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Capacitor: Universal Web Applications

capacitor.ionicframework.com

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Re: Capacitor: Universal Web Applications

#31

Post by zedpm »

I hope this works out, and I hope it fixes some of the grief that Cordova causes. We've ended up with some legacy apps built with Ionic, and have had so many problems that trace directly back to Cordova that we're looking very seriously at complete rewrites.

Integrating with some third-party like Auth0 goes smoothly for our projects until we get to Cordova, at which point we start chasing absurd bugs and explaining to their support that we do actually need Cordova support. We've been told more than once that Cordova is the "problem child" in terms of supported platforms.

Re: Capacitor: Universal Web Applications

#32

Post by osrec »

yesimahuman wrote: post #15
osrec wrote: post #5

Why not just PWAs? I think the browser has come a long way, and a great number of things can now be accomplished in the browser without any additional frameworks. We built Bx ( https://usebx.com ) without any frameworks and it feels much like a native app on a phone or tablet when added to the home screen.

PWAs are awesome, but we don’t see it as either or. If your app needs access to proprietary native SDKs then you need a native app. Capacitor gives you optionality to do both with the same code.

I think that's a fair point. I had a more detailed look at your proposed deliverables, and it all looks pretty cool. Wish you all the best with the launch :)

Re: Capacitor: Universal Web Applications

#33

Post by osrec »

rhacker wrote: post #18
yesimahuman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PWAs are awesome, but we don’t see it as either or. If your app needs access to proprietary native SDKs then you need a native app. Capacitor gives you optionality to do both with the same code.

Instead of this madness device manufacturers could work together with HTML5 cons... to make a set of APIs that access native things, and for not-so-standardized features they could use prefixes kinda like we did in CSS. The websites accessing these HTML5 APIs would simply check for their existence first, then start using them. Usage of the APIs would then kick of device specific permission prompts, etc... Think about…

I don't think we need manufacturers to cooperate as much as we need the major browser developers to cooperate! Prefixes are not great either - it sets you up for incompatibilities later on. The point is we want collaboration across Google/Apple etc to create one truly cross-platform platform with a standardised API. For all its shortcomings, the browser IS slowly moving towards that goal.

Re: Capacitor: Universal Web Applications

#34

Post by reaperducer »

joshgachnang wrote: post #10
osrec wrote: post #5

Why not just PWAs? I think the browser has come a long way, and a great number of things can now be accomplished in the browser without any additional frameworks. We built Bx ( https://usebx.com ) without any frameworks and it feels much like a native app on a phone or tablet when added to the home screen.

I think there's a lot of instances you need more than is currently exposed for PWAs, especially on iOS. Push notifications is a big one. And the home screen installation on iOS (even with 11.3) leaves a lot to be desired compared to Android. P.S. Bx looks pretty awesome :)

>And the home screen installation on iOS (even with 11.3) leaves a lot to be desired compared to Android.

Can you elaborate on this? I recently added a web site to the home screen of an iPhone 6 and a Galaxy S7 and they look the same to me. Is there additional functionality in the Android home page icon of which I'm unaware? (Not an Android expert by any stretch of the imagination.)

Re: Capacitor: Universal Web Applications

#35

Post by yesimahuman »

zedpm wrote: post #31

I hope this works out, and I hope it fixes some of the grief that Cordova causes. We've ended up with some legacy apps built with Ionic, and have had so many problems that trace directly back to Cordova that we're looking very seriously at complete rewrites. Integrating with some third-party like Auth0 goes smoothly for our projects until we get to Cordova, at which point we start chasing absurd bugs and explaining t…

Agreed that we need to fix that and also make it easier for people to build/maintain plugins. A hard problem across the cross-platform mobile space that I hope we can help with.

Re: Capacitor: Universal Web Applications

#36

Post by atonse »

yesimahuman wrote: post #9
atonse wrote: post #8

Is this a competitor to React Native? RN seems to be the ideal: truly native components but a JS programming model.

We’re focused on pure web applications, and being able to run an app in the App Store and on the web as a PWA and Electron with the same code is a problem our users and customers are asking us to solve. It’s a different approach and I think those that want to stay web-native but still have easy access to native SDKs will find Capacitor interesting. We’ve had some good feedback from some react native developers that t…

Gotcha. Thanks for the clarification.

My concern is that too often, embedded web apps still never feel right. It's that uncanny valley. I'm sure it's better than its ever been, but do you have thoughts on bridging that uncanny valley? (through maybe some CSS animation libraries that mimic the native controls?)

Re: Capacitor: Universal Web Applications

#37

Post by michaelgreen »

osrec wrote: post #5

Why not just PWAs? I think the browser has come a long way, and a great number of things can now be accomplished in the browser without any additional frameworks. We built Bx ( https://usebx.com ) without any frameworks and it feels much like a native app on a phone or tablet when added to the home screen.

We built a PWA with vanilla javascript that does a lot of augmented reality work with the camera. The main issue is the lack of iOS support. Apple recently updated iOS to include support for the service worker (literally like this week) but it still lacks a huge number of features that chrome on Android has and basically every desktop browser has.

You do get access to a lot of the core sensors on the device but the inconsistencies on iOS just really make life a lot harder. Hopefully this will change over the next year but I'm not sure how quickly it will happen. So basically yes, you should build PWAs but until apple gets completely on board you can't really leverage them to their full extent like you can with chrome on android.

Re: Capacitor: Universal Web Applications

#38

Post by bl4ckm0r3 »

michaelgreen wrote: post #37
osrec wrote: post #5

Why not just PWAs? I think the browser has come a long way, and a great number of things can now be accomplished in the browser without any additional frameworks. We built Bx ( https://usebx.com ) without any frameworks and it feels much like a native app on a phone or tablet when added to the home screen.

We built a PWA with vanilla javascript that does a lot of augmented reality work with the camera. The main issue is the lack of iOS support. Apple recently updated iOS to include support for the service worker (literally like this week) but it still lacks a huge number of features that chrome on Android has and basically every desktop browser has. You do get access to a lot of the core sensors on the device but the i…

ios supports PWAs (service workers) now doesn't it?

Re: Capacitor: Universal Web Applications

#39

Post by yesimahuman »

atonse wrote: post #36
yesimahuman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re focused on pure web applications, and being able to run an app in the App Store and on the web as a PWA and Electron with the same code is a problem our users and customers are asking us to solve. It’s a different approach and I think those that want to stay web-native but still have easy access to native SDKs will find Capacitor interesting. We’ve had some good feedback from some react native developers that t…

Gotcha. Thanks for the clarification. My concern is that too often, embedded web apps still never feel right. It's that uncanny valley. I'm sure it's better than its ever been, but do you have thoughts on bridging that uncanny valley? (through maybe some CSS animation libraries that mimic the native controls?)

We'd like to think Ionic does this well, but also I think people would be surprised how many successful, popular apps actually utilize native shell wrapped web views!

Re: Capacitor: Universal Web Applications

#40

Post by madhato »

yesimahuman wrote: post #12

Capacitor creator/Ionic co-founder here. Didn’t expect to see this on the front page! Disclaimer: it’s still alpha. We’re building Capacitor based on feedback from the Ionic community to improve our ability to move across platforms such as App Store/web/electron, make it easier to interact with Native SDKs, mix web and native UI, and manage native app projects/tooling. One feature I'm really excited about is having W…

Why not add changes to Cordova instead of making a replacement?
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