25 ms·

Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

240 points by johnzimmerman 11y ago

ourmandave 11y ago
I was hoping it would say what their dev stack is.
- sehr 11y ago
  On the front end they use Polymer https://youtu.be/fD2As5RmM8Q?t=966 https://youtu.be/fD2As5RmM8Q?t=966
rdsnsca 11y ago
Never heard of this website until today... maybe they should of advertised it some.
kin 11y ago
As a consumer I can relate to this. I subscribe to many monthly magazines including GQ and Esquire. I enjoy the publication as it is meant to be viewed, ads and all. Of course, now they're piled up and so I want to switch to digital. Sounds like a great solution. GQ has a digital app or I can use iOS news stand. This was not a great experience as each issue took at least 20 minutes to download a gig of content. Of course, once the content is there the experience is rich and fantastic. Based off my experiences, I really think a mobile web experience is best for reading magazines. Only the page I'm interested in would load and I shouldn't have to take up a whole gig of precious space to read an issue. Just my two cents.
johnpjoseph 11y ago
Interesting that a smallish magazine is moving away from native mobile back to web while not too long ago I saw that some large retail company discontinued their mobile web site and require use of their native app (flipkart I think). I don't think expecting a new audience just because you have an app is reasonable. I'd be interested in seeing how many new users they generate with just the mobile web site - I suspect that ultra loyal existing readers may take the time to bookmark their site and come back, but would be very surprised if their overall usage doesn't decline.
- sehr 11y ago
  They might be focusing on being a pit stop v a destination, catering to in app views and being shared mostly via Twitter and all that
- har777 11y ago
  One of their acquired companies Myntra is now app only. Only have a pc and the internet ? Sorry. You can only purchase from our apps.
  - lenkite 11y ago
    Myntra sales drastically dropped after going app only. http://goo.gl/JQy6IX http://goo.gl/JQy6IX
- MarkMc 11y ago
  What's interesting about the Flipkart example is that they have a fully-functional website available which they serve to desktop browsers, but the website is blocked to mobile browsers. Clearly they have decided that they prefer their mobile users to use their app, not a website.
mark_l_watson 11y ago
+1 for the article As a web vs. app proponent I love this. I do have a few apps installed on my Note 4 but I prefer getting Twitter, FB, etc. as a web site. Web standards like HTML5 are wonderful so let's use them and make the web awesome. My brother and one friend each have a few hundred apps installed on their phones. I am sometimes surprised that their phones still function with so much cruft installed, never mind the privacy considerations.
- dpeck 11y ago
  Theres quite a set of privacy concerns wrt tracking and data sharing while using the browser as well. Seems like even drawbacks on all sides at best.
  - tootie 11y ago
    Apps are just as bad. Worse because you can't see if you're transmitting over https or not.
    - bsilvereagle 11y ago
      You could argue that apps are worse since they can cert pin and prevent you from mitm'ing your https traffic - you have no clue what data is being sent. With browsers (for now, Chrome on iOS may start/be cert pinning) you can install a cert and still mitm.
- _delirium 11y ago
  Websites also can't spam you with push notifications the way installed apps can, so I strongly prefer them as a user. But I suspect this is one reason companies like apps. I'm not sure whether it's my imagination, but this seems to have gotten a lot worse in the past year or two, and is no longer limited to apps from shady no-name companies. Apps from reputable companies used to try to have some plausible reason related to your actual use of the app for a notification, but lately Yelp and Hotwire have just started brazenly spamming ads unrelated to any activity. So I uninstalled those two, and am now much more resistant to installing new ones.
rokhayakebe 11y ago
I suspect the reason many think they prefer apps is the one-click launch and the automated bookmark created on your screen. If a mobile browser behaved like an appstore (Search for website, See results, Click to Install, i.e. bookmark), you would have the same behavior, downloads, and most people would not be able to tell whether they are using an app, web app, or website.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- lewisl9029 11y ago
  This is exactly what the Hosted Web App and Web App Manifest Specs are meant to address: http://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/ http://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/ Unfortunately, the two largest mobile platforms (iOS and Android) don't have native support for these specs yet. And I'm not sure if they ever will properly support them since they'd probably prefer to keep the free developer lock-in they get with their native app platforms. In the mean time though, you can use projects like Manifold JS to create Cordova-based polyfills for those platforms: http://manifoldjs.com/ http://manifoldjs.com/
  - sehr 11y ago
    I don't use android, but I remember hearing about it trying to blur the lines between apps & browser tabs. They might be more amenable to the idea of browser apps considering web advertising is their cash cow too IIRC
- calebegg 11y ago
  Chrome for Android has a feature where if you visit the same site a few times in a two week period (or some sort of heuristic like that), the site can have it prompt you to add it to your homescreen: http://updates.html5rocks.com/2015/03/increasing-engagement-with-app-install-banners-in-chrome-for-android http://updates.html5rocks.com/2015/03/increasing-engagement-...
- thegeomaster 11y ago
  Firefox OS has something like this. On Firefox Marketplace, you can submit a mobile website that serves a small manifest.json file and it will be indistinguishable from a native app. I've been praising this innovative approach so many times on HN, but I have to do it again---it elegantly solves a lot of the problems we're having with native apps, and it all mostly works and integrates fine with the OS (the idea could use some polishing but is good as a proof-of-concept). It's a shame that the OS itself never really took off.
idibidiart 11y ago
The web is a great publishing medium for magazines and news outlets. Apps are for doing stuff beyond passive browsing.
