Ionic: 2017-18 Roadmap
The Ionic team has been extremely busy and highly productive this past fall. We’ve released several new projects and launched our Ionic Pro commercial service. We’ve been working hard to make our framework and services better and better.
With all these initiatives moving forward, I wanted to take a step back and talk about what Ionic will look like over the next 6-12 months.
First, let’s go over some things you can expect in the near term.
Next 30-60 Days
Ionic 11/iPhone X
iPhone X launched in November, and iOS 11 has been out for over a month. We’ve released updates for Ionic 3.x for Angular and Ionic 1.x for AngularJS to ensure compatibility.
For those still using the AngularJS version of Ionic, this is our first release in quite some time. Refer to our latest blog post and make sure to update correctly to the latest version.
Ensure you have the latest versions of Ionic (AngularJS or Angular) for iPhone X and iOS 11:
Ionic - Angular (3.x): 3.7.1 Ionic - AngularJS (1.x): 1.3.4 (Update Guide)
Read more about preparing for iOS 11
WKWebView as Default for New Apps
We recently updated the default Web view on iOS to WKWebView.
WKWebView brings significant performance and feature improvements over the traditional UIWebView. Scrolling is better, infinite and virtual scrolling is faster and smoother, JavaScript execution is faster, and developers have access to more APIs.
For existing apps, we recommend trying this out to see if your app benefits - we believe it will.
However, there are some things to be aware of when using it.
Read the blog post about WKWebView for more information.
Ionic Pro Updates
Ionic Pro is our new platform dedicated to making Ionic development faster and easier. Pro can automatically track runtime errors (even in TypeScript), enable app updates without going through the app store, and (soon) will offer PWA hosting, among other features.
For users who encountered issues with Ionic Pro earlier, thank you for being among the first users and for your feedback. Expect rapid improvements to Pro as we’ve started hiring people onto the team. Early reception has been positive, and the team has made many improvements to take your Ionic development to the next level.
We’ve been actively working on major features recently, including PWA hosting, which will be rolled out to the public once it’s ready.
Ionic DevApp and Ionic View
A few months ago, we discussed the Ionic View app, which is evolving into two apps: a new Ionic View focused on beta and external testing, and Ionic DevApp focused on local development.
We saw that Ionic View was popular, with users either using it for local development or for external testing - this wasn’t surprising.
What we’ve done is add more test cases to the new Ionic View. We’ve added extensive functionality to make it easy to share your app with external testers and devices, including A/B testing, and sharing different versions with different people. We’ve also added many new native plugins to it. We’re confident this will be a major part of your beta testing, and you’ll find it especially simple compared to TestFlight and other similar tools. Over the past week or so, we’ve also fixed some issues, so if you used it in October or earlier, please try it again.
For the (soon-to-be-released) Ionic DevApp, we’ve taken the local development use case and improved it by 100x. Unlike server-side upload and in-app testing, DevApp discovers your ionic serve instances and seamlessly loads your app over the network. It also supports hot reloading.
I believe DevApp will be beneficial for the Ionic development workflow, as it removes the need to understand Cordova and the native SDK toolchain. Look forward to the official DevApp release in the coming weeks.
Enterprise Ionic
Today, we’re expanding our work with enterprise companies using Ionic. Are you interested in getting expert help and scaling functionality in enterprise environments? Please get in touch
Next 3-6 Months
Ionic 4
We’re working hard on the next generation of Ionic, and you’ll see us porting most components to Web Components built using a new tool we created for building fast Web Components: Stencil.
Ionic 4 is significant for several reasons, primarily because it will be the first framework-agnostic version.
For those who have been with us from the beginning, Ionic was the first Web standards component library. Unfortunately, before 2013, there was no “native” way to create custom HTML tags, so we chose AngularJS because it was the best way to provide a custom tag library that didn’t require users to manually scaffold or initialize components. The Angular community ultimately became the ideal home for Ionic, and we’re very grateful for the support and help from the community that helped us achieve this goal.
With Web Components now natively supported, we feel it’s time to return to our original dream and start making Ionic components available to all developers, regardless of their technology stack.
Does this mean we're leaving Angular? No! We think Angular is great, and our goal is to make ionic-angular more like an API. This isn’t an either/or situation - instead, Ionic component tags will now run as Web Components rather than Angular code, which will make ionic-angular smaller with faster load times.
For those who like Ionic but want to use Vue, React, Ember, jQuery, or pure JavaScript, when Ionic 4 is released, you’ll be able to use Ionic. In fact, we’re certain you can use Ionic 4 with AngularJS (1.x), and we’ll provide a way for you to use it with Ionic/AngularJS.
In addition to supporting these new frameworks, Ionic 4 will bring substantial improvements for PWAs, mainly due to “using the platform” (i.e., less code and using native browser components), and we’ve added new lazy loading strategies to Stencil.
We hope that moving to Web Components will help end framework churn once and for all.
Cordova Plugin Initiative
We’re hiring people to proactively maintain Cordova plugins. We know the Cordova plugin ecosystem is facing challenges. Many plugins provide interfaces to native functionality, but many aren’t maintained or updated regularly. We want to invest more resources to help improve plugins and provide some of the plugins we build to enterprises, along with supporting these plugins.
PWA
It’s no secret that we’re fans of PWAs. Modern web apps use new APIs to provide app-like experiences for users.
There’s a lot of confusion about PWAs. Does it mean Cordova is no longer necessary? Is Ionic losing app store support? Will PWAs replace native apps?
In the web community, you’ll see people positioning PWAs as alternatives to native apps. At Ionic, you won’t see that. We believe the solution depends on what your users are looking for in your app. Do your users heavily rely on Google search and web links? A PWA can provide a high-quality experience for users without the hassle of pushing an app to the store. Do users find your app through the App Store or other apps? A native app might make more sense. If your app requires more native functionality than web functionality, then a native app is also the best solution. If your app has the ability to provide a beautiful, simple web experience while also having extensive native APIs, you might understand that both PWAs and native apps are needed.
Always Bet on the Web
With major updates to Web APIs and user devices becoming faster and better, it’s proven that betting on the web was right.
We want Ionic to be the UI layer that runs on the web. We understand that native apps (App Store) are a very important platform for Ionic, but we also think it’s cool that the same code can work as a PWA. Additionally, Ionic apps can run in Electron as interactive web sites.
We’ve always been 100% focused on open web standards and web technologies, even when it wasn’t cool, and we’re proud of that.
Looking ahead, we’ll continue to push this pragmatic approach: focus on the web, run anywhere.
Always bet on the web.
Cheers, Max
Final Thoughts
This roadmap from Ionic’s leadership provides valuable insights into the strategic direction of the framework during a pivotal time in web and mobile development. The transition to Web Components with Ionic 4 represented a major shift towards framework-agnostic development, while maintaining strong support for Angular developers.
The emphasis on both native app development (through Cordova plugins and app stores) and progressive web apps shows Ionic’s commitment to providing developers with flexible deployment options based on their specific use cases and target audiences.
The investments in developer tooling like Ionic Pro, DevApp, and improved plugin maintenance demonstrate a mature approach to supporting the entire development lifecycle, not just the core framework itself.
