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Comment by l_t | Hacker News Reader

This looks pretty neat! First I've heard of Ionic, and I want to use it. I have a question for anyone familiar with it.

I mostly make Web apps with very complex UIs that target desktop computers specifically. I'm not as concerned with the mobile app story right now, I just want a batteries included UI framework. Is that a valid use-case for Ionic, or should it only be used if cross-platform deployment is needed?

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I´ve used Ionic for both mobile apps and PWA (web sites that access the device hardware).

It is pretty straightforward to do both in Ionic.

As a side comment, the other day I wanted to do a very simple single page "app" (I jog, so I wanted a "sonar" kind of app that told me how far to my target speed I am, constantly).

I thought I was going to give native Andriod Studio a try... as this was a very simple app and I was going to use GPS functionality, it sounded right. I was badly surprised by the way UIs are built in Android Studio, it is so fugly, it took me back to the AWT/Swing framework I worked with in the late 90s. After battling with the ConstraitLayouts and other bullshit, I went back to Ionic to do a simple HTML layout and had the app working in 1 hour.

I can't believe in 2019 that is the way Google is making people build interfaces in Android.

Android studio is awful. Moving from it to Xcode is like climbing to an open field out of a dank old basement.

Constraint layout is a delight for working, I wish there was something like that in css.

I really want to understand it. It reminded me of my days migrating from the Vb5/6 UI to java swing. It was painful, but after you groked its logic, it made sense.

How can I get to grok Android's Ui layout process?

Until now Ionic has been mobile first. But they announced earlier this year [1] that they are working towards better desktop support. So I'm not sure it would be the best choice if you need a mature framework for desktop web apps right now and don't need hybrid/native mobile apps.

We're currently adding desktop support to our existing Ionic app that has been mobile only so far so we are banking on being able to work around that and Ionic adding better desktop support over time.

[1] https://ionicframework.com/blog/ionic-4-roadmap-new-features...

Quasar framework is awesome and built on vue. https://quasar.dev/

For what you mentioned you might consider Sencha (assuming you want to pay as they're not exactly cheap). Here is the demo page with all their visual components:

https://examples.sencha.com/extjs/7.0.0/examples/kitchensink...

My company’s main app is built with ionic. Started with v 1.x and is now on 4.11. I love it but, our app was mostly aimed at mobile. It has since become much more desktop focused and we often have to create our own components. (Which is really easy using Stenciljs, also from ionic). Here’s some things you’ll need to work out:

Datepickers. The ones provided by ionic are strictly for mobile. I think they are planning to do a desktop version but I have waited 4 years for that.

IE 11 support. Forget it. Luckily it is less and less important but if you need I wouldn’t bother.

Desktop style menus and lists. Possible to create but is not included.

Ionic are improving dekstop features but it still mostly aimed at mobile. If possible, try creating one of the most desktop centric parts of your app and see how far you get. If mobile use is not important at all you might not get many benefits from using ionic.

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