The Ionic Blog

Quick Guide to Comparing Ionic & Flutter

Flutter has been out of preview for about six months now, and in that time we’ve gotten quite a few questions about how it compares with Ionic. Having taken a close look at what Google’s latest development framework has to offer, we put together a thorough comparison guide that walks through the key similarities and differences between Ionic and Flutter. Of course, we’re slightly biased in our outlook, but we’ve tried to keep this comparison as fact-based and balanced as possible.

I encourage anyone who’s interested in this topic to check out our guide for the full details, but here’s the very short version.

>>>> Download Ionic vs Flutter Guide here <<<<

Ionic Show: Ionic 4, Capacitor 1.0, Stencil One, Q&A, and more

It’s been just a hair over 500 days since the last Ionic Show.

That’s far too long. Today, we’re excited to be back with a vengeance: a movie-length Ionic Show episode covering all the latest Ionic news! 🎉

In this episode of the Ionic Show, Max and Ben bring on Josh Thomas and Matt Netkow to cover Ionic 4, Capacitor, Stencil One, and a community Q&A. Some of the highlights include…

Develop 99% of your Ionic app in the browser with Capacitor

One of the very special things about Ionic and Capacitor is that a huge bulk of your app development can happen right in a browser on your desktop. That means full access to your traditional desktop web development tools (Chrome/Safari/Firefox dev tools) and the development velocity of building without having to recompile or deploy to a simulator or device.

One of the guiding design goals of Capacitor, Ionic’s new native web app container project that runs your web app natively on iOS, Android, Electron, and the web as a Progressive Web App, was to increase the amount of time you can spend developing your app on desktop before having to mess with simulators or devices.

On top of that, building web-first means that your app will likely run well as a Progressive Web App with minimal additional work, assuming you’re able to achieve the functionality your app needs with Web APIs.

Let’s take a look at how that works.

A state management pattern for Ionic React with React Hooks

How to manage state in your app can often be the biggest and most impactful architectural decision you make.

Unfortunately, there is no standard practice for state management. Developers have to choose between a wide variety of techniques and libraries (many of them 3rd party), including Redux, MobX, state “tunneling,” singleton state services, or just hacking it together. Some of these solutions are optimized for large apps, and some for small ones.

With React Hooks, however, we finally have a state management technique that is both native to the framework, and a good fit for a huge swathe of apps (except, perhaps, very large ones).

If you aren’t familiar with Hooks in React, go read our introduction to Using React Hooks in Ionic React, it offers a primer on the new APIs and how to build basic apps with them. We will gloss over that in this post.

Let’s jump in.

Introducing Stencil One

Today I am thrilled to announce the 1.0.0 release of Stencil—or what we’re calling “Stencil One.” 🎉

Last week at JSConf EU, we had the pleasure of announcing the Stencil One final release on stage, just a few weeks after we released the beta. Now I’m excited to go in-depth and explain what this moment means for Stencil and Ionic.

Ionic CLI v5.0.0 Brings Ionic React Beta Support

The latest version of the Ionic CLI has dropped, containing some great updates. To see the full list of changes, review the changelog. Read on for update instructions and the highlights.

NOTE: The Ionic CLI has a different versioning scheme than the Ionic Framework. Ionic Framework 5 doesn’t exist… yet. 🤓 Run ionic info in your Ionic project for details.

Announcing Capacitor 1.0

Today I’m thrilled to announce the 1.0 release of Capacitor, Ionic’s new Native API Container that makes it easy to build web apps that run on iOS, Android, Electron, and on the web as Progressive Web Apps—with full access to native functionality on each platform.

Announcing Stencil One: Beta

Today, we’re thrilled to announce the release of Stencil 1.0 beta (what we’re calling Stencil One), featuring an all-new compiler architecture. It is not only able to better optimize your components, but is designed to be completely future-proof.

PWAs Powered by Web Components with David Dal Busco

After a brief hiatus, our Bet on the Web podcast is back with a new episode. This time, we’re chatting with David Dal Busco, the creator of DeckDeckGo and organizer of the Ionic Zurich meetup group.

Capacitor Beta: The Road to 1.0

The Capacitor team has been heads down the last few months preparing for a version 1.0 release, currently slated for early June. Here’s the latest news on the Capacitor beta.

Haven’t heard of Capacitor? It’s our new open source cross-platform app runtime that makes it easier to build web apps that run natively on iOS, Android, Electron, and the web. It provides web-focused APIs that enable an app to stay as close to web-standards as possible while accessing rich native device features on platforms that support them. The best part? It’s backward-compatible with Cordova, so you can comfortably switch your existing Ionic apps to it whenever you’re ready.