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I created a Web App(PWA) via React and Bootstrap. It runs perfectly. I planned to create an Android and another iOS Apps that have only one page with a Webview that loads my Web App via URL and ship those Apps to the customer.

My question is that there is a better and standard way to this? I heard about Hybrid Frameworks like IONIC but as I understand, IONIC Apps, Are web Apps that run on device not loaded from a URL, Is that right?

What I want is that my changes in the server affect all users and Apps installed on their devices. Because of that, I created the PWA App, not the Native App. I searched a lot but I can't reach a final decision.

Used to be I was an Android developer and had a lot of problems with shipping the latest version to the customer, Now I want to use Web-based technologies to reach Apps that works like a website.

Fcoder
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1 Answers1

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The issue here is: you will not be able to use the devices resources if you load the PWA in a Webview. For example push notifications will not work. A PWA can be installed onto a phone and windows as an application. This will have push notification on Android and Windows but not on Mac or iOS (Safari is the new IE). You need to go Hybrid or back to Native if you need more.

You are right with IONIC. It is a wrapper for a webapp stored on the device but it allows us to use native features (push works on both Android and iOS). But you still have the distribution issue since you need to publish to the stores every version. Not even mentioning the hoops apple gets you through when you try to publish.

The good thing with IONIC is you have a single source code for multiple platforms and you can choose the library you want to build with. It used to be Angular but now you can choose ReactJS, Vue, Angular or ES. Which makes it way friendlier.

With IONIC you could build the native features and lazy load the rest as dynamic component from a url: stackoverflow question if you do not care about backward compatibility.

I did both PWA and IONIC. Both has their pros and cons.

If I do not care about iOS and Apple I would stay with PWA otherwise IONIC.

mxsxs2
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