October 2014 Summaries

In October 2014, Ionic released a new feature called the Ionic Tinder-style Cards ion, responding to high demand for Tinder-like swipe card interfaces within the Ionic framework. Originally inspired by the app Jellyfish, the swipe card functionality was developed to showcase the capabilities of Ionic and HTML5, emphasizing the swipe interface's wide applicability for processing lists of items with simple positive or negative reactions. This feature allows users to swipe cards left or right, animating the stack beneath the current card, and incorporates the collide animation library to create physics-style animations, such as springs and gravity. To utilize this feature, developers can integrate it into their projects using Bower, and a demo is available on GitHub to demonstrate its implementation.

Songhop is a music streaming app designed for teens and young adults, developed by the team behind Thinkster.io using the Ionic framework. The app features a Tinder-like interface with swipe gestures for easy music discovery and is praised for its speed and responsiveness, challenging the notion that only native apps can deliver high performance. The developers, known for their expertise in AngularJS, chose Ionic for its comprehensive documentation and intuitive design, which facilitated the app's development. Songhop is available on the iOS App Store, and the creators plan to release a tutorial to help users build their own versions of the app.

With the Dreamforce 2014 Hackathon approaching, participants are encouraged to utilize resources from Ionic, Salesforce, and Heroku to efficiently develop their apps, with a chance to win a $1 million prize. Ionic, highlighted for its ability to streamline the development of cross-platform apps using familiar web technologies, will be showcased in the DevZone, where attendees can learn about its Creator tool for building hybrid apps. Heroku offers a mobile app template that integrates Ionic, Angular, Cordova, and NodeJS, providing a strong foundation for app development with both backend and frontend capabilities, including force.com support. The emphasis is on leveraging these tools to focus on the unique aspects of apps rather than getting bogged down by complex native configurations.

Ionic developers frequently use Heroku as a backend or to host their Ionic applications as mobile websites or externally-loaded apps, prompting Ionic to create a ready-to-go app with Node.js and Express to facilitate this integration. This setup allows developers to either host Ionic apps as mobile websites or build Node.js API servers, with easy deployment available via a Heroku Deploy button or manual instructions on GitHub. Max Lynch, CEO of Ionic, encourages developers to try this solution and provide feedback, while also promoting the Ionic newsletter for the latest updates and related posts on topics such as Capacitor and progressive web apps.

Mallzee, branded as "the personal stylist in your pocket," aggregates over two million products from 100 major fashion brands to provide personalized fashion recommendations for its users, primarily aged 16-35. Initially developed with a web-focused approach, the Mallzee team transitioned to using the Ionic framework in May 2014 to streamline app development and enhance user interface quality. Ionic's reusable components allowed for a rapid overhaul of the app's UI, facilitating both development efficiency and marketing team involvement in app content management without needing deep coding expertise. The decision to adopt a hybrid app model was influenced by the team's web development background and the desire for cross-platform support, although initial efforts concentrated on perfecting the iOS user experience before expanding to Android.