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Non-developer here. Can someone explain how this compares to something like Titanium and what benefits it provides over other HTML5 Mobile Frameworks?

yesimahuman 13y ago
For web developers, Titanium won't exercise your existing knowledge base. The license is also not as clearly open source and free to use as Ionic, even for commercial apps. In terms of comparing to other frameworks, we have a lot of mobile-specific UI interactions that most others don't, like draggable side menus, pull to refresh, etc.
- neovive 13y ago
  Good point about the licensing models. That is a very big difference as well.
neovive 13y ago
From my quick review, Ionic is a framework for building mobile applications using web standard technologies (HTML5/JS/CSS). You then build your application using PhoneGap -- which builds a native mobile application wrapped in a WebView. This would be similar to writing a web app using jQuery Mobile and building a mobile app using PhoneGap. Ionic gives you a nice starting point, just like when you use Bootstrap for a website instead of writing all of your styles from scratch. Titanium apps are written in JavaScript (using Titanium libraries) that hook into native functionality. Your apps are then compiled into fully native mobile applications (not WebViews). It really comes down to the differences between running fully native apps vs. web views wrapped in a native application. There is a good explanation of the differences between here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17249500/xamarin-2-0-vs-appcelerator-titanium-vs-phonegap http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17249500/xamarin-2-0-vs-a....
adamdbradley 13y ago
Blog post: Where does the Ionic Framework fit in? http://ionicframework.com/blog/where-does-the-ionic-framework-fit-in/ http://ionicframework.com/blog/where-does-the-ionic-framewor...

yesimahuman 13y ago

For web developers, Titanium won't exercise your existing knowledge base. The license is also not as clearly open source and free to use as Ionic, even for commercial apps. In terms of comparing to other frameworks, we have a lot of mobile-specific UI interactions that most others don't, like draggable side menus, pull to refresh, etc.

neovive 13y ago
Good point about the licensing models. That is a very big difference as well.

neovive 13y ago

From my quick review, Ionic is a framework for building mobile applications using web standard technologies (HTML5/JS/CSS). You then build your application using PhoneGap -- which builds a native mobile application wrapped in a WebView. This would be similar to writing a web app using jQuery Mobile and building a mobile app using PhoneGap. Ionic gives you a nice starting point, just like when you use Bootstrap for a website instead of writing all of your styles from scratch. Titanium apps are written in JavaScript (using Titanium libraries) that hook into native functionality. Your apps are then compiled into fully native mobile applications (not WebViews). It really comes down to the differences between running fully native apps vs. web views wrapped in a native application. There is a good explanation of the differences between here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17249500/xamarin-2-0-vs-appcelerator-titanium-vs-phonegap http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17249500/xamarin-2-0-vs-a....

adamdbradley 13y ago

Blog post: Where does the Ionic Framework fit in? http://ionicframework.com/blog/where-does-the-ionic-framework-fit-in/ http://ionicframework.com/blog/where-does-the-ionic-framewor...