In our previous blog (Intro to Hybrid Mobile App Development and Ionic Framework), we have seen what is hybrid mobile application and its architecture with the introduction to Ionic framework, earlier we were concerned about using the ionic framework over others, so in the series we are going to compare and understand why ionic framework only, what are the difference and improvements that makes ionic easy to use.
~Why Ionic ?
PhoneGap gave you a blank slate, Ionic provides UI components for you to use and to customize using the popular CSS extension language – Sass. Before building a hybrid app using PhoneGap or Cordova, you’d be in a state of choice paralysis. Which UI framework would you use? Ionic removes that choice for you and gives you a solid foundation with examples for you to make and create your own apps quickly. You can get on with the business logic of your app without the overhead of picking what UI kit to use.
~What ionic says:
“We’re using AngularJS and Sass”. It provides the UI components for you to use. It reduces the cognitive overhead to get up and running.
Here we encounter a new topic crosswalk, so without going to see other information just stick to the point with some FAQs about crosswalk, What is it, why we use, what are the requirements, how to use it etc.
~What is Crosswalk?
- Crosswalk is an open source project that allows you to specify a version of Chrome to use as your web browser in Android. The compiled app will have your code hosted inside of this Chrome webview.
~Why should I use Crosswalk?
- Older versions of Android devices (4.0-4.3) use Android’s default browser, which has significantly less performance and standards compliance than modern Chrome. Using Crosswalk gives you a specific and more performant version of Chrome to use on all Android devices, in order to reduce fluctuations and fragmentation among devices.
~How does Crosswalk improve Cordova Android apps?
- By designating a specific version of Chrome, you can skip the unexpected behavior from browsers that vary from device to device. Crosswalk also provides improved performance and ease of debugging.
~What can I expect, performance and size-wise?
- In older Android Devices (4.0-4.3), you’ll see about a 10x improvement of both HTML/CSS rendering and JavaScript performance and CSS correctness. To bundle Chrome, you will see a small (~10-15MB) size increase in your Android Apps.
~How do I report errors?
- If you encounter any errors, please type
ionic infoand paste that information to our Ionic CLI issues on github
~What are the architectures for Android devices, and why do they exist?
- There are two main Architectures for Android – x86 and ARM. The reason for the two is that the device providers choose to use a separate processor. With different processors, we’ll need to compile them separately. Using Crosswalk, you may specify that you want two separate builds for x86 / Arm to keep your build size down. If you make a single build, you will have to bundle both versions of Crosswalk (x86/Arm) and have a larger build size (~50-60 MB).
Now it’s time to come into some code and try figuring out how everything is going on, so in our coming series we will start working on our first Ionic Framework App development.
Update: Ionic Framework dev setup environment
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