- tootie 11y ago
  While apps have more capability, the web can do pretty much anything you need with content and data. The only time you really need an app is for CPU-intensive work or accessing hardware.
  - zeveb 11y ago
    > The only time you really need an app is for CPU-intensive work or accessing hardware. Or when you want to own your own data, or work offline…
    - icebraining 11y ago
      Between Application Cache and various data storage solutions (local storage, the File API, etc), webapps can do that. https://unhosted.org/ https://unhosted.org/
    - owencm 11y ago
      Sites can definitely work offline using the new Service Worker system: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/service-worker/introduction/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/service-worker/introd.... Try this example: https://voice-memos.appspot.com https://voice-memos.appspot.com.
  - kllrnohj 11y ago
    If you want to do any sort of custom drawing or animation you basically can't do it with the web, the performance just isn't there. You must stay on the specific fast paths offered by the browser or you're screwed. So no, the web cannot do pretty much anything with content and data. The web can do very, very little with content & data, it is just often enough coverage for passive things like articles.
georgemcbay 11y ago
As an Android user I'm very fond of native apps as long as they integrate into the OS well via activities, intents, content provider interfaces etc, all stuff you can't really do with web apps (though I know someone is going to want to chime and and talk about WebIntents or whatever other thing nobody actually uses because it just doesn't deliver the same sort of flexibility as what I'm talking about). So I'm sticking with native apps where it makes sense. Having said that, for the type of site this actual post is discussing, eh... web is probably just fine. Go ahead and use it... I have no issue with the linked article, but some of the people discussing this here and other places seem to be nudging this into a discussion about "mobile web is ready to replace all native apps", which IMO is a ridiculous statement.
alistproducer2 11y ago
It depends on two things: do you make use of hardware and does your ux depend on touch gestures.
tootie 11y ago
I'd add that if you intend to maintain a web site then adding support for apps (presumably multiple since cross-platform is still hard) then you are throttling your bandwidth to actually improve features and stability. I'm thinking of certain food delivery app that had enough bugs on their Android app, then I fell back to their mobile site and haven't looked back. They could have saved themselves probably a few million bucks and just kept their mobile site looking spiffy.
- praneshp 11y ago
  Eat24?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- stephengillie 11y ago
  I feel exactly this way about a certain image sharing site. After numerous bad experiences with their app, I went back to their mobile website and found it fully functional. For some reason, copy and paste didn't work in the app, which is unacceptable in a community based on copying and pasting cat image URLs.
seivan 11y ago
Could have used React and tried to share component source between iOS, Android and Web. I mean since you're going to fully go web, I don't see the problem in this. It's all JavaScript anyway, unless you want to start playing with the hardware APIs. Yeah you would have to write some of the UI layer differently, but I think it isn't that much. You can wrap your own UI components to use Android/iOS/Web internally.
- marknutter 11y ago
  That doesn't solve any of the problems they listed in the article.
  - Flenser 11y ago
    > as we pushed the design envelope further on our stories, we were constantly running into the technical limitations of the app approval process. While we could develop, deploy, and—if necessary—repair new code instantly on the web, any change to our apps required re-submitting it to the app store in question. It's possilbe that if the design changes are only on the javascript side that the app could just download those instead of them having to be sent for review.
beefsack 11y ago
Horses for courses; the web works well for content, apps work well for interactivity.
swagv 11y ago
Native apps are just a momentary crutch until Web standards on devices get better. Especially since most so-called apps are merely glorified Web pages in custom browsers.
a3n 11y ago
The thing about potentially having to wait two weeks to make an updated app available, and the control over your business that implies, makes my testicles suck up into my torso.
jlarocco 11y ago
It's sad it's taken people so long to realize it, but at least they're starting to get a clue. Who'd have thought that an app that's essentially a web browser tied to a single site was a bad idea that nobody would want to use? If desktop and laptop users access your content/game/social network/whatever from a web page, it's probably best to have mobile users access it that way, too.
- radio4fan 11y ago
  I absolutely agree. And I don't buy their justification for going down the app route in the first place: "But by the middle of 2011, six months after we launched in our app, more than half of installed web browsers were still not HTML5 compliant." Who cares? The app only targets iOS, so as long as mobile Safari rendered it, they were fine. And most of us here know that the app would be a pretty thin wrapper round a webview. I suspect the real reason for going down the app route is because back in 2011 all the marketing types were screaming "WE MUST HAVE AN APP!!!1!!" News International made the same mistake with "The Daily", which (probably) cost them over $60M.
st3fan 11y ago
How do you deal with offline support? If I'm not connected and I want to read an article, where do I go? Can't open the website. Did you run metrics to find out how many people are going to miss offline?
- owencm 11y ago
  Actually, sites in Chrome can work fully offline today using Service Worker (http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/service-worker/introduction/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/service-worker/introd...). And they can get users to add the site to their homescreen, so they have the full icon+offline experience (https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/03/increasing-engagement-with-app-install-banners-in-chrome-for-android https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/03/increasing...).
  - mintplant 11y ago
