Top 13 Reasons : Why to learn Ionic?

26 aug. 2022

Beginner

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9 min read

Choosing the right platform for developing a mobile application is a serious decision. There are lots of platforms for developing mobile application in the market, for example, Ionic framework, React Native, Xamrin, Corona Labs, PhoneGap, Sencha Touch e.t.c. Ionic framework is leading open source framework for developing cross-platform mobile application development. Ionic is a rapidly growing framework nowadays because of its performance, flexibility and big community platform. The biggest reason to use ionic framework is easy to use native plugins, set of default UI, easy to customize. The latest version for ionic is version 4.0 which is extremely powerful and faster performance. In this article, I am going to talk about why you should choose ionic for your next project and what are the biggest reasons to use Ionic. Here are the top 13 reasons to use Ionic Framework.

Open Source and completely free

The open source refers to anyone can change, view, modify the original source of the software. This is the biggest reason why you should use ionic framework. You can change or modify the framework as per your desire. For example, if a developer has to pay $1000 for a subscription to use the framework then it will be a problem for that developer who cannot effort that much money or for those who are new to this platform or for freelancer developers. Ionic framework is completely free to use so that anyone can build the application by using this platform without any cost. Anyone can build and deploy their application and they don’t have to pay any penny to use ionic framework. Finding a stable version is a big problem with open source platform but ionic framework managed to do that with lunch stable version for their framework.
Rapidly growing community

Choosing a new framework is a serious decision because of support. Sometimes it is really hard for experts to figure out the actual problem when they don’t have a proper and biggest community. If you are thinking about the switch to ionic framework then you took the right decision because of its community support. There are thousands of developers who will help you instantly when you have any problem with the ionic framework. The best thing about ionic team is if you post any problem in social media like Twitter and community platform like StackOverflow/GitHub then you might get a reply from their core team members for solving your problems. There are millions of developer who are ready to help you when you have any problem.
Build on Angular

Angular is a popular and very strong open source framework for UI development developed by Google Inc. Ionic uses Angular for their development and application structure. That means if you can code on angular you can easily code on Ionic. There are some changes on the ionic framework then angular like HTML element, Navigation e.t.c. It doesn’t mean that angular is best for every situation but because of world best engineers are building it and so many developers are using angular it is pretty much safe and reliable to use it. Another best part of using Ionic is angular developer community can help you to solve must of the problems related to your application.
Support for React and Vue

If you don’t want to start your mobile application with angular and if you are React or Vuejs developer then you have good news, Ionic framework supports React and Vuejs instant of angular for your mobile application. To start your application with Vuejs, you have to install @ionic/vue library from npm. To start your application with React you have to install @ionic/react library.
Cordova plugins and Code for all

Cordova Plugins are small bundles written in javascript format. It helps to use almost anything like a native application. We can use javascript in any platform, OS so one code written in the ionic framework can run in any platform or any operating systems. Cordova plugins will give you access to devices features like camera, sensors, geolocation, Battery and many more. Cordova plugins are really fast and flexible which helps your application to perform really assume. Some small lines of code can easily access the features of your devices and can perform faster.
Easily customizable default User Interface

Ionic comes with a beautiful default user interface that can be easily modified. It comes with prebuild javascript and SCSS libraries. You can easily customize ionic elements to your own style. It includes all the component that is required for applications like, Button, Form input, List, Navigation, Grid, Tabs, Alert Controller, Animation, modal, cards, DateTime, Loading, Segments, Toolbar, Header, Footer, Slides e.t.c. You can find full list over here on ionic framework official documentation website. The default styles of a component are very beautiful and simple. You can change styles by overwriting default scss class.
Easy Testing

Many developers think that testing application is a difficult and time-consuming task, but not with ionic. Ionic applications are easy to run, with one simple command your application will be ready within some seconds. If we are developing a mobile application with ionic then we don’t have to test our application on mobile, we can easily run our application on various web browsers with debugging enabled. It doesn’t mean that we cannot test on mobile, we can test our application real-time in mobile devices and browser whatever we prefer to use. But we cannot test our application in the browser if we used some plugins to access device features like sensors, camera, geolocation and other because our browser cannot access those device features through web browsers.

