Use Ionic for a mobile website?

[gschlenkhoff]

We are having a debate whether Ionic is a good approach for a purely mobile website, excluding native apps.

In most cases user acquisition happens through the mobile web channel, then one may lock in customers with a native app.

Having that said I'm curious to know how you guys think about the pros and cons for going with Ionic, instead of e.g. Bootstrap or Google Web Starter Kit.

Ionic offers very nice CSS and Javascript plugins which make your site look fresh. Also business logic is written with less LOCs due to having AngularJS at its core.

So what you guys think about Ionic for mobile websites?

[aikah]

> Also business logic is written with less LOCs due to having AngularJS at its core.

I fail to see how your business logic has anything to do with angularjs which is a presentation framework. AngularJS doesn't come with models like Backbone or Ember.

I fail to understand how people can ask other people this question when they say absolutely nothing about what they are developing. That's the easiest way to make the wrong decision in a project.

> In most cases user acquisition happens through the mobile web channel, then one may lock in customers with a native app.

What does that even mean? I doesn't mean anything. Again what is your product? we don't know.

[perryg → aikah]

> AngularJS doesn't come with models like Backbone or Ember.

You may want to brush up on your understanding of Angular

[aikah → perryg]

You may want to stop writing meaningless sentences.There is no model layer in angularjs.

[dandanisaur]

In my opinion, one of the benefits of ionic is building an Android/iOS app that can be easily ported (may have to change a few things) as a mobile website. I've never had any problems using Ionic as a mobile website, but i'm unsure if there would really be any deal breaking pros and cons.

[dmackerman]

It should be fine. The only thing I'd be weary about is initial page load times. Try and keep your "app" light, or if you're just using the HTML/CSS from Ionic then that isnt a concern at all.

[yesimahuman]

(Ionic co-creator here): it's great for mobile websites. Most of all because we develop primarily in iOS Safari and Chrome on Android.

[gschlenkhoff]

check out this stackoverflow too: http://goo.gl/MUpnRC