    Service Workers are also in Firefox Nightly right now, but are hidden behind an about:config flag until the feature is fully baked. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Service_Worker_API#Browser_compatibility https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Service_Wor... http://caniuse.com/serviceworkers http://caniuse.com/serviceworkers There's also the Application Cache, which has been fully supported in the stable versions for a while now. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Using_the_application_cache https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Using_the_... http://caniuse.com/offline-apps http://caniuse.com/offline-apps And of course, FF for Android has an "Add to Homescreen" button too.
    - hackcasual 11y ago
      Application cache is a fucking nightmare. Service Worker's can't come soon enough.
- stephengillie 11y ago
  Most apps are delivering content, so they also fail when offline. Yes, there are a number of apps that cache some data locally, but I believe they're in the minority. Even casual games have to check in with a database and retrieve a couple datapoints about your progress, your in-app purchases, and what powerups are available to you.
frame_perfect 11y ago
Ironically this article doesn't render in MobileSafari for me.
swah 11y ago
This will happen naturally once we don't have a word for apps and another for websites. Icon on the home screen and finding the "app" on the store is what most users need (basically bookmarks).
glisom 11y ago
Lol, sure.
declan 11y ago
It looks like the folks at Atavist did the right thing. As far as I can tell they created a publishing platform that lets folks format thousands of words of text and photos and videos, which is a very good use case for a web browser. Plus, contributors can add links, italics, subheds, captions, etc. This is not the best use case for mobile apps. They have a beautiful digital magazine that doesn't need to live in a native app -- and had no compelling reason to. When we started building our smart news app ( more info at https://recent.io/ https://recent.io/ ) we considered creating a non-native web app and took a few steps in that direction. But we rely on touch gestures a lot, require no keyboard input except for searching, update news recommendations minute-by-minute, and wanted to appear in the app stores, so we went down the iOS and Android paths instead.
fabioyy 11y ago
i hear the same bullshit since the time when iphone was released ( and without apps support ) yet, there isn't a single "amazing" case of webapp. ( the same for xamarin, phonegap, cordova, name_your_cross_app_development_here ) i call it laziness to learn how to code native apps. the only cross development that works, is for games ( almost all top 10 mobile games are in unreal or unity ( or cocosx ) )
- ergothus 11y ago
  It's about your content, not a universal rule. Text content? Turns out the web is great, and you don't get much benefit from going native. Highly interactive, multiple control, local database content? Turns out web sucks at it on mobile devices.
rebootthesystem 11y ago
Well, the most important thing you gain from moving your apps to the web is owning the relationship with your users. And that is HUGE. With the Apple iOS App Store you are isolated from your users, it is very difficult and nearly impossible to build a list and keep in touch with them in a meaningful way. I am sure there are cases where this isn't true, but I think I can say this is probably the case for the vast majority of apps out there. By being on the web it is your business, your platform and your users. Not Apple's (or whoever). And, yes, depending on your niche, building an audience could be very difficult. Guess what? The vast majority of apps on the app store fail. I think we might actually be able to say success on the web might actually be easier.
stutsmansoft 11y ago
Good luck
hiou 11y ago
So content is king?
ksec 11y ago
As a user, I dont really care about it being an App or Mobile Web. It needs two things, 1. An Icon on my Springbroad, so i can easily view it whenever I want to. 2. It should be butter smooth and dont warm my pants after reading. ( i.e lots of CPU cycle. ) Native Apps does better in both department. And whenever users gets a choice most would likely prefer the App version. HTML5 or Web has definitely improve, and it could or will do better then the web if we dont have the Ads constantly loading in the background. ( Ad blocker is another topic ) I guess atavist already have their group of loyal customers it makes sense for them to change. Personally I see the article mostly complain about the Distribution and Discovery Problem. And some App Store Approval process.
- amirmansour 11y ago
  I agree with you, but I must also add that not every site needs to have an app. Mobile web is plenty appropriate and sufficient for many types of apps. Many news and blog sites are a great example of this. In their case, an installable app would make sense if they are offering a feature or experience that requires the privileges of an app. Lets not unnecessarily crowd up our phones and app stores. The World Wide Web is still a good idea.
  - cmod 11y ago
    Techmeme is a prime example of this — bookmark it on your homescreen and it's as good as an app. Their mobile design is, IMO, easier to parse than the web, too.
    - danny8000 11y ago
      Financial Times does not have an iOS app - just a mobile website. They have been very clever in building the site so that it is very app-like, for instance they use local storage to store the days download stories. But, was initially confusing because I couldn't find their app in the app store, where I was expecting it.
      - untog 11y ago
Animats 11y ago
Good. Using the app mechanism to deliver static pages was silly and inefficient. The only reason it caught on was because it came with a payment system.
brad0 11y ago
The biggest problem with native apps is that there are a lot of native mobile developers. One in 20 or so are actually good. So you have all these apps that were built by someone who has no idea on how to architect them. The company has already spent so much just getting it out the door that they refuse to rewrite it. Native mobile dev is great. You just need to have good mobile developers run your team.
- harryf 11y ago
  Same applies for web. There is so much crappy mobile web UX out there. Good developers, good designers etc. are all essential whatever the platform
ousta 11y ago
