As we continue to push the boundaries of what's possible with cross-platform app development, we're excited to announce the arrival of Ionic Framework v6 beta. This significant update marks another major milestone in our journey towards building faster, more reliable, and more feature-rich apps for mobile and desktop.

Faster, More Reliable Release Cadence

At Ioniconf 2021, we took a closer look at the improvements coming with Framework v6 and how you can get your hands on these enhancements today. It's been over a year since Framework v5 launched in February 2020, and we've listened to your feedback. One of the key pain points was the time it takes for iOS and Android design changes to make it into Framework releases. To address this, we're adjusting our major release schedule to better coincide with platform software releases. This means you can expect yearly major releases with these design changes.

Easy Upgrade

We've worked hard to make upgrading to Framework v6 a breeze! With fewer breaking changes than Framework v5 and many of those changes not requiring any action on your end, the upgrade process should be smooth sailing.

Components

Framework v6 brings new components that make it easier to build mobile and desktop experiences. We're excited to introduce the following components, which are available for use today:

Accordion

Our first new component is the ion-accordion, designed to help you organize large amounts of content in an easy-to-understand way. This flexible component features smooth animations, keyboard support, reduced motion accessibility, and can be used on both mobile and desktop applications.

Breadcrumbs

Next up is the ion-breadcrumbs component, providing important context to users about where they are in your application and how they got there. Fully customizable and collapsable, this component is perfect for complex application setups.

Datetime

Last but not least is our completely revamped ion-datetime component, featuring a modern design, localization support, keyboard and screen reader integration, and the latest calendar picker styles on iOS and Android.

And more! Keep an eye out for other components like bottom drawer and desktop select coming soon!

Performance and Tooling

Ionic Framework is built with lightning-fast Web Components and takes advantage of modern Web APIs, ensuring your apps are just as fast as native applications. We leverage the best parts of Stencil to bring performance and bundling improvements to your Ionic Framework apps.

Custom Elements

In Framework v6, we're shipping a new build called the Custom Elements build. This build does not rely on Stencil's lazy loading and helps bundlers include only the components used in your application. This will help reduce the overall size of your application as well as the size of your application's first chunk, making your apps load even faster.

Vite, Rollup, and ESBuild

As an added bonus, Framework v6 will be usable with tooling like Vite, Rollup, and ESBuild, giving you even more options for building apps. This is something developers have been asking us about for a while, so we're excited to roll this support out.

Design

Design has always been crucial to building Ionic Framework, and we've updated Framework v6 with the latest iOS and Android designs. We've also re-aligned our major version release schedule to get you these design changes even faster in the future.

iOS

Some notable changes to the iOS mode include a new refresher style and updated toolbar and modal styles for dark mode. And, we're happy to announce that Framework v6 will be iOS 15 ready when it ships!

Material Design

One big design change is our revamped input styles to support new filled and outline styles. We've also added error and helper text slots in addition to a character counter.

Deprecations

There are a couple of deprecations in Framework v6, with a 1-year migration period before these features are removed in Framework v7:

Virtual Scroll

In Framework v6, the ion-virtual-scroll component has been deprecated in favor of using framework-specific solutions. Given the complex nature of this feature, we'll be providing guidance on how to migrate your apps to the new solution.

With Framework v6, you can look forward to building even faster and more reliable apps with swift app development capabilities. Stay tuned for more updates!