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It seems to me that some of the issues you mention with web apps would also be apparent with native apps acting as a front-end to online apps. Network transfers

• algore 16y ago
  > Network transfers and latency can result in pauses and delays that would impact user experience more than choppy transitions, and native apps can't change that. Yes they can. Things can be pre-loaded in the background. Data can be queued. Storage can be local. I know you can find some package or framework somewhere that attempts to do these things in a web browser, but its all hacks. Stateless HTML is not a application development platform. > I feel like SMBs are the target of web-based mobile frameworks Sure, that's possible. But there are also people creating native frameworks to put SMBs into apps. Magazines are a good example. The big publishers are making their own apps, but they're are also working on frameworks to deliver other magazines. Then there are non-publishers like Zinio that are making the platform for any magazine to be published. > Is it worth the time and cost to create native front-ends for iOS, Android, BB, W7P? I'm not arguing that everyone who wants a blog needs to write their own blog software. No, obviously they can use something like Wordpress, and let WP worry about the programming and compatibility, and they can concentrate on content. Same goes for apps. I'm simply saying that native apps always were superior to webapps. People forgot because it became so easy and cheap to churn out functional web code. AND because these mobile client devices were closed off for development for so long. Love him or hate him, Jobs opened up everything with the iPhone SDK. I think the expectation of a company to have a native app today is equivalent to the expectation that they would have a website in 1997. Back then it was a very expensive proposition. Today EVERYONE has a website. Tomorrow everyone will have an app. Doesn't mean they have to hire their own software team to build it from scratch.
  • jasonlotito 16y ago
    > Yes they can. Things can be pre-loaded in the background. Data can be queued. Storage can be local. I know you can find some package or framework somewhere that attempts to do these things in a web browser, but its all hacks. Stateless HTML is not a application development platform. I think you fail to realize this can be accomplished using the tools in the article. They have access to things like this, including cameras and what not. You keep saying things that make no sense in context.
    • algore 16y ago
      You fail to realize that these "tools" are ugly hacks to make HTML do things it's clearly not well suited to do. Why continue to struggle with a flawed platform? > You keep saying things that make no sense in context. In what context is that? I'm looking around, I'm seeing movement by Microsoft, Apple, and Google to limited-purpose simplified computers with app stores built in. I'm seeing developers actually able to sell software again. I'm seeing rich, beautiful interfaces that are responsive and smooth. I'm seeing voice, camera, accelerometer, and GPS integration. And I'm seeing it in native software TODAY. It works now, it's not beta, and it's making money. Tell me where I'm wrong? Can you hack together a way to do all this in JS? Maybe, but it's unreliable, and it's years away from being comparable. Sure, you can wait 2 years until it's figured out, by then it will be outdated again anyway. I think you're very comfortable writing your web apps, it's something you understand and you're good at it, and naturally you're resisting change. But the industry is not going to stop changing because you're good at CSS hacks to make rounded corners on div blocks and you just wish we'd keep doing it that way because it's easy for you.
      • jasonlotito 16y ago
        > I'm looking around, I'm seeing movement by Microsoft, Apple, and Google to limited-purpose simplified computers with app stores built in. I'm seeing developers actually able to sell software again. I'm seeing rich, beautiful interfaces that are responsive and smooth. I'm seeing voice, camera, accelerometer, and GPS integration. And I'm seeing it in native software TODAY. It works now, it's not beta, and it's making money. Tell me where I'm wrong? Your not. However, I haven't argued against this. > You fail to realize that these "tools" are ugly hacks to make HTML do things it's clearly not well suited to do. Well, good thing they aren't using HTML then. > In what context is that? In the context of the article. PhoneGap let's you create native software but using technology like HTML and JS that hooks into Apple's (and others) existing API. More importantly, Apple uses XML for it's UI as well, so the difference between HTML and Apple's own XML format for it's UI is negligible. > and naturally you're resisting change. The industry is changing from desktop TO web-based. Your cherished MS, Apple, and Google agree with this as well, as you can see by their plans to not only support, but promote these types of applications. And, in this case, I can either follow the lead of Apple, MS, Google, and Mozilla, or take the advice of some nobody random commenter with a stick up his ass. Maybe you can explain how these companies are wrong?