{"id":95,"date":"2013-11-01T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-01T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=95"},"modified":"2019-06-12T14:51:35","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T14:51:35","slug":"urls-and-hybrid-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ionic.io\/blog\/urls-and-hybrid-apps","title":{"rendered":"URLs are for Web Apps, not Hybrid Apps."},"content":{"rendered":"

When we started planning to build what soon became Ionic<\/a>, we knew that we needed to take a native-focused approach to building the next great HTML5 development framework.<\/p>\n

We felt that there were plenty of web-focused HTML5 frameworks, but few that treated HTML5 as a first-class citizen in the app store. We couldn’t ignore that people increasingly look to the app store to find apps, rather than browse the web for them.<\/p>\n

One big difference that kept coming up between web apps and native apps is how they handle URLs. Web apps utilize URLs both for the developer’s convenience but also for the user’s, allowing people all over the world to link directly to content and using them to delineate parts of a user interface. Native apps, in comparison, don’t use URLs for UI interactions, or use them only under the hood for the developer’s convenience.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In a native app, a user will never see any URLs even if the app is using URL based routing underneath. Obviously there are no URL bars or browser chrome in a native app so having URLs doesn’t make sense. When used, it’s merely a convenient way to manage UI state for the developer.<\/p>\n

Yet most current HTML5 development frameworks have kept URLs as a core concept, limiting a lot of UI interaction to those that can triggered through an anchor like <a href="nextPage.html"><\/a><\/code>. Things like switching to a new page, popping up a dialog box, or linking tabs. It’s probably out of developer comfort, but also because the history of HTML5 and web technology is rooted in the browser app. But even then, URLs were meant to link to specific resources on the web, not to control user interface interactions.<\/p>\n

If you are familiar with native app development, you’ll know that native apps tend to utilize a lower level design pattern called theView Controller<\/a> pattern (ignore the Model portion for now). The idea is pretty simple: you have a set of views (think of them as boxes or rectangles where UI elements are drawn), and then controllers that manage multiple views in tandem.<\/p>\n

The UITabBarController<\/a> on iOS is a perfect example of this. It takes a set of child controllers which each have their own set of views that make up each “page” in the tabs, and manages tabbing between them:<\/p>\n

\n \"UITabController\"