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A better article would be "Why Wired Didn't use HTML5 for their iPad App". Since that probably wouldn't have the same link-bait worthy title, I'll write one her

by ajg1977 16y ago

A better article would be "Why Wired Didn't use HTML5 for their iPad App". Since that probably wouldn't have the same link-bait worthy title, I'll write one here. Why didn't Wired use HTML5? 1) a) it was built by Adobe who build it on Flash to begin with, b) the tools just aren't there yet. c) because of #2. 2) Why is the app 500MB? Because all the rich content (images, movies, audio) are bundled into the app so you do not need an internet connection to view it. I think we can all agree that downloading a "magazine" before you leave the house, then finding you can't view most of it, would be an uber fail. If the app had been based on HTML5 it would have been a 'mare to cache all of the content locally for offline viewing. HTML5 does offer local storage, but not in a way that would allow sites to cache 500MB of content. And even if they could, do you really want to wait 20 minutes for that Pixar feature to download over 3G? I suppose you could have created a native app with everything bundled locally and a UIWebView for rendering the HTML5 content, but really what do you gain from that?

malnourish 16y ago
Less than 500MB? A serious question.
- dirkstoop 16y ago
  There's absolutely no reason for it to turn out smaller. The meat of the app is in the media. I make cocoa apps, and I'm pretty sure that the 'native' part of the app — the part of it that could be ditched by linking to WebKit instead – weighs in way under 10 megs
  - andybak 16y ago
    I got the impression that even the text was stored as a graphic.
voidfiles 16y ago
More testing needs to be done on the Application Cache(http://www.w3.org/TR/offline-webapps/#offline http://www.w3.org/TR/offline-webapps/#offline), but you know it might just be possible to cache video content, and if not now it might be possible in the future.
dirkstoop 16y ago
what do you gain from that? - less control over interaction - less snappy animation - approval of some bloggers - easier ports to fictive multi-touch tablets on other platforms (Yeah, I understand your question was retorical, but I couldn't resist)
petercooper 16y ago
If the app had been based on HTML5 it would have been a 'mare to cache all of the content locally for offline viewing. HTML5 does offer local storage, but not in a way that would allow sites to cache 500MB of content. And even if they could, do you really want to wait 20 minutes for that Pixar feature to download over 3G? You can build an iPhone OS app that contains all of the data to be rendered by a Webkit UIWebView. Apps built on Phonegap use this technique, for example. It's possible to build a pre-packaged app that's basically a glorified Web browser with all of the content embedded inside as resources. The interactive elements could then have been made with JavaScript, rather than pre-rendered.
- ajg1977 16y ago
  I refer you to my last sentence: What would be the benefit in this when tools for building rich HTML5 apps are non-existent?
  - andybak 16y ago
    That's funny. As far as I can tell all the tools that are used for HTML (text editors and IDE's mainly) seem to be working pretty well for HTML5. And if you mean WYSIWYG then that market is dominated by Dreamweaver and even that has added HTML5 support.
    - ajg1977 16y ago
      Because you CAN churn out HTML5 in different text editors (or Dreamweaver) doesn't mean they're a GOOD way to generate rich content. While I think Flash (the authoring tool) is a bloated mess, it's light years ahead of anything that exists for creating interactive content with HTML5/CSS/Javascript. There are no good tools for generating something like the Wired app in HTML5.
      - WiseWeasel 16y ago
        Actually, the Flash Builder app in CS5 can output to Canvas, but unfortunately, the latest version of mobile webkit that renders UIWebViews still has fairly poor Canvas rendering capabilities and performance.
wmf 16y ago
Why is the app 500MB? Because all the rich content are bundled into the app The article says that rich content isn't the source of the bloat: Each full page is a giant image – there are actually two images for each page: one for landscape and one for portrait mode. If the app stored text as, you know, text then presumably it would require significantly less space. Eliminating the portrait/landscape duplication would also save space.
- DrSprout 16y ago
  Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, but if their intent was to show what a load of nonsense Apple's insistence that native apps are better is, it sounds like they couldn't have done a better job.
  - andybak 16y ago
    Did you RTFA? You could have made this a native app using the webkit control and bundled all the content in a 10th of the size.
    - DrSprout 16y ago
      Yeah, I'm saying that from what I'm reading they must have intentionally been looking to create a completely native app that is worse than the Flash-compiled one. That or the descriptions of the app are somewhat overcritical.
      - kevinelliott 16y ago
        To entertain your reasoning: Adobe certainly could have intentionally created a "sucky native app" to contrast their "awesome Adobe iPhone OS compiler" but they mostly left out features and released a bloated (size) app. If they truly made a native app with HTML-based text and image optimization, or use their compiler, they could have equally reduced the size of this app and increased the functionality beyond what they have done here. Thus, the current implementation does NOT do a good job of proving that their compiler could have been better than a native Objective-C app. Even so, if Adobe did want to throw a laughing cog at Apple via their clients, they're doing Wired a disservice, and frankly, that's terribly insane. They just couldn't throw a high profile partner/client under the bridge just to amuse some tantric executive war between Adobe and Apple. Lastly, although hard to believe a company fairly technology agnostic as Wired would use their financial line (their money making product) as a way to experiment with dissing a technology giant, let's pretend Wired and Adobe both wanted to stick it to Apple for the 3.1.3 clause. They would be simply shooting themselves in the foot, as their customer is who really loses out here, not Apple. It just make any sense at all, although I will give you that it's a romantic idea. More likely, they rushed a replacement implementation, since they couldn't use Adobe's compiler. Conde Naste clearly upholds Wired to the same deadlines as their other high end properties, and want to see a ROI for all the R&D they've had, perhaps. Becausethis certainly looks like a rushed implementation, or at a minimum, one done by amateurs.
jaxn 16y ago
I just read through this issue of Wired on my iPad while on a plane. It was neat to be able to have the videos and such without an internet connection. However, the real reason it is 500MB is the same reason the paper copy is so many pages... It is about 50% advertising.
jawngee 16y ago
I'm the author of the article. Ain't nobody talking about downloading the thing as you read it. All of the content for an HTML 5 version could be stored offline, you'd be gaining massive size savings - which on limited mobile devices (not just the iPad) would be huge gains. I'm actually considering writing an open source objective-c framework for specifically this purpose, I would hate for Adobe to get a foothold in this and kill the promise.
cma 16y ago
"I suppose you could have created a native app with everything bundled locally and a UIWebView for rendering the HTML5 content, but really what do you gain from that?" An easy jumping off point for cross compatibility with Android, Windows, and OS X?

