Introduction to Hybrid Apps
What is Ionic Framework ?
Do you need to buildup both IOS, Android and Windows Phone apps for your clients? In this case, you need to learn and write Objective C for IOS native apps and Java for Android native apps, it may spend you double effort and time for both platforms, but the logic maybe the same.
Recently, there are some new mobile frameworks, such as PhoneGap and Ionic. They are so called Hybrid Apps. You may find that the performance, especially UI response, of Hybrid apps is not that good comparing with Native apps. Yes, you are correct… However, you just need to write your Hybrid apps once, and it can run on both IOS, Android and Windows Phone devices, it can save much of your time.
You can find the below comparison between Native, Hybrid and WebPage (or using webview):
Native | Hybrid | WebPage | |
UI Response | Fast | Good Enough, because all CSS and JS are stored in the Hybrid | Slow, depends on mobile network and your page (HTML, CSS and JS) size |
Platform | Single | Cross-platform | Cross-platform |
Development Tools | Specified SDK and Tools | Standard web technologies, CSS and JS | Standard web technologies, CSS and JS |
Access to Native APIs | Support | Support | Not Support |
Graphical Performance | Fast | Slower than Native Apps | Slower than Native Apps |
Deployment | Using AppStore | Using AppStore | Simply update the web server |
Why Hybrid Framework’s performance is good enough?
Because Ionic framework will bundle all your CSS and JS into the Hybrid App, instead of downloading all required files (HTML, CSS and JS) to the browser and run.
How to publish to AppStore ?
You can publish your App to AppStore, just like Native App. After built the Hybrid app, it will generate APK file for Android and .xcodeproj for IOS.
You can follow this blog in order to buildup some examples with Ionic framework using Angular JS and Restful API.