March 2014 Summaries

Ionic Framework has officially transitioned into its beta phase, marked by the release of version 1.0.0-beta.1, known as "Ionic Actinium." Since its alpha release, the framework has seen significant growth, with developers creating over 220 new apps daily and the project garnering over 4,100 stars on its GitHub repository. The beta version introduces several changes aimed at simplifying the development of hybrid mobile apps, such as restructuring how UI elements like headers and footers are handled and replacing custom attributes with simpler class attributes to streamline styling. The update also enhances developer control through expanded delegate patterns and automatically adjusts content layout based on surrounding widgets, eliminating the need for certain manual adjustments. Looking ahead, the Ionic team plans to enhance animations, add support for additional platforms like Windows Phone 8 and FirefoxOS, and make performance improvements, while also inviting developers to join their team to further advance mobile app development using web technologies.

On March 13, 2014, Max Lynch, CEO of Ionic, announced the release of new popup support for the Ionic framework, addressing limitations of native browser prompts like alert(), confirm(), and prompt(). This new feature, inspired by iOS modal functionality, allows developers to create custom popups with enhanced capabilities such as password prompts and multiple inputs, which are not feasible with standard browser options. The popups can stack and dismiss like native modals and are integrated with Angular promises to handle asynchronous data return. Developers can customize popups extensively, using templates and scope bindings to control elements like buttons and input fields. A live demo showcases these features, with comprehensive API documentation soon to follow, enhancing Ionic's ability to deliver tailored user interaction within mobile apps.

Ionic, an open-source mobile development framework, announced it secured $1 million in funding from Arthur Ventures, as reported by TechCrunch. The funding aims to enhance Ionic's stability, documentation, and features, particularly for Android and Windows Phone support, as the framework gains popularity with over 200 new apps being created daily. The Ionic community is rapidly growing, demonstrated by active forum participation and the success of their first developer meetup in San Francisco. While Ionic remains free to use, the company plans to generate revenue through optional backend services and tools that integrate well with the framework. With the new funding, Ionic plans to double its nine-member team, primarily based in Madison, while remaining open to remote work, and anticipates the upcoming Beta release, promising more developments throughout 2014.

Ionic's CEO Max Lynch clarifies the differences between Cordova and PhoneGap, highlighting that Cordova is an open-source project originally created by Nitobi to bridge web technologies with native app capabilities, while PhoneGap is Adobe's branded version with additional proprietary services. Adobe acquired Nitobi in 2011 and contributed Cordova to the Apache Software Foundation. Cordova serves as a powerful low-level API that allows developers to create mobile apps using web technologies like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript, with the ability to access native functions through plugins. Despite Cordova's goal of becoming obsolete by having its APIs adopted by browsers, Lynch argues for more customizable and creative hybrid apps, advocating for the development of more generic native-to-browser plugins. Ionic utilizes Cordova as its core tool to enable the creation of complex and custom apps, emphasizing the need for more developers to contribute to the Cordova ecosystem.