the article does not mention this but publishing an app for iOS is drastically more costly in time and efforts than publishing for android. It is the worst publishing process I have ever seen. sluggish certificates, keys, provisionning profiles, iOS lack of retro-compatibility, apple lack of communication on what the major versions are changing and apple lack of judgement when reviewing apps with guidelines that are changing every day. Frankly I don't even understand how can developers enjoy working on developing apps for iOS it is lackluster in every part.
- andreamazz 11y ago
  What do you mean by lack of retro compatibility? You can still ship apps that target ios6, you have runtime checks for APIs that are missing in one version, the IDE suggests what is available or not. The major versions (and minors) are thoroughly documented in API diffs, the IDE suggests what to modify according to your platform target. The review guidelines are basically changing for the major versions, accordingly to the new tech introduced, and most of them are dictated by common sense. If something goes awry the review team is available to discuss with you. Good luck getting an Android app reinstated if it is taken down. The certificates are a pain in the ass, no way around that, but the rest of the platform makes up for this, the tools and language(s) are way easier to use.
  - vetinari 11y ago
    I have an iPhone 3G in the drawer, as an emergency phone. The amount of apps, that this phone can download from App Store, whether running iOS 3 or 4, is exactly zero (yes, even those that were available in the past, cannot be downloaded). My brother has for exact the same purpose the original HTC G1, running Android 1.6. That phone can download every single app from the Play Store, that was made available when the phone was supported.
    - qq66 11y ago
      If you're using it as an emergency phone, do you really need to install apps? Apple has taken the position that the older phones are not worth the trouble it takes to support them. The numbers seem to bear out this decision -- most in-market iPhones seem to be 4S and newer, and people upgrade their iPhones almost immediately when the new OS is released (this I can't understand at all, the new OSes frequently break things, and I always wait a few months to update).
brusch64 11y ago
But isn't this an "App" which shouldn't have been an App in the first place (I think they write something like this in the article). That's really one of my pet peeves. I don't like installing apps just to read an article. A good mobile site is much preferable in my opinion. But I've started a little bit later than most to the smart phone game and I'm a little bit quirky - so that may be just me.
- simonh 11y ago
  If only there was a single native app, preferably pre-installed on the phone, that was specifically designed to download content from publishers around the world and render it dynamically on a range of device screen sizes. It could be publisher neutral and allow bookmarking, and maybe let you have multiple pages open at a time. Nah, it'd never catch on. Native apps for publishing are dead ;)
- waylandsmithers 11y ago
  Exactly, and that's why it makes that a publisher would use the web for its original purpose-- the transfer of documents. Especially now with the News app on iOS, I don't see many reasons why a publisher would need to go to the trouble of maintaining its own suite of apps.
thewhitetulip 11y ago
This is great! Mobile apps have taken our age back to the age where everything is platform dependent, the Internet was invented so that devices from multiple manufacturers could communicate with each other, but with Android and iOS we have created a new niche of platforms, now it is devices with specific Operating Systems, and they are pushing our age back! There is a trend in Indian startups to abandon the web altogether and go "app only", among other reasons it defeats the entire purpose of the Internet as we know it, kudos Atavist!
chayesfss 11y ago
Sencha does this for enterprise apps too. For publishing, I wish RSS feeds had taken off. Would be great to visit a site and see that I could just subscribe to their RSS feed and see it in my own reader app.
- baldfat 11y ago
  The loss of RSS just still blows my mind. I still get my podcast with it but sad to see RSS to be relegated to obscurity when it started out so strong. The issue was the implementing it was "too much trouble" with the public.
cdnsteve 11y ago
Why not Meteor (meteor.com)? It has hot code push ability. No store approval required. Everything in JS.
applecore 11y ago
It's becoming increasingly clear that the future of publishing—for content providers—will be to relinquish control and publish their content directly to third-party distribution and engagement platforms. See: Snapchat Discover & Facebook Instant Articles.
halosghost 11y ago
First of all, good for atavist. They recognize their market, and are following the path of greatest efficiency and effectiveness. Sounds like great business sense to me. Now, on the other hand, I have to say, this kind of thing always bums me out. For a news distribution service, it does not matter so much I suspect, but in-general, the trend of putting more and more of the functionality I rely on daily into a web browser is distressing. Web browsers, despite all the innovation and work that has gone on lately, are still an enormous attack surface with the most significant likelihood of security breach (especially given that the rise of javascript has led us all to the point where we are almost allowing arbitrary code execution from untrusted sources on every page visit). Not to mention that web browsers were founded on the notion of conveying content, not functionality; HTML is a markup language (with <canvas> and JS and HTML frameworks, that's not so concrete anymore), it was not meant to host alternatives to the power of native applications. I often find myself wishing for the ability to use a text-based web browser and have "The Web" still work, but those days are mostly long-gone[1] till I finally get around to writing my own browser[2] (which seems like it should not be a necessary step just to be able to interact with a simpler Web). I suppose I am just tilting at windmills at this point (and, as I said, this post is not really aimed at atavist since I think content-delivery is a perfect niche for being web-only). Ah well, a user can dream, I suppose… [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r38al1w-h4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r38al1w-h4k [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072796

