Welcome to Canvas
Learn more about how Canvas works and what you can achieve with it
Welcome to our Canvas Help Center, here you will find everything you need to learn how to use, configure and customize your apps.
If you are new around here, take a moment to learn more about our Canvas platform and how it works, below.
How does Canvas work?
Canvas is a hybrid mobile app platform, it blends the benefits of native and web solutions, allowing you to convert your website into a mobile app at a fraction of the cost you would normally spend to build an app from scratch.
A Canvas app is made of 3 main parts, each listed and described below:
Native elements 📱
As a mobile app, Canvas is built using native code (Swift for iOS, and Kotlin for Android).
On the native side of things, we have a core element that allows Canvas to display your website content inside an app, called WebView.
We also have integrations with third-party platforms such as OneSignal for push notifications and Firebase for app analytics.
Your website 🌐
This is what makes Canvas so powerful, your website is responsible for feeding the app with all the content, features, and design.
A great website, with meaningful features, good user experience, and fast performance will always convert into a great mobile app using Canvas.
Another awesome benefit of using your website to power your app is that whenever you make changes to your website, those changes will automatically reflect in your app.
Configuration ⚙️
Whenever your app is opened it will pull a configuration file from the web, which contains all the instructions about which pages should be displayed and how the menus should be organized.
This allows you to easily make changes to your app without having to go through the process of rebuilding the app and resubmitting it for a new review in the stores.
Below you can see a visual representation of all 3 parts of Canvas and how they are implemented in the app:
