Bootstrap vs Ionic

Overview

Ionic

Stacks9.5K

Followers8.6K

Votes1.8K

Bootstrap

Stacks57.4K

Followers13.2K

Votes7.7K

GitHub Stars173.6K

Forks79.2K

Bootstrap vs Ionic: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this Markdown code, we will provide the key differences between Bootstrap and Ionic.

Framework Type: Bootstrap is a frontend framework that focuses on responsive web development, offering a variety of pre-built components and CSS classes. On the other hand, Ionic is a complete UI toolkit and framework that allows the development of hybrid mobile applications using web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Target Platform: Bootstrap primarily targets web development, providing pre-built components and CSS classes that can be used to enhance the visual appeal and functionality of websites. Ionic, on the other hand, focuses on mobile app development and targets multiple platforms including iOS, Android, and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).
Component Library: Bootstrap offers a rich collection of UI components like buttons, navigation bars, grids, forms, and more. These components can be easily customized and integrated into web applications. In contrast, Ionic provides a wide range of mobile-specific components that are designed to mimic the look and feel of native mobile apps. These components are optimized for mobile interactions and touch gestures.
Styling Approach: Bootstrap mainly relies on CSS classes for styling and provides a default theme with the option to customize it. It follows a responsive design approach, ensuring that websites adapt well to different screen sizes. Ionic, on the other hand, uses a combination of CSS classes and modern CSS variables to style its components. It also provides theming options that allow developers to easily customize the look and feel of their mobile apps.
Development Workflow: When using Bootstrap, developers can either include the Bootstrap CSS and JS files directly in their web pages or use a package manager to install Bootstrap and import it into their projects. They can then start using the pre-built components and classes within their HTML markup. Ionic follows a similar approach but also offers a command-line interface (CLI) that streamlines the development process of hybrid mobile apps. The CLI provides various commands for generating, building, and testing apps.
Integration with Native Capabilities: As a web development framework, Bootstrap does not offer direct integration with native device capabilities like camera, geolocation, or push notifications. However, it can be used within hybrid mobile apps built with Ionic to enhance the user interface. Ionic, being a mobile app development framework, provides a wide range of plugins and APIs that allow developers to access and utilize native device capabilities seamlessly.

In Summary, Bootstrap is primarily focused on web development and offers a comprehensive collection of pre-built components for responsive web development. Ionic, on the other hand, is a complete UI toolkit and framework that targets hybrid mobile app development, providing a rich collection of mobile-specific components and seamless integration with native device capabilities.

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Advice on Ionic, Bootstrap

Bridget

Full Stack Developer at Bridget Sarah

May 29, 2020

Decided

I do prefer to write things from scratch however when it came to wanting to jump-start the frontend, I found that it was taking me a lot longer hence why needing to use something very fast.

Bootstrap was the boom when it came out, I didn't like it, to be honest, set in its way and a pain to over-ride and in addition, you can tell from a distance if you're using boostrap and as everything looks the same.

I came across Tailwind CSS as I wanted more dynamic features, you could say, I've been now doing it for a few days and I love it a lot. I've been practising with the full stack part installed but I an't we wait until I do a new project, and I'll e able to select exactly what I want. Much faster.

681k views681k

Comments

Daniel

Frontend Developer at atSistemas

Jun 10, 2020

Needs adviceon

New Relic

Next.js

React

I'm building, from scratch, a webapp. It's going to be a dashboard to check on our apps in New Relic and update the Apdex from the webapp. I have just chosen Next.js as our framework because we use React already, and after going through the tutorial, I just loved the latest changes they have implemented.

But we have to decide on a CSS framework for the UI. I'm partial to Bulma because I love that it's all about CSS (and you can use SCSS from the start), that it's rather lightweight and that it doesn't come with JavaScript clutter. One of the things I hate about Bootstrap is that you depend on jQuery to use the JavaScript part. My boss loves UIkIt, but when I've used it in the past, I didn't like it.

What do you think we should use? Maybe you have another suggestion?

1.07M views1.07M

Comments

Anonymous

CEO at ME!

Jun 7, 2020

Decided

While with Ionic it is possible to make mobile applications with only web technologies, Flutter is more performant and is easy to use if you are willing to learn Dart, which is a fun language. Plus, it has awesome documentation and, while its ecosystem isn't near as big as JavaScript's is, it has a good package manager called Pub and its packages are generally high quality.