by ajg1977 16y ago

malnourish 16y ago

Less than 500MB? A serious question.

dirkstoop 16y ago
There's absolutely no reason for it to turn out smaller. The meat of the app is in the media. I make cocoa apps, and I'm pretty sure that the 'native' part of the app — the part of it that could be ditched by linking to WebKit instead – weighs in way under 10 megs
- andybak 16y ago
  I got the impression that even the text was stored as a graphic.

voidfiles 16y ago

More testing needs to be done on the Application Cache(http://www.w3.org/TR/offline-webapps/#offline http://www.w3.org/TR/offline-webapps/#offline), but you know it might just be possible to cache video content, and if not now it might be possible in the future.

dirkstoop 16y ago

what do you gain from that? - less control over interaction - less snappy animation - approval of some bloggers - easier ports to fictive multi-touch tablets on other platforms (Yeah, I understand your question was retorical, but I couldn't resist)

petercooper 16y ago

If the app had been based on HTML5 it would have been a 'mare to cache all of the content locally for offline viewing. HTML5 does offer local storage, but not in a way that would allow sites to cache 500MB of content. And even if they could, do you really want to wait 20 minutes for that Pixar feature to download over 3G? You can build an iPhone OS app that contains all of the data to be rendered by a Webkit UIWebView. Apps built on Phonegap use this technique, for example. It's possible to build a pre-packaged app that's basically a glorified Web browser with all of the content embedded inside as resources. The interactive elements could then have been made with JavaScript, rather than pre-rendered.

