The best place to start with Ionic is our documentation page.
Note: Ionic is Alpha software and currently best supports iOS 6 and Android 4.1 (though we are working on Android performance improvements). Ionic is changing quickly as we work towards the beta.
Ionic is the open source HTML5 Mobile Framework for building amazing, cross-platform hybrid native apps with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
We built Ionic because we wanted a framework that focused on building hybrid native apps, rather than mobile websites. We wanted this framework to be obsessive about great design and performance. A framework that left the past behind and focused on the future where mobile devices could make HTML5 feel native.
It's important to realize that Ionic is not a replacement for frameworks used for building mobile web apps. There are a lot of great solutions that work well for websites, like jQuery Mobile.
Ionic is also not a good solution if you need to support older generation devices. Our compatibility starts at iOS 6 and Android 4.1. We will never support versions earlier than those. This is a framework for the future. Learn more, Where does the Ionic Framework fit in?
To start using ionic, you have two options: copy over the built JS and CSS files, or
use the ionic
tool (ionic-cli) which can be installed through npm:
$ sudo npm install -g ionic
Then, you can start a new ionic project by running:
$ ionic start myproject
The source files are in the dist/
folder. You can just grab the dist/js/ionic.js
, dist/js/ionic-angular.js
, and dist/ionic.css
files and
you'll be good to go. For most cases, you'll need AngularJS as well, which we bundle a current 1.2.x version in dist/js/angular
.
You will first have to install dependencies by running:
npm install
Make sure that you have npm already installed.
Ionic comes with many interesting examples showing the power of the framework. To check them out, navigate into the source folder, and start a web server. The easiest way is to use Python:
python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000
node_modules/grunt-cli/bin/grunt watch
http://localhost:8000/examples/starters/
http://localhost:8000/test/
- Follow @ionicframework on Twitter.
- Subscribe to the Ionic Newsletter.
- Have a question that's not a feature request or bug report? Discuss on the Ionic Forum.
- Read our Blog.
- Have a feature request or find a bug? Submit an issue.
Max Lynch
Ben Sperry
Adam Bradley
Ionic is licensed under the MIT Open Source license. For more information, see the LICENSE file in this repository.