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I have a very old Cordova app, works well for the purpose, but looks so outdated. It uses pretty basic JavaScript, HTML & CSS with some help from jQuery and jQuery Mobile, and contains a few pages in separate files. It is built only for Android so far. Now it is time to give it a facelift and possibly build for iOS and Windows desktop, the reasons why Cordova has been chosen back then. Also a messy multi-page system could be converted into a single page app, as a nice bonus.

I'm thinking about dropping jQuery Mobile and perhaps jQuery too, possibly adding Vue.js (which I've used on the web) instead. I don't have that much time to spend on this, so preferably it should be doable quickly, I'm not looking to rewrite whole program.

At first I was looking at Onsen UI or similar UI framework, thinking it might be the easiest option. But now I'm wondering if switching to e.g. Ionic Framework or Quasar Framework would give extra features/benefits without needing significantly more time. And this is where I'd like to hear your thoughts, especially if you've done similar facelift?

robblond
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  • Never did this but I think you have to rewrite whole application. ionic does have VUE js support so it will be easy for you to adopt and convert your application. – Najam Us Saqib Jul 13 '21 at 06:45

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I think Ionic would be a good choice for you.

It supports three main frameworks and Vue is one of them. As you already have experience with Vue, this should hopefully be rather straightforward.

I do think though you would be better building the app back up from scratch. If your current codebase is a few years old, bringing it up to date with a new build will include any new features, compatibility changes and security patches which may still be present in your present codebase. This will become obvious if you decide to release your app on iOS as Apple are notoriously strict on what they approve.

Also, take a look at Capacitor instead of Cordova. Personally, I prefer it as I found a lot of Cordova plugins weren't maintained and hadn't been updated in years. It might not be a problem for your project but I strongly encourage the use of Capacitor nowadays.

Super_Simon
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  • Capacitor have limited plugin currently and uses cordova's plugins for native API's. might be within 2 years capacitor will have complete plugin supports. – Najam Us Saqib Jul 13 '21 at 13:33
  • @NajamUsSaqib actually that's what I've been thinking. For example the app uses Cordova SQLite plugin. I saw the Capacitor SQLite plugin does not support Electron yet so this excludes my idea of adding desktop support, as far as I can tell. In addition the syntax seems to be different, so it would be one more change needed. Perhaps Cordova plugin could work under Capacitor, I don't know. Trying to keep this simple and learn & practise some other time. – robblond Jul 16 '21 at 16:24
  • You can use keyvalue storage using a Cordova application and make use of a Capacitor driver to run it. I don't know how well set you are on using SQLite for a full database but it’s probably overkill for 95% of apps. The only time it would be worthwhile implementing full SQLite would be if your app needs to run complex tasks in organised relational tables. – Super_Simon Jul 16 '21 at 19:55