

Build hybrid apps with the Ionic Creator - mkremer90
http://ionicframework.com/blog/ionic-creator/

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Brajeshwar
From the Site.

"Totally free!

We want to help more web and mobile developers become hybrid developers with
Ionic. Having great tools like Creator will lower the bar for getting started
with mobile development in general, and we love that!

To achieve this dream, we have decided to make the Ionic Creator 100% free.
While we might charge in the future for heavy usage, we will always have a
free version of Creator available, so you can quickly build Ionic and Cordova
apps."

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taternuts
If only it were actually this easy to set up
([http://ionicframework.com/getting-
started/](http://ionicframework.com/getting-started/)) - just spent 45 mins
trying to get it working with an android target on an ubuntu box and I've had
enough, uninstalling everything

~~~
megablast
This is why I have up trying to write BB apps. It was just so hard to get
going.

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pbreit
Surely this approach has gotta get some serious uptake soon/finally? For your
average CRUD app, coding in iOS and Android (and web) makes little sense.
Titanium was promising before it made the big shift to Alloy. Jquery Mobile is
oddly "meh". Ionic looks quite nice so far.

I see 37 Signals is making this approach work, too (albeit with different
tools): [http://signalvnoise.com/posts/3766-hybrid-how-we-took-
baseca...](http://signalvnoise.com/posts/3766-hybrid-how-we-took-basecamp-
multi-platform-with-a-tiny-team)

~~~
tootie
I don't think jquery mobile was ever a good idea for making hybrid apps. Aside
from the name, it wasn't nearly as flexible as original jquery. There's also a
distinction between what's needed for a mobile site vs a hyrbid app. If the
.js files are baked into the app, bandwidth and latency are non-issues. What
you need is to optimize performance only.

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chrisdevereux
I'm not familiar with Ionic. It describes itself as a framework for Hybrid
apps, which sounds interesting, but all I can see described on the website is
html and css. Anyone mind enlightening me on what that means here?

~~~
JonnieCache
It's angular, with cordova/phonegap packaged alongside it, and then a whole
load of ionic sauce in the form of css and angular directives to make the
thing work on mobiles in a polished way. They're doing stuff like catching
every touch event and doing debouncing, while actually improving performance.
Some of it is quite impressive.

I'd recommend it if you need to make an angular app look and behave like a
native app as much as possible.

Unfortunately if you want to deviate from ionic's currently small pool of iOS-
ish design metaphors, then it's not flexible at all, that's what you sacrifice
for having everything else work with minimum fuss. I believe they are working
on remedying this, there's lots of stuff on the issue tracker about enabling
iOS Mail style layouts and so on.

In the end, it's just angular, and ui-router: this is its strength. Take a
look at the repo.

~~~
tootie
If you want flexible, you can just use vanilla Cordova. There's always a
trade-off between features and flexibility.

~~~
JonnieCache
That's exactly what I did in the end. I was hoping to use some of ionic's
general optimisations without using its UI components, but I wasn't clever
enough to work out if this was a good idea in the short time I had.

------
bildung
I cant't find either pricing or other hints of a valid business model
anywhere. That makes me a bit wary to try it out - how long can ionic exist
without income?

~~~
yesimahuman
Hey, one of the founders here. :) Rest assured our company is financially
strong and Ionic will only be getting _more_ love going forwards. We did raise
some money recently , but we actually have some nice revenue already (imagine
that!).

Unlike our past products, we aren't trying to build a company around just
Creator. It's a tool to help existing Ionic devs and train the future of Ionic
devs, and so we want to keep it free as much as possible to just help more
people build with Ionic.

~~~
tootie
That's awesome. I'm such a hater of the iOS dev requirements so I really hope
that the hybrid app space really takes off. Do you have any plans for
mitigating JavaScript performance on mobile devices? Do you see any movement
in building cross-paltform plugins?

~~~
mot0rola
JavaScript is fairly fast, the DOM is what is slow in my experience. I too am
hopeful that the hybrid app space takes off as well.

It would be really cool to see Ionic have some support for windows. Then I
could really see this being adopted at my company.

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abluecloud
> Sign up below for early access to the Creator beta.

Annoying.

~~~
tylermac1
Yes, annoying that Ionic wants to beta test their new software package. How
annoying of them.

~~~
abluecloud
Yes, but it's not an instant access beta program. So whilst I appreciate they
want to beta it, I'd like to have a little play knowing that it's in beta.

~~~
yesimahuman
Sorry for the confusion. It's not in beta yet. No one is using it and it's not
quite ready. The list is for when that opens up, and we will be liberal about
letting people in.

