Introducing Ionic 4: Ionic for Everyone

Ionic 4, dubbed "Ionic for Everyone," marks a significant evolution of the Ionic Framework from its roots as a mobile-focused Angular toolkit to a versatile, universally accessible UI design system and app framework utilizing web components. This release allows developers to use Ionic's custom HTML tags across various platforms, including mobile, desktop, and Progressive Web Apps, through standard web APIs like Custom Elements and Shadow DOM, eliminating reliance on specific frontend frameworks. With performance and customization enhancements, such as the adoption of CSS Custom Properties for theming, Ionic 4 positions itself as a future-proof, high-performance framework. The framework's components, compiled with Stencil, are optimized for load and render performance, aligning with Progressive Web App standards. Ionic 4's move to a "bring your own framework" model supports integration with popular frameworks like React and Vue, enhancing its flexibility. This release also includes revamped documentation, improved starter templates, and upcoming support for desktop-specific UI, enriched animations, and theming options, along with plans to incorporate the Capacitor tool for native plugin support.