Ionic serve –lab will run our application on a web browser. ionic Cordova run android will run our application in our real android device. We can use IOS instant of android to run on iOS device.
The powerful command line interface

Ionic has a powerful Command line interface (CLI) which helps to enhance productivity and faster development for the applications. Simply, CLI uses a command line to interact with our applications. It helps to create a new project, component, install native plugins, test our application, or do anything inside our application so that we can achieve the right architecture automatically for our application. CLI helps the developer to work less and consume less time to do anything in our applications. For an example, there are a total of 19 images for Android that we have to upload for our application icons and splash screen and there is a total of 32 images for IOS devices. If we have to resize and build those images in photoshop it will be lots of time-consuming work but with a simple command ionic Cordova resources, you can resize your images automatically. To do that you have to place your image name with icon.png (1024/1024) and splash.png (2732/2732) into resources folder. There are lots of other commands which will help you to achieve time-consuming work in a minute. You can find all those commands in ionic official documentation website.
Save project cost and time

As I already mentioned, the ionic platform is free and open source cross-platform development framework. That means we don’t have to buy any kind of subscriptions to start with ionic and we can code once to run in any platform or OS. Ionic platform is free to use. If you need a mobile application for Android and IOS then you don’t have to develop it on both platforms by learning java for android and swift for IOS. You don’t have to manage multiple repos, you don’t have to redesign your application for android and ios separately, you don’t have to fix bugs for both platforms separately with ionic you can save a lot of time and money of your project by developing a cross-platform application. Your web app’s angular code can be reused in the ionic framework so that you don’t have to rewrite your all code and logic for developing a mobile application.
Multi-platform support

Ionic is a cross-platform framework that means if we wrote a code, we can run those code for multiple devices like Android devices, IOS devices, Windows devices, Desktop application, MAC OS applications. Ionic has a responsible grid that can be useful and responsive for desktop applications. It is fast and really easy to configure for multiple platforms.
Support for PWA

Progressive Web Application (PWA) is future of Mobile web application. It is a web application which looks like a Native application. The biggest feature or benefit of PWA is it doesn’t require to login into App stores, it is consistently fast, it can sync data in the background. Many greatest tech companies are moving towards PWA like Instagram, Twitter, Alibaba, Pinterest, Forbs e.t.c. Ionic framework supports PWA features.

It is so easy to enable PWA feature in your ionic application. There is a code in src/index.html
```
 <script>
 if ('serviceWorker' in navigator) {
 navigator.serviceWorker.register('service-worker.js')
 .then(() => console.log('service worker installed'))
 .catch(err => console.error('Error', err));
 }
 </script>
```
Just uncomment this line to enable PWA features in an ionic application.
Ionic Cloud

Ionic cloud is a cloud-based system to testing and building ionic application provided by the Ionic framework itself. There are lots of features in the ionic cloud like testing, building, deploy, Application designing, Database, Push notification, Analytics and many more. Ionic cloud is paid service. With ionic cloud, user can develop a fully functional application in the cloud just by some clicks. You have to install @ionic/cloud-angular package via npm in your application to start with ionic cloud.
Tutorials and references

Ionic framework already has some huge amount of developer support and community members. Many new developers are attracted to ionic framework because of its performance and flexibility. Many experienced developers are writing blogs, article, creating videos day by day related to ionic framework. Ionic official site is the best place to learn about ionic, it already has deep knowledge or tutorial about how we can use ionic framework properly and with managed way. Joshmorony is one of the top tutorial creators for ionic framework and his almost every tutorial is free. There are lots of other references like Ionic Academy.

Conclusion

In this article, I talked about why you should choose ionic framework for your next project. I suggest you try ionic at least once, you will never regret using ionic framework. Many world best companies are using ionic framework like CAT, Adobe, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, McDonald e.t.c. I hope those reasons might help you to choose the right cross-platform application.