240 points by johnzimmerman 11y ago

ourmandave 11y ago

I was hoping it would say what their dev stack is.

sehr 11y ago
On the front end they use Polymer https://youtu.be/fD2As5RmM8Q?t=966 https://youtu.be/fD2As5RmM8Q?t=966

rdsnsca 11y ago

Never heard of this website until today... maybe they should of advertised it some.

kin 11y ago

As a consumer I can relate to this. I subscribe to many monthly magazines including GQ and Esquire. I enjoy the publication as it is meant to be viewed, ads and all. Of course, now they're piled up and so I want to switch to digital. Sounds like a great solution. GQ has a digital app or I can use iOS news stand. This was not a great experience as each issue took at least 20 minutes to download a gig of content. Of course, once the content is there the experience is rich and fantastic. Based off my experiences, I really think a mobile web experience is best for reading magazines. Only the page I'm interested in would load and I shouldn't have to take up a whole gig of precious space to read an issue. Just my two cents.

johnpjoseph 11y ago

Interesting that a smallish magazine is moving away from native mobile back to web while not too long ago I saw that some large retail company discontinued their mobile web site and require use of their native app (flipkart I think). I don't think expecting a new audience just because you have an app is reasonable. I'd be interested in seeing how many new users they generate with just the mobile web site - I suspect that ultra loyal existing readers may take the time to bookmark their site and come back, but would be very surprised if their overall usage doesn't decline.

sehr 11y ago
They might be focusing on being a pit stop v a destination, catering to in app views and being shared mostly via Twitter and all that
har777 11y ago
One of their acquired companies Myntra is now app only. Only have a pc and the internet ? Sorry. You can only purchase from our apps.
- lenkite 11y ago
  Myntra sales drastically dropped after going app only. http://goo.gl/JQy6IX http://goo.gl/JQy6IX
MarkMc 11y ago
What's interesting about the Flipkart example is that they have a fully-functional website available which they serve to desktop browsers, but the website is blocked to mobile browsers. Clearly they have decided that they prefer their mobile users to use their app, not a website.

mark_l_watson 11y ago

+1 for the article As a web vs. app proponent I love this. I do have a few apps installed on my Note 4 but I prefer getting Twitter, FB, etc. as a web site. Web standards like HTML5 are wonderful so let's use them and make the web awesome. My brother and one friend each have a few hundred apps installed on their phones. I am sometimes surprised that their phones still function with so much cruft installed, never mind the privacy considerations.

dpeck 11y ago
Theres quite a set of privacy concerns wrt tracking and data sharing while using the browser as well. Seems like even drawbacks on all sides at best.
- tootie 11y ago
  Apps are just as bad. Worse because you can't see if you're transmitting over https or not.
  - bsilvereagle 11y ago
    You could argue that apps are worse since they can cert pin and prevent you from mitm'ing your https traffic - you have no clue what data is being sent. With browsers (for now, Chrome on iOS may start/be cert pinning) you can install a cert and still mitm.
_delirium 11y ago
Websites also can't spam you with push notifications the way installed apps can, so I strongly prefer them as a user. But I suspect this is one reason companies like apps. I'm not sure whether it's my imagination, but this seems to have gotten a lot worse in the past year or two, and is no longer limited to apps from shady no-name companies. Apps from reputable companies used to try to have some plausible reason related to your actual use of the app for a notification, but lately Yelp and Hotwire have just started brazenly spamming ads unrelated to any activity. So I uninstalled those two, and am now much more resistant to installing new ones.

rokhayakebe 11y ago

I suspect the reason many think they prefer apps is the one-click launch and the automated bookmark created on your screen. If a mobile browser behaved like an appstore (Search for website, See results, Click to Install, i.e. bookmark), you would have the same behavior, downloads, and most people would not be able to tell whether they are using an app, web app, or website.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
lewisl9029 11y ago
This is exactly what the Hosted Web App and Web App Manifest Specs are meant to address: http://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/ http://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/ Unfortunately, the two largest mobile platforms (iOS and Android) don't have native support for these specs yet. And I'm not sure if they ever will properly support them since they'd probably prefer to keep the free developer lock-in they get with their native app platforms. In the mean time though, you can use projects like Manifold JS to create Cordova-based polyfills for those platforms: http://manifoldjs.com/ http://manifoldjs.com/
- sehr 11y ago
  I don't use android, but I remember hearing about it trying to blur the lines between apps & browser tabs. They might be more amenable to the idea of browser apps considering web advertising is their cash cow too IIRC
calebegg 11y ago
Chrome for Android has a feature where if you visit the same site a few times in a two week period (or some sort of heuristic like that), the site can have it prompt you to add it to your homescreen: http://updates.html5rocks.com/2015/03/increasing-engagement-with-app-install-banners-in-chrome-for-android http://updates.html5rocks.com/2015/03/increasing-engagement-...
thegeomaster 11y ago
Firefox OS has something like this. On Firefox Marketplace, you can submit a mobile website that serves a small manifest.json file and it will be indistinguishable from a native app. I've been praising this innovative approach so many times on HN, but I have to do it again---it elegantly solves a lot of the problems we're having with native apps, and it all mostly works and integrates fine with the OS (the idea could use some polishing but is good as a proof-of-concept). It's a shame that the OS itself never really took off.

