6 ms·

BBC News iPad app re-done in HTML5

66 points by jamesgpearce 16y ago

daleharvey 16y ago
I was surprised when I was checking caniuse.com today that cross origin requests were supported pretty much across the board. Is there a reason you couldnt use them? http://caniuse.com/#feat=cors http://caniuse.com/#feat=cors
- jamesgpearce 16y ago
  The server needs to know what to do with them. Since I am only writing a client here, I can't do the server-side piece of the preflight checks etc Also the service needs to have a particular user-agent to work, so the proxy doubles up as a rewriter for that.
shortformblog 16y ago
You've gotten pretty far with this, and for that it's worth commending. Nice job. I look forward to seeing a polished version of this. You should offer it up to the BBC. :)
- jamesgpearce 16y ago
  Thanks. Stay tuned. I'm actually waiting for a Cease & Desist letter from them ;-)
  - masklinn 16y ago
    Q: why not do an offline application? As far as I can tell, you don't talk about manifests and "offlining" it as if it were the normal BBC application. Any reason?
    - jamesgpearce 16y ago
      I will put a manifest on it, for sure... and the AJAX-stuff is cached via localStorage, so that already gets offline-ness
fortes 16y ago
I love this type of stuff. The project I'm working on right now is all about having a better experience than the iPad magazine apps, while using HTML/JS instead of proprietary tech. Here's a video demo of some of the layout, for the curious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt2iJZGqMpw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt2iJZGqMpw
alexbosworth 16y ago
Html5 on the ipad is still wishful thinking by people who don't want to bother being an ios developer. This demo is clearly worse than the BBC app and i have yet to see an ios web app that doesn't feel hacky and make me wish for a native version. In a couple generations when mobile CPUs are faster and ipads have more than 256mb of ram, we will see a repeat of the web app takeover that occurred on the desktop.
- einarvollset 16y ago
  Amen. I am more than a little sick of people opinionating about the greatness of all things HTML5 when they've clearly never tried to develop anything for either Android or iPhone, but simply wish that their existing experience directly translates. If you're downvoting, please shoot me an email with your html5 mobile app to prove me wrong: einar@lcrnd.com
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- balac 16y ago
  you a probably right, but you still can't directly compare the full time efforts of the BBC with this single developers part time project. It would be interesting to see what the BBC themselves could produce in HTML.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  It's not expected to be the same quality as the BBC app, it's a demo. More precisely a proof of concept. The message here is that if the BBC spent as much money making a high quality "mobile" html5 version of their site as they spent on the iPad app they would have just as good an end user experience with a lot fewer issues. For one you save all the money it takes to get an app into the app store (remembering that developer time and effort == money). For another you get the benefit of supporting more platforms instantly, iPad, iPhone, netbooks, android phones, etc.
  - alexbosworth 16y ago
    A disclaimer: my company develops iOS apps on contract so I am a bit biased in preferring native code, but I have tried to do HTML5 as a substitute in the past. In my experience trying to develop HTML5 apps instead of a native app: 1) Development (and design) time is roughly equivalent between an iOS developer and an HTML developer, because of time trying to copy things that native code gets for free. 2) It's a bad idea to use a cheap HTML developer because there is a lot of stuff to work around, a good HTML5 iPad app is not something you can really do by dragging things around in dreamweaver. 3) What you wind up developing will have to be majorly modified for another platform due to iOS specific bugs, features and chrome. 4) You will never reach the same quality in HTML5 because the iPad has issues relating to CPU, RAM, and bugs or missing features in Safari that Apple doesn't seem too bothered to fix. As a proviso, in some circumstances, like for simple apps that don't need to be perfect, HTML5 is a good idea. What I'm saying is that in most cases native will be better in time/money spent and quality of resulting product.
jacquesm 16y ago
Anybody that plans a business on a mobile platform based on app sales should take note of this, even if it isn't there yet I really think that it is the future. We've already seen this movie before, and if google docs is possible on a desktop/laptop + serverfarm you really have to wonder how long it is going to take before history repeats itself and 'apps' will go the way of a large number of desktop applications that are now 'web-apps'.
- maxklein 16y ago
  You forget that 'apps' started off as web-apps in the first iphone, and neither the users nor developers liked them, so the SDK was released. The future lies in thicker clients, particularly for mobile where the internet is not as assured as on a desktop.
  - stevanl 16y ago
    Considering most of those thick mobile applications would rely on the internet for one reason or another, it's not wrong to assume that web-apps could take the reign in the future. After all, HTML offers more capability now than it did back when the iPhone was released.
    - arethuza 16y ago
      I've been doing a fair bit of development with jQTouch, jQuery, offline web apps and the SQL database engine accessible from JavaScript in Safari and it's a pretty sweet combination.
    - Supermighty 16y ago
      >fter all, HTML offers more capability now than it did back when the iPhone was released. Over all web apps offer more control for the developer as well.
  - pornel 16y ago
    Web app situation on iPhone has improved considerably since pre-SDK days: • In 1.0 there was no offline cache or local storage. You had to download whole app each time over 2G. • JS was many times slower (pre-SquirrelFish engine, slower hardware). • No CSS transitions or animations. Now you can have 3D hardware-accelerated layers in CSS. • You couldn't get rid of status bar and Safari toolbars. Now iOS allows apps to take over entire screen (if user bookmarks page on home screen). Also developers needed some time to learn how to use WebKit features. Instead of dumbed-down CSS you can use some CSS3 and -webkit- properties. Instead of slow and limited onclick you can use non-standard touch events, etc.
abbetts 16y ago
Html/js is good for some UI parts of an app but eventually makes one yearn for native threading/locking, queueing, posting notifications, for that last 10-20% of code.
revicon 16y ago
Looking at the way the proxy was created on the Nginx server, it seems he's created an open http proxy that's asking to be abused. Anyone could make a curl request to that /apps/bbc-news/proxy uri and pass whatever URL they wanted to hit via the x_bbc_url http header. Doing this, any request they make would appear to come from the whitherapps.com (or whatever) domain. I can see the 4chan guys having a field day with this posting spam to boards their own IPs have been banned from. Seems like the server should only allow http proxying to a white list of domains, or better yet, a white list of urls.
- jamesgpearce 16y ago
  Yeah - you're right... I hadn't expected this little experiment to hit Hacker News in quite the way it did, so the proxy is getting locked down.

