web App that uses an API to talk to the device to use native features. That being said, depends on what support you want browser wise.

4

Well I’ve read the #browser_support section (I am not that lazy) and I am not talking about desktop at all. I am talking solely about mobile browsers. To clarify things my definition of mobile web app (taken from Create An HTML/CSS Mobile Web App Using Sencha Touch — Smashing Magazine)

A mobile Web app is an app that you access via a mobile browser (such as iPhone’s Safari). It is not a static mobile website. It is designed to work like a native app, but it is not accessible via the App Store or Android Marketplace. You pull it up right from the browser.

What I make out of the browser support page, is that since ionic is being tested on Web View API per platform and since each platform’s browser never lacks features compared to a Web View (excluding native ofc), I guess it should work on each platform’s official browser right? But no support for Chrome on iOS for example.

You see, ionic was simpler to setup and use than other frameworks that supposedly aim for mobile web apps, so I was tempted to think about making a mobile site by stripping the native features of a hybrid app, or at least invest in the same technology .

Anyway, I understand there is no official support for something like that yet, just wanted your input.

Thanks and keep up the awesome job.

5

Yeah the mobile webview is targeted towards webkit-based browsers. So just keep that in mind,

http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1&qpcustomb=1

6

Hi everyone!

I’m in the exact same situation as @th​3hunt.
I’m trying to find out if there’s any good reason not to go with Ionic to build our webapps. Actually, the only one reason was Ionic’s disclaimer.

So if I understood correctly, as soon as the webapp will be displayed on a webkit based browser, anything should go fine (Safari on IOS, Androïd web browser and even Chome < 28).
But what about Chrome (based on Blink) and IE (based on Trident) ? Do I need to expekt some strange behaviors? Would someone really recommend me not to go with Ionic on webapp and for what particular reason?

Many thanks!
Mit.

7

Well new versions of chrome that are based on blink will be fine, but IE will not. Also firefox will cause some issues too.

2 Likes
8

Sorry for reviving this post, but it shows up in Search engines, so I think it’s the place to post again.

What to think about the new 1.2 release? See: Announcing Ionic 1.2 - Ionic Blog

Ionic 1.2 marks the first release where we actively recommend Ionic for those looking to build a mobile website (not just an app for the app store).

Though, no browsers’ table support is available…

And Ionic v2 (currently in beta) should be able to implement all this too, isn’t it?

9

I’ve selected Ionic v2, as some Ionic Team members seem to indicate that v2 would be compatible for browsers too… in the long run :slight_smile: