Ionic Framework, a mobile UI toolkit for building cross-platform apps, has loosened its ties to the Angular JavaScript framework with Ionic Framework 4.0.
Released on January 23, Ionic 4.0 moves from being “mobile for Angular” toward being a UI design system and app framework for web developers in general. The release, which was built with Web Components, still works with Angular, and it is an alpha stage for use with the React JavaScript library and the Vue JavaScript framework.
Ionic Framework and Angular
From the beginning, Ionic has leveraged AngularJS directives as a mechanism to build JavaScript-powered components that could be distributed as HTML tags. When AngularJS was later rewritten, Ionic was ported to the rewrite, called Angular. Since then, React and Vue have grown in popularity, but users of these tools could not use Ionic, which required Angular.
Because browsers have converged on Web Components as a standard component model, the builders of Ionic have ported the framework so it can be distributed as Web Components. These components use Custom Elements and Shadow DOM APIs available in mobile and desktop browsers. Web developers can use Ionic components in mobile and desktop apps as well as Progressive Web Apps by using Ionic custom HTML tags. Ionic also now targets standard web APIs instead of third-party APIs, to ensure stability.
Ionic Framework Web Components
Ionic components, of which there are nearly 100, have been evaluated for performance, customizability, and platform look and feel. A refresh has been performed for iOS and Material Design so that components match the latest standards for Android and iOS. The components were rebuilt using the Ionic Web Component compiler project, Stencil.
Where to download Ionic Framework
Download Ionic via NPM with the following command:
npm install -g ionic