66 points by jamesgpearce 16y ago

I was surprised when I was checking caniuse.com today that cross origin requests were supported pretty much across the board. Is there a reason you couldnt use them? http://caniuse.com/#feat=cors http://caniuse.com/#feat=cors

jamesgpearce 16y ago
The server needs to know what to do with them. Since I am only writing a client here, I can't do the server-side piece of the preflight checks etc Also the service needs to have a particular user-agent to work, so the proxy doubles up as a rewriter for that.

shortformblog 16y ago

You've gotten pretty far with this, and for that it's worth commending. Nice job. I look forward to seeing a polished version of this. You should offer it up to the BBC. :)

jamesgpearce 16y ago
Thanks. Stay tuned. I'm actually waiting for a Cease & Desist letter from them ;-)
- masklinn 16y ago
  Q: why not do an offline application? As far as I can tell, you don't talk about manifests and "offlining" it as if it were the normal BBC application. Any reason?
  - jamesgpearce 16y ago
    I will put a manifest on it, for sure... and the AJAX-stuff is cached via localStorage, so that already gets offline-ness

fortes 16y ago

I love this type of stuff. The project I'm working on right now is all about having a better experience than the iPad magazine apps, while using HTML/JS instead of proprietary tech. Here's a video demo of some of the layout, for the curious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt2iJZGqMpw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt2iJZGqMpw

alexbosworth 16y ago

Html5 on the ipad is still wishful thinking by people who don't want to bother being an ios developer. This demo is clearly worse than the BBC app and i have yet to see an ios web app that doesn't feel hacky and make me wish for a native version. In a couple generations when mobile CPUs are faster and ipads have more than 256mb of ram, we will see a repeat of the web app takeover that occurred on the desktop.

einarvollset 16y ago
Amen. I am more than a little sick of people opinionating about the greatness of all things HTML5 when they've clearly never tried to develop anything for either Android or iPhone, but simply wish that their existing experience directly translates. If you're downvoting, please shoot me an email with your html5 mobile app to prove me wrong: einar@lcrnd.com
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
balac 16y ago
you a probably right, but you still can't directly compare the full time efforts of the BBC with this single developers part time project. It would be interesting to see what the BBC themselves could produce in HTML.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
It's not expected to be the same quality as the BBC app, it's a demo. More precisely a proof of concept. The message here is that if the BBC spent as much money making a high quality "mobile" html5 version of their site as they spent on the iPad app they would have just as good an end user experience with a lot fewer issues. For one you save all the money it takes to get an app into the app store (remembering that developer time and effort == money). For another you get the benefit of supporting more platforms instantly, iPad, iPhone, netbooks, android phones, etc.
- alexbosworth 16y ago
  A disclaimer: my company develops iOS apps on contract so I am a bit biased in preferring native code, but I have tried to do HTML5 as a substitute in the past. In my experience trying to develop HTML5 apps instead of a native app: 1) Development (and design) time is roughly equivalent between an iOS developer and an HTML developer, because of time trying to copy things that native code gets for free. 2) It's a bad idea to use a cheap HTML developer because there is a lot of stuff to work around, a good HTML5 iPad app is not something you can really do by dragging things around in dreamweaver. 3) What you wind up developing will have to be majorly modified for another platform due to iOS specific bugs, features and chrome. 4) You will never reach the same quality in HTML5 because the iPad has issues relating to CPU, RAM, and bugs or missing features in Safari that Apple doesn't seem too bothered to fix. As a proviso, in some circumstances, like for simple apps that don't need to be perfect, HTML5 is a good idea. What I'm saying is that in most cases native will be better in time/money spent and quality of resulting product.

jacquesm 16y ago

Anybody that plans a business on a mobile platform based on app sales should take note of this, even if it isn't there yet I really think that it is the future. We've already seen this movie before, and if google docs is possible on a desktop/laptop + serverfarm you really have to wonder how long it is going to take before history repeats itself and 'apps' will go the way of a large number of desktop applications that are now 'web-apps'.

maxklein 16y ago
You forget that 'apps' started off as web-apps in the first iphone, and neither the users nor developers liked them, so the SDK was released. The future lies in thicker clients, particularly for mobile where the internet is not as assured as on a desktop.
- stevanl 16y ago
  Considering most of those thick mobile applications would rely on the internet for one reason or another, it's not wrong to assume that web-apps could take the reign in the future. After all, HTML offers more capability now than it did back when the iPhone was released.
  - arethuza 16y ago
    I've been doing a fair bit of development with jQTouch, jQuery, offline web apps and the SQL database engine accessible from JavaScript in Safari and it's a pretty sweet combination.
  - Supermighty 16y ago
    >fter all, HTML offers more capability now than it did back when the iPhone was released. Over all web apps offer more control for the developer as well.
- pornel 16y ago
  Web app situation on iPhone has improved considerably since pre-SDK days: • In 1.0 there was no offline cache or local storage. You had to download whole app each time over 2G. • JS was many times slower (pre-SquirrelFish engine, slower hardware). • No CSS transitions or animations. Now you can have 3D hardware-accelerated layers in CSS. • You couldn't get rid of status bar and Safari toolbars. Now iOS allows apps to take over entire screen (if user bookmarks page on home screen). Also developers needed some time to learn how to use WebKit features. Instead of dumbed-down CSS you can use some CSS3 and -webkit- properties. Instead of slow and limited onclick you can use non-standard touch events, etc.

abbetts 16y ago

Html/js is good for some UI parts of an app but eventually makes one yearn for native threading/locking, queueing, posting notifications, for that last 10-20% of code.

revicon 16y ago

Looking at the way the proxy was created on the Nginx server, it seems he's created an open http proxy that's asking to be abused. Anyone could make a curl request to that /apps/bbc-news/proxy uri and pass whatever URL they wanted to hit via the x_bbc_url http header. Doing this, any request they make would appear to come from the whitherapps.com (or whatever) domain. I can see the 4chan guys having a field day with this posting spam to boards their own IPs have been banned from. Seems like the server should only allow http proxying to a white list of domains, or better yet, a white list of urls.

jamesgpearce 16y ago
Yeah - you're right... I hadn't expected this little experiment to hit Hacker News in quite the way it did, so the proxy is getting locked down.