idibidiart 11y ago

The web is a great publishing medium for magazines and news outlets. Apps are for doing stuff beyond passive browsing.

tootie 11y ago
While apps have more capability, the web can do pretty much anything you need with content and data. The only time you really need an app is for CPU-intensive work or accessing hardware.
- zeveb 11y ago
  > The only time you really need an app is for CPU-intensive work or accessing hardware. Or when you want to own your own data, or work offline…
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Between Application Cache and various data storage solutions (local storage, the File API, etc), webapps can do that. https://unhosted.org/ https://unhosted.org/
  - owencm 11y ago
    Sites can definitely work offline using the new Service Worker system: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/service-worker/introduction/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/service-worker/introd.... Try this example: https://voice-memos.appspot.com https://voice-memos.appspot.com.
- kllrnohj 11y ago
  If you want to do any sort of custom drawing or animation you basically can't do it with the web, the performance just isn't there. You must stay on the specific fast paths offered by the browser or you're screwed. So no, the web cannot do pretty much anything with content and data. The web can do very, very little with content & data, it is just often enough coverage for passive things like articles.

georgemcbay 11y ago

As an Android user I'm very fond of native apps as long as they integrate into the OS well via activities, intents, content provider interfaces etc, all stuff you can't really do with web apps (though I know someone is going to want to chime and and talk about WebIntents or whatever other thing nobody actually uses because it just doesn't deliver the same sort of flexibility as what I'm talking about). So I'm sticking with native apps where it makes sense. Having said that, for the type of site this actual post is discussing, eh... web is probably just fine. Go ahead and use it... I have no issue with the linked article, but some of the people discussing this here and other places seem to be nudging this into a discussion about "mobile web is ready to replace all native apps", which IMO is a ridiculous statement.

alistproducer2 11y ago

It depends on two things: do you make use of hardware and does your ux depend on touch gestures.

tootie 11y ago

I'd add that if you intend to maintain a web site then adding support for apps (presumably multiple since cross-platform is still hard) then you are throttling your bandwidth to actually improve features and stability. I'm thinking of certain food delivery app that had enough bugs on their Android app, then I fell back to their mobile site and haven't looked back. They could have saved themselves probably a few million bucks and just kept their mobile site looking spiffy.

praneshp 11y ago
Eat24?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
stephengillie 11y ago
I feel exactly this way about a certain image sharing site. After numerous bad experiences with their app, I went back to their mobile website and found it fully functional. For some reason, copy and paste didn't work in the app, which is unacceptable in a community based on copying and pasting cat image URLs.

seivan 11y ago

Could have used React and tried to share component source between iOS, Android and Web. I mean since you're going to fully go web, I don't see the problem in this. It's all JavaScript anyway, unless you want to start playing with the hardware APIs. Yeah you would have to write some of the UI layer differently, but I think it isn't that much. You can wrap your own UI components to use Android/iOS/Web internally.

marknutter 11y ago
That doesn't solve any of the problems they listed in the article.
- Flenser 11y ago
  > as we pushed the design envelope further on our stories, we were constantly running into the technical limitations of the app approval process. While we could develop, deploy, and—if necessary—repair new code instantly on the web, any change to our apps required re-submitting it to the app store in question. It's possilbe that if the design changes are only on the javascript side that the app could just download those instead of them having to be sent for review.

beefsack 11y ago

Horses for courses; the web works well for content, apps work well for interactivity.

swagv 11y ago

Native apps are just a momentary crutch until Web standards on devices get better. Especially since most so-called apps are merely glorified Web pages in custom browsers.

a3n 11y ago

The thing about potentially having to wait two weeks to make an updated app available, and the control over your business that implies, makes my testicles suck up into my torso.

jlarocco 11y ago

It's sad it's taken people so long to realize it, but at least they're starting to get a clue. Who'd have thought that an app that's essentially a web browser tied to a single site was a bad idea that nobody would want to use? If desktop and laptop users access your content/game/social network/whatever from a web page, it's probably best to have mobile users access it that way, too.

radio4fan 11y ago
I absolutely agree. And I don't buy their justification for going down the app route in the first place: "But by the middle of 2011, six months after we launched in our app, more than half of installed web browsers were still not HTML5 compliant." Who cares? The app only targets iOS, so as long as mobile Safari rendered it, they were fine. And most of us here know that the app would be a pretty thin wrapper round a webview. I suspect the real reason for going down the app route is because back in 2011 all the marketing types were screaming "WE MUST HAVE AN APP!!!1!!" News International made the same mistake with "The Daily", which (probably) cost them over $60M.

st3fan 11y ago

How do you deal with offline support? If I'm not connected and I want to read an article, where do I go? Can't open the website. Did you run metrics to find out how many people are going to miss offline?

