Hello! For now Ionic only supports iOS Safari and Android Browser (latter is based on Chrome for Mobile 30 at Android 4.4), and going to support Firefox OS and Windows Phone’s IE in the future. Reasons for such choice are clear, Ionic is for apps rather than for sites.
Problem is Firefox, and especially Chrome are clearly trying to push browser-based webapps ahead. Even now you can “Add to frontpage” / “Create a shortcut” for your webapp, and it will behave much like hybrid one: browser interface will go away, webapp will be shown separately from browser among recently used apps, can work offline and so on. And we’ve said nothing about Chrome and Firefox marketplaces (and latter is available on Android yet).
And, of course, “normal” browser gives you a clear advantage - especially if you’re as aggressive future-forward, as members of Iconic team. Just because “normal” browser is evergreen. Android 4.4 WebView is light years ahead of Android 4.3 WebView, but it’s still obsolete. It was announced less than 4 month ago (and probably is 1.5-2 years behind beating older Android versions, for now 4.1 is most popular one), but still lacks ES6 Promises, PNaCl, DevicePixelRatio on zoom, Web Speech API (synthesis), Page Visibility API, and much more. And that’s just difference between Chrome 30 and 33, not between Chrome and Android Explo… Browser.
So the question is a simple one: will there be official support for mobile Chrome and Firefox in the future?
While I love Ionic and I use it for my personal projects, it was ironically dismissed on my customer facing projects because it does not support basic web browsers(IE at some level/Chrome/Firefox).
It was impossible for me to convince my team members to use something that ignores those domains. Why ? almost ANY serious service out there, including facebook, twitter and google requires to have a web version as well. Writing TWO different web frameworks(bootstrap for web/Ionic for mobile) is going 5 year back. It does not make sense at all.
Agreed! I am very impressed with Ionic, but it needs to be able to support desktop browsers, even if that means shims or graceful degradation of some features, etc. I have no interest in having to develop separate mobile versions of my web applications and agree this seems like an outdated strategy.