June 2017 Summaries

Ionic CEO Max Lynch outlines a new direction for the company's Cloud product, focusing on creating a more cohesive and valuable developer experience by integrating it more closely with the core Ionic framework. The approach involves discontinuing the "Cloud" brand and reimagining the product to better support mobile developers through enhanced features such as improved live updates, error tracking, and a git-based development workflow. The company has engaged with over 80 customers to gather feedback, leading to key insights for the product's evolution, including a stronger focus on Ionic View for testing and sharing apps, and the introduction of a free Ionic Developer App for enhanced device testing. Lynch acknowledges past communication shortcomings and highlights the plan to transition existing customers smoothly to the new system while continuing partnerships with cloud vendors like AWS. Ionic aims to make mobile development significantly faster and more efficient, with further details to be released as the revamped platform approaches its launch.

Amit Moryossef discusses the integration of right-to-left (RTL) language support into the Ionic framework, highlighting the initial challenges and the progressive solutions adopted. Ionic, traditionally optimized for left-to-right (LTR) languages, is now incorporating RTL support to accommodate languages like Hebrew and Arabic, which are read in the opposite direction. The process involves utilizing Sass mixins to replace CSS properties for better bidirectional compatibility, and while many RTL adjustments have been made, some styles still require case-by-case handling in TypeScript. The community-driven effort aims to provide comprehensive RTL support in future Ionic releases while maintaining support for LTR, and developers are encouraged to leverage new Sass mixins for multi-directional styling in their applications.

Million eyez, a startup aiming to revolutionize visual storytelling, faced significant challenges in disrupting the traditional photography industry dominated by giants like Getty Images. Founded by Carmit Hirsch and Idan Elgar, the platform connects storytellers with curated photo collections through a mobile app and website, initially hindered by the maintenance of separate code bases for mobile and desktop versions. Seeking scalability, they adopted the Ionic Framework, allowing them to merge their systems into a single code base that supports both iOS and Android apps, as well as a progressive web app and desktop site. This transition significantly accelerated development speed and ensured feature consistency across platforms, with the flexibility to easily modify design elements using web standards. The switch to Ionic not only streamlined their development process but also enhanced the overall user experience by maintaining uniformity and efficiency across all digital experiences.

On June 2, 2017, the official GitHub organization name for the Ionic framework changed from "driftyco" to "ionic-team," as announced by Mike Hartington, the Director of Developer Relations. Users are informed that GitHub's automatic redirects should prevent any major disruptions, but they are advised to update bookmarks, links, and local repositories to reflect the new organization name. A helpful command for finding and updating old references on Unix-based systems is provided, and users are encouraged to reach out for assistance via the Ionic Forum or Slack. The announcement also promotes subscribing to Ionic's newsletter for updates and highlights related posts about Ionic and its tools, emphasizing the ongoing support and resources available to developers.

Yann Braga, a full stack developer from Fortaleza, Brazil, shares his journey of winning the Ionic Jedi Hackster contest by developing a Star Wars-themed app using the Ionic framework and the newly released Ionic CLI v3. Although not a huge Star Wars fan, Braga was inspired to create an app featuring movie information, characters, trailers, and award nominations using data from SWAPI, enhanced with animated splash screens, custom icons, and sound effects. He further improved the app's performance by utilizing Ionic Cache and developed a Firebase-powered feature to display user preferences on a map. Winning the contest motivated him to convert the app into a Progressive Web App (PWA), leveraging Ionic's built-in support for service workers and manifest files to enable offline capabilities and ease of installation. Braga credits his success to the Ionic community and his active participation in it, which has significantly advanced his career as a developer and fostered connections with other professionals in the field.