owencm 11y ago
Actually, sites in Chrome can work fully offline today using Service Worker (http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/service-worker/introduction/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/service-worker/introd...). And they can get users to add the site to their homescreen, so they have the full icon+offline experience (https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/03/increasing-engagement-with-app-install-banners-in-chrome-for-android https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/03/increasing...).
- mintplant 11y ago
  Service Workers are also in Firefox Nightly right now, but are hidden behind an about:config flag until the feature is fully baked. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Service_Worker_API#Browser_compatibility https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Service_Wor... http://caniuse.com/serviceworkers http://caniuse.com/serviceworkers There's also the Application Cache, which has been fully supported in the stable versions for a while now. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Using_the_application_cache https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Using_the_... http://caniuse.com/offline-apps http://caniuse.com/offline-apps And of course, FF for Android has an "Add to Homescreen" button too.
  - hackcasual 11y ago
    Application cache is a fucking nightmare. Service Worker's can't come soon enough.
stephengillie 11y ago
Most apps are delivering content, so they also fail when offline. Yes, there are a number of apps that cache some data locally, but I believe they're in the minority. Even casual games have to check in with a database and retrieve a couple datapoints about your progress, your in-app purchases, and what powerups are available to you.

frame_perfect 11y ago

Ironically this article doesn't render in MobileSafari for me.

swah 11y ago

This will happen naturally once we don't have a word for apps and another for websites. Icon on the home screen and finding the "app" on the store is what most users need (basically bookmarks).

glisom 11y ago

Lol, sure.

declan 11y ago

It looks like the folks at Atavist did the right thing. As far as I can tell they created a publishing platform that lets folks format thousands of words of text and photos and videos, which is a very good use case for a web browser. Plus, contributors can add links, italics, subheds, captions, etc. This is not the best use case for mobile apps. They have a beautiful digital magazine that doesn't need to live in a native app -- and had no compelling reason to. When we started building our smart news app ( more info at https://recent.io/ https://recent.io/ ) we considered creating a non-native web app and took a few steps in that direction. But we rely on touch gestures a lot, require no keyboard input except for searching, update news recommendations minute-by-minute, and wanted to appear in the app stores, so we went down the iOS and Android paths instead.

fabioyy 11y ago

i hear the same bullshit since the time when iphone was released ( and without apps support ) yet, there isn't a single "amazing" case of webapp. ( the same for xamarin, phonegap, cordova, name_your_cross_app_development_here ) i call it laziness to learn how to code native apps. the only cross development that works, is for games ( almost all top 10 mobile games are in unreal or unity ( or cocosx ) )

ergothus 11y ago
It's about your content, not a universal rule. Text content? Turns out the web is great, and you don't get much benefit from going native. Highly interactive, multiple control, local database content? Turns out web sucks at it on mobile devices.

rebootthesystem 11y ago

Well, the most important thing you gain from moving your apps to the web is owning the relationship with your users. And that is HUGE. With the Apple iOS App Store you are isolated from your users, it is very difficult and nearly impossible to build a list and keep in touch with them in a meaningful way. I am sure there are cases where this isn't true, but I think I can say this is probably the case for the vast majority of apps out there. By being on the web it is your business, your platform and your users. Not Apple's (or whoever). And, yes, depending on your niche, building an audience could be very difficult. Guess what? The vast majority of apps on the app store fail. I think we might actually be able to say success on the web might actually be easier.

stutsmansoft 11y ago

Good luck

hiou 11y ago

So content is king?

ksec 11y ago

As a user, I dont really care about it being an App or Mobile Web. It needs two things, 1. An Icon on my Springbroad, so i can easily view it whenever I want to. 2. It should be butter smooth and dont warm my pants after reading. ( i.e lots of CPU cycle. ) Native Apps does better in both department. And whenever users gets a choice most would likely prefer the App version. HTML5 or Web has definitely improve, and it could or will do better then the web if we dont have the Ads constantly loading in the background. ( Ad blocker is another topic ) I guess atavist already have their group of loyal customers it makes sense for them to change. Personally I see the article mostly complain about the Distribution and Discovery Problem. And some App Store Approval process.

amirmansour 11y ago
I agree with you, but I must also add that not every site needs to have an app. Mobile web is plenty appropriate and sufficient for many types of apps. Many news and blog sites are a great example of this. In their case, an installable app would make sense if they are offering a feature or experience that requires the privileges of an app. Lets not unnecessarily crowd up our phones and app stores. The World Wide Web is still a good idea.
- cmod 11y ago
  Techmeme is a prime example of this — bookmark it on your homescreen and it's as good as an app. Their mobile design is, IMO, easier to parse than the web, too.
  - danny8000 11y ago
    Financial Times does not have an iOS app - just a mobile website. They have been very clever in building the site so that it is very app-like, for instance they use local storage to store the days download stories. But, was initially confusing because I couldn't find their app in the app store, where I was expecting it.
    - untog 11y ago

Animats 11y ago

Good. Using the app mechanism to deliver static pages was silly and inefficient. The only reason it caught on was because it came with a payment system.

brad0 11y ago

The biggest problem with native apps is that there are a lot of native mobile developers. One in 20 or so are actually good. So you have all these apps that were built by someone who has no idea on how to architect them. The company has already spent so much just getting it out the door that they refuse to rewrite it. Native mobile dev is great. You just need to have good mobile developers run your team.

