Recently I came across Ionic Framework, which is really good and has got very nice UI components and integration with angular framework, thought of sharing my experience and thoughts about the framework. Generally I use jQueryMobile as the UI framework for most of the Hybrid Mobile applications, but there are performance concern and I started looking for a lightweight Mobile UI framework and came across Ionic Framework.
After deep diving into the framework, found that it is not just a UI framework replacing JQM or other Mobile UI frameworks, It is something which uses Angular js, which is a MVVM open source framework use to build Rich front end applications.We need to write loads of Javascript code in Phonegap/cordova application, We need to go for some MV* or MVVM Javascript framework, Ionic comes inbuilt with Angular which is really good. AngularJS data binding and dependency helps to reduce the lines of code to be written.
Ionic + Angular + PhoneGap Build = Hybrid Mobile Application
Ionic CSS Components :
Ionic provides a lot more flexible, customizable UI that we get from popular frameworks like Bootstrap, things like grid system, form elements, header footer with different themes, refer their docs for detailed info about the Css Components.
ngCordova:
Ionic team has developed a framework called ngCordova which simplifies the integration of Cordova plugin with Angular, this is one of the very good feature I liked with Ionic.
Please read this docs for more information about ngCordova
IonIcons :
IonIcons has loads of good glossy icons that we can make use in our application, These icons are more than enough for our Mobile development to get a native feeling.
Loading :
Ionic Loading($ionicLoading) is used to block the user interaction during some process, it got options to customize the loading template, the type of animation, width, backdrop and delay.
Popup :
Ionic popup($ionicPopup) is a very nice extension, The very good thing about the Ionic popup is, it got built in support for javascript popup methods alert(), prompt(), and confirm() .
The popup has options to defined the template, buttons, title.
There are lot more good extensions like Scroll, Side Menus, Tabs and so on which really helps to get good Native look, I really enjoyed working with Ionic.
