I still have an Ionic1 app. I’m debating upgrading to v3 or v4 (when it’s released), but I realize these are substantial upgrades and have an associated cost for my business.
What are some reasons to do the upgrade now?
If you are happy what Ionic v1 offers (UI elements and design, AngularJS base) you can stay with it. The native parts around your app are done with the newest version of Cordova, which means you are fine on that front.
If you want to create a PWA or mobile website, use one of the newer UI components Ionic 3 or 4 offer, then you should probably think about upgrading. Also if you want to use Angular and Typescript.
Upgrading from v1 to anything newer is more a rewrite than “just” an upgrade, so this is an important decision to make.
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It all depends on the support of Ionic 1. I’m surprised, but the Ionic team is still supporting it. I would only consider upgrading when Ionic 1 is out of support and there are known security risk, when your business needs new functionality that would work with angularjs anymore, or when angularjs/ionic1 knowledge is so hard to find it would become more expensive to maintain you’re current application then building a new one would cost.
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Review google long term support for angularjs and decide if that is ok for you
If so and you are interested in the newest goodies, stay on angularjs for the largest portion of your code and use ionic 4 with angularjs as ionic 4 is framework agnostic
Otherwise your field of play is wide open deciding on vue react vanillajs etc
Only if your timelines are aggressive ionic v3 is an option knowing that you will have to move at least once again to v4 as ionic is going to give lts to v4, not v3 - and v3’s angular implementation is not keeping up with angular developments from google
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Depends on your app. If it’s a complex app with reliance on many plugins including Cordova plugins stick to v1 is my opinion. The ionic framework has moved from v2 to v3 to v4 very quickly and the community of plugIn support has not moved that fast. As of today v4 is very beta. By the time you would finish porting to v2 or v3 you’ll find there is literally no forum support for them as v4 likely might have stabilized. For the record v2 (and v3) are solid. But why port when you know given 6 months they will likely move down the pecking list of attention?
For those who tell you otherwise it’s very unlikely they are dealing with large projects with many 3rd party dependencies.
I’d strongly recommend at least waiting till year end.
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