harryf 11y ago
Same applies for web. There is so much crappy mobile web UX out there. Good developers, good designers etc. are all essential whatever the platform

ousta 11y ago

the article does not mention this but publishing an app for iOS is drastically more costly in time and efforts than publishing for android. It is the worst publishing process I have ever seen. sluggish certificates, keys, provisionning profiles, iOS lack of retro-compatibility, apple lack of communication on what the major versions are changing and apple lack of judgement when reviewing apps with guidelines that are changing every day. Frankly I don't even understand how can developers enjoy working on developing apps for iOS it is lackluster in every part.

andreamazz 11y ago
What do you mean by lack of retro compatibility? You can still ship apps that target ios6, you have runtime checks for APIs that are missing in one version, the IDE suggests what is available or not. The major versions (and minors) are thoroughly documented in API diffs, the IDE suggests what to modify according to your platform target. The review guidelines are basically changing for the major versions, accordingly to the new tech introduced, and most of them are dictated by common sense. If something goes awry the review team is available to discuss with you. Good luck getting an Android app reinstated if it is taken down. The certificates are a pain in the ass, no way around that, but the rest of the platform makes up for this, the tools and language(s) are way easier to use.
- vetinari 11y ago
  I have an iPhone 3G in the drawer, as an emergency phone. The amount of apps, that this phone can download from App Store, whether running iOS 3 or 4, is exactly zero (yes, even those that were available in the past, cannot be downloaded). My brother has for exact the same purpose the original HTC G1, running Android 1.6. That phone can download every single app from the Play Store, that was made available when the phone was supported.
  - qq66 11y ago
    If you're using it as an emergency phone, do you really need to install apps? Apple has taken the position that the older phones are not worth the trouble it takes to support them. The numbers seem to bear out this decision -- most in-market iPhones seem to be 4S and newer, and people upgrade their iPhones almost immediately when the new OS is released (this I can't understand at all, the new OSes frequently break things, and I always wait a few months to update).

brusch64 11y ago

But isn't this an "App" which shouldn't have been an App in the first place (I think they write something like this in the article). That's really one of my pet peeves. I don't like installing apps just to read an article. A good mobile site is much preferable in my opinion. But I've started a little bit later than most to the smart phone game and I'm a little bit quirky - so that may be just me.

simonh 11y ago
If only there was a single native app, preferably pre-installed on the phone, that was specifically designed to download content from publishers around the world and render it dynamically on a range of device screen sizes. It could be publisher neutral and allow bookmarking, and maybe let you have multiple pages open at a time. Nah, it'd never catch on. Native apps for publishing are dead ;)
waylandsmithers 11y ago
Exactly, and that's why it makes that a publisher would use the web for its original purpose-- the transfer of documents. Especially now with the News app on iOS, I don't see many reasons why a publisher would need to go to the trouble of maintaining its own suite of apps.

thewhitetulip 11y ago

This is great! Mobile apps have taken our age back to the age where everything is platform dependent, the Internet was invented so that devices from multiple manufacturers could communicate with each other, but with Android and iOS we have created a new niche of platforms, now it is devices with specific Operating Systems, and they are pushing our age back! There is a trend in Indian startups to abandon the web altogether and go "app only", among other reasons it defeats the entire purpose of the Internet as we know it, kudos Atavist!

chayesfss 11y ago

Sencha does this for enterprise apps too. For publishing, I wish RSS feeds had taken off. Would be great to visit a site and see that I could just subscribe to their RSS feed and see it in my own reader app.

baldfat 11y ago
The loss of RSS just still blows my mind. I still get my podcast with it but sad to see RSS to be relegated to obscurity when it started out so strong. The issue was the implementing it was "too much trouble" with the public.

cdnsteve 11y ago

Why not Meteor (meteor.com)? It has hot code push ability. No store approval required. Everything in JS.

applecore 11y ago

It's becoming increasingly clear that the future of publishing—for content providers—will be to relinquish control and publish their content directly to third-party distribution and engagement platforms. See: Snapchat Discover & Facebook Instant Articles.

halosghost 11y ago

First of all, good for atavist. They recognize their market, and are following the path of greatest efficiency and effectiveness. Sounds like great business sense to me. Now, on the other hand, I have to say, this kind of thing always bums me out. For a news distribution service, it does not matter so much I suspect, but in-general, the trend of putting more and more of the functionality I rely on daily into a web browser is distressing. Web browsers, despite all the innovation and work that has gone on lately, are still an enormous attack surface with the most significant likelihood of security breach (especially given that the rise of javascript has led us all to the point where we are almost allowing arbitrary code execution from untrusted sources on every page visit). Not to mention that web browsers were founded on the notion of conveying content, not functionality; HTML is a markup language (with <canvas> and JS and HTML frameworks, that's not so concrete anymore), it was not meant to host alternatives to the power of native applications. I often find myself wishing for the ability to use a text-based web browser and have "The Web" still work, but those days are mostly long-gone[1] till I finally get around to writing my own browser[2] (which seems like it should not be a necessary step just to be able to interact with a simpler Web). I suppose I am just tilting at windmills at this point (and, as I said, this post is not really aimed at atavist since I think content-delivery is a perfect niche for being web-only). Ah well, a user can dream, I suppose… [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r38al1w-h4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r38al1w-h4k [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072796