ajg1977 16y ago
I refer you to my last sentence: What would be the benefit in this when tools for building rich HTML5 apps are non-existent?
- andybak 16y ago
  That's funny. As far as I can tell all the tools that are used for HTML (text editors and IDE's mainly) seem to be working pretty well for HTML5. And if you mean WYSIWYG then that market is dominated by Dreamweaver and even that has added HTML5 support.
  - ajg1977 16y ago
    Because you CAN churn out HTML5 in different text editors (or Dreamweaver) doesn't mean they're a GOOD way to generate rich content. While I think Flash (the authoring tool) is a bloated mess, it's light years ahead of anything that exists for creating interactive content with HTML5/CSS/Javascript. There are no good tools for generating something like the Wired app in HTML5.
    - WiseWeasel 16y ago
      Actually, the Flash Builder app in CS5 can output to Canvas, but unfortunately, the latest version of mobile webkit that renders UIWebViews still has fairly poor Canvas rendering capabilities and performance.

wmf 16y ago

Why is the app 500MB? Because all the rich content are bundled into the app The article says that rich content isn't the source of the bloat: Each full page is a giant image – there are actually two images for each page: one for landscape and one for portrait mode. If the app stored text as, you know, text then presumably it would require significantly less space. Eliminating the portrait/landscape duplication would also save space.

DrSprout 16y ago
Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, but if their intent was to show what a load of nonsense Apple's insistence that native apps are better is, it sounds like they couldn't have done a better job.
- andybak 16y ago
  Did you RTFA? You could have made this a native app using the webkit control and bundled all the content in a 10th of the size.
  - DrSprout 16y ago
    Yeah, I'm saying that from what I'm reading they must have intentionally been looking to create a completely native app that is worse than the Flash-compiled one. That or the descriptions of the app are somewhat overcritical.
    - kevinelliott 16y ago
      To entertain your reasoning: Adobe certainly could have intentionally created a "sucky native app" to contrast their "awesome Adobe iPhone OS compiler" but they mostly left out features and released a bloated (size) app. If they truly made a native app with HTML-based text and image optimization, or use their compiler, they could have equally reduced the size of this app and increased the functionality beyond what they have done here. Thus, the current implementation does NOT do a good job of proving that their compiler could have been better than a native Objective-C app. Even so, if Adobe did want to throw a laughing cog at Apple via their clients, they're doing Wired a disservice, and frankly, that's terribly insane. They just couldn't throw a high profile partner/client under the bridge just to amuse some tantric executive war between Adobe and Apple. Lastly, although hard to believe a company fairly technology agnostic as Wired would use their financial line (their money making product) as a way to experiment with dissing a technology giant, let's pretend Wired and Adobe both wanted to stick it to Apple for the 3.1.3 clause. They would be simply shooting themselves in the foot, as their customer is who really loses out here, not Apple. It just make any sense at all, although I will give you that it's a romantic idea. More likely, they rushed a replacement implementation, since they couldn't use Adobe's compiler. Conde Naste clearly upholds Wired to the same deadlines as their other high end properties, and want to see a ROI for all the R&D they've had, perhaps. Becausethis certainly looks like a rushed implementation, or at a minimum, one done by amateurs.

jaxn 16y ago

I just read through this issue of Wired on my iPad while on a plane. It was neat to be able to have the videos and such without an internet connection. However, the real reason it is 500MB is the same reason the paper copy is so many pages... It is about 50% advertising.

jawngee 16y ago

I'm the author of the article. Ain't nobody talking about downloading the thing as you read it. All of the content for an HTML 5 version could be stored offline, you'd be gaining massive size savings - which on limited mobile devices (not just the iPad) would be huge gains. I'm actually considering writing an open source objective-c framework for specifically this purpose, I would hate for Adobe to get a foothold in this and kill the promise.

cma 16y ago

"I suppose you could have created a native app with everything bundled locally and a UIWebView for rendering the HTML5 content, but really what do you gain from that?" An easy jumping off point for cross compatibility with Android, Windows, and OS X?