403k views403k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Ionic	Bootstrap
Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.	Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.
Performance obsessed;Utilizes Angular and React;Native focused;Beautifully designed;Based on Web Components;	Preprocessors: Bootstrap ships with vanilla CSS, but its source code utilizes the two most popular CSS preprocessors, Less and Sass. Quickly get started with precompiled CSS or build on the source.;One framework, every device: Bootstrap easily and efficiently scales your websites and applications with a single code base, from phones to tablets to desktops with CSS media queries.;Full of features: With Bootstrap, you get extensive and beautiful documentation for common HTML elements, dozens of custom HTML and CSS components, and awesome jQuery plugins.
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 173.6K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 79.2K
Stacks 9.5K	Stacks 57.4K
Followers 8.6K	Followers 13.2K
Votes 1.8K	Votes 7.7K
Pros & Cons
Pros 248 Allows for rapid prototyping 228 Hybrid mobile 208 It's angularjs 186 Free 179 It's javascript, html, and css Cons 20 Not suitable for high performance or UI intensive apps 15 Not meant for game development 2 Not a native app	Pros 1582 Responsiveness 1193 UI components 943 Consistent 779 Great docs 677 Flexible Cons 26 Javascript is tied to jquery 16 Every site uses the defaults 15 Grid system break points aren't ideal 14 Too much heavy decoration in default look 8 Verbose styles

What are some alternatives to Ionic, Bootstrap?

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

React Native

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

Xamarin

Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Foundation

Foundation is the most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world. You can quickly prototype and build sites or apps that work on any kind of device with Foundation, which includes layout constructs (like a fully responsive grid), elements and best practices.

Semantic UI

Semantic empowers designers and developers by creating a shared vocabulary for UI.

Materialize

A CSS Framework based on material design.

Material Design for Angular

Material Design is a specification for a unified system of visual, motion, and interaction design that adapts across different devices. Our goal is to deliver a lean, lightweight set of AngularJS-native UI elements that implement the material design system for use in Angular SPAs.

NativeScript

NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

Material-UI

Material UI is a library of React UI components that implements Google's Material Design.

Blazor

Blazor is a .NET web framework that runs in any browser. You author Blazor apps using C#/Razor and HTML.

Related Comparisons

Bootstrap vs Ionic: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this Markdown code, we will provide the key differences between Bootstrap and Ionic.

Framework Type: Bootstrap is a frontend framework that focuses on responsive web development, offering a variety of pre-built components and CSS classes. On the other hand, Ionic is a complete UI toolkit and framework that allows the development of hybrid mobile applications using web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Target Platform: Bootstrap primarily targets web development, providing pre-built components and CSS classes that can be used to enhance the visual appeal and functionality of websites. Ionic, on the other hand, focuses on mobile app development and targets multiple platforms including iOS, Android, and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).
Component Library: Bootstrap offers a rich collection of UI components like buttons, navigation bars, grids, forms, and more. These components can be easily customized and integrated into web applications. In contrast, Ionic provides a wide range of mobile-specific components that are designed to mimic the look and feel of native mobile apps. These components are optimized for mobile interactions and touch gestures.
Styling Approach: Bootstrap mainly relies on CSS classes for styling and provides a default theme with the option to customize it. It follows a responsive design approach, ensuring that websites adapt well to different screen sizes. Ionic, on the other hand, uses a combination of CSS classes and modern CSS variables to style its components. It also provides theming options that allow developers to easily customize the look and feel of their mobile apps.
Development Workflow: When using Bootstrap, developers can either include the Bootstrap CSS and JS files directly in their web pages or use a package manager to install Bootstrap and import it into their projects. They can then start using the pre-built components and classes within their HTML markup. Ionic follows a similar approach but also offers a command-line interface (CLI) that streamlines the development process of hybrid mobile apps. The CLI provides various commands for generating, building, and testing apps.
Integration with Native Capabilities: As a web development framework, Bootstrap does not offer direct integration with native device capabilities like camera, geolocation, or push notifications. However, it can be used within hybrid mobile apps built with Ionic to enhance the user interface. Ionic, being a mobile app development framework, provides a wide range of plugins and APIs that allow developers to access and utilize native device capabilities seamlessly.

Bootstrap vs Ionic

Overview

Bootstrap vs Ionic: What are the differences?