What to expect in this article
What is Ionic?
Ionic is a comprehensive platform for the easy, efficient development of apps for Android & iOS based on web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript and CSS. The Ionic team recently announced the release of version 1.2 with extensive bug fixes and many new features – in this article we present the highlights.
What new features does Ionic 1.2 bring?
Alongside plenty of bug fixes, the update brings a range of interesting new features. In this blog post we’d like to look at a selection of the most exciting additions and improvements.
Using web technologies to render app content means results can be achieved quickly across different devices. A negative side effect, however, is that presentation performance isn’t always optimal.
Scrolling, for instance, used to be implemented in JavaScript, which caused performance problems above all on Android. With this update, native scrolling is introduced for all platforms – instead of JavaScript, the scroll technologies of the respective operating systems are used, and performance improves considerably. With native scrolling in use, <label> elements in the app increasingly showed faulty behaviour. To counteract this problem, the Ionic team has now introduced its own element for labels, <ion-label>.
At the same time, support for the HTML radio and checkbox elements is discontinued and replaced by Ionic’s own <ion-radio> and <ion-checkbox> elements. With changes like these, the Ionic team aims to reduce the number of errors in the more complex implementation of HTML elements.
Ionic for efficient mobile websites
If you’re looking for a simple way to generate mobile websites, since Ionic 1.2 you can increasingly reuse your existing code for it. Ionic offers the ability to create mobile websites based on existing app code. Given Google’s recent moves to penalise websites that push app-download banners, this is very valuable information.
In conclusion, this update takes Ionic a step in the right direction – efficient development of stable hybrid apps.
Interested in a hybrid app based on Ionic? We are your competent partner – as an internet and mobile agency in Stuttgart, aceArt GmbH. Get in touch!
