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I am often impressed by how native some web-rendered mobile apps can feel. But as of a few years ago, as I understand the top N most popular, best-selling, hig

I am often impressed by how native some web-rendered mobile apps can feel. But as of a few years ago, as I understand the top N most popular, best-selling, highest revenue, etc. apps for both iOS and Android were mostly native apps, build with the primary native tooling/language/etc per-platform. Presumably this is because that last little bit of being native pays off in a highly competitive environment. I wonder if that is still true.

VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
It's definitely still true. I can spot a mobile app built with web tech pretty much instantly. It just feels very slightly crappy. I don't think there's any kind of library or framework that will ever fix that. Native is pretty much the only way to go if you really want the app to look/feel good.
- martini333 5y ago
  No, you cannot.
  - slater 5y ago
    Yes, you can.
- afavour 5y ago
  I’m less sure about that. You can spot a mobile app built with crappy web tech, because it is very slightly crappy. An app using web tech well would be indistinguishable from a native one. Case in point: years ago the Instagram activity feed was rendered in a webview. The only way I ever found out was because they clearly did a faulty deploy that was missing CSS: it rendered in Times New Roman with blue links, etc. But up until that point I didn’t have a clue and I do this stuff for a living. On iOS at least there are a ton of WKWebView APIs that aid native integration, you can even do force touch context menus and the like. It’s just that by and large people don’t.
  - marcellus23 5y ago
    > years ago the Instagram activity feed was rendered in a webview Isn’t the instagram activity feed just a big scrolling page of images and text? It doesn’t exactly have a lot of interactivity or animations and transitions, so maybe not the best example for what can be done with web APIs. Lots of native apps use web views for individual screens that display mostly static content, but that’s not really what’s being discussed.
    - afavour 5y ago
      Maybe we disagree about what’s being discussed: “mobile app made with web tech” definitely falls into that category for me. I bring it up because it isn’t hypothetical for me, I’ve received pushback against using webviews in these situations because “web stuff always looks awful” and I know that to not be the case. In any case the vast majority of native apps aren’t much more that scrolling lists themselves! Sometimes I think we overcomplicate our image of what native apps usually are. The OS-provided transitions between views are one of few big differentiators, IMO.
      - marcellus23 5y ago
        But then that’s just a native app that uses web views for some pieces. Every app does that. Native transitions between views are exactly what the posted link is discussing. For static content, of course there’s really not a difference. It’s the interactions that matter.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      > maybe not the best example for what can be done with web APIs. Well, the page sucks. If they can't make such a simple thing right, perhaps wait before making something else? BTW almost all such pages on the web suck (Twitter comes to mind) and are worse than native versions
  - spiffytech 5y ago
    > You can spot a mobile app built with crappy web tech, because it is very slightly crappy. An app using web tech well would be indistinguishable from a native one. I've seen many people remark that they can reliably spot a web-based mobile app, and this response is exactly what goes through my mind. My core rebuttal is that we generally don't get feedback about our guesses - we don't get corrected if we guess wrong about what powers an app. So maybe we'll correctly guess the most obvious cases, but that gives us false confidence about our overall accuracy.
dariosalvi78 5y ago
a simple web app with a good CSS framework can be hardly distinguishable from a native one. There will always be some UI quirks, for example how the back button in Android is handled, but probably few users will notice them.

VWWHFSfQ 5y ago

It's definitely still true. I can spot a mobile app built with web tech pretty much instantly. It just feels very slightly crappy. I don't think there's any kind of library or framework that will ever fix that. Native is pretty much the only way to go if you really want the app to look/feel good.

martini333 5y ago
No, you cannot.
- slater 5y ago
  Yes, you can.
afavour 5y ago
I’m less sure about that. You can spot a mobile app built with crappy web tech, because it is very slightly crappy. An app using web tech well would be indistinguishable from a native one. Case in point: years ago the Instagram activity feed was rendered in a webview. The only way I ever found out was because they clearly did a faulty deploy that was missing CSS: it rendered in Times New Roman with blue links, etc. But up until that point I didn’t have a clue and I do this stuff for a living. On iOS at least there are a ton of WKWebView APIs that aid native integration, you can even do force touch context menus and the like. It’s just that by and large people don’t.
- marcellus23 5y ago
  > years ago the Instagram activity feed was rendered in a webview Isn’t the instagram activity feed just a big scrolling page of images and text? It doesn’t exactly have a lot of interactivity or animations and transitions, so maybe not the best example for what can be done with web APIs. Lots of native apps use web views for individual screens that display mostly static content, but that’s not really what’s being discussed.
  - afavour 5y ago
    Maybe we disagree about what’s being discussed: “mobile app made with web tech” definitely falls into that category for me. I bring it up because it isn’t hypothetical for me, I’ve received pushback against using webviews in these situations because “web stuff always looks awful” and I know that to not be the case. In any case the vast majority of native apps aren’t much more that scrolling lists themselves! Sometimes I think we overcomplicate our image of what native apps usually are. The OS-provided transitions between views are one of few big differentiators, IMO.
    - marcellus23 5y ago
      But then that’s just a native app that uses web views for some pieces. Every app does that. Native transitions between views are exactly what the posted link is discussing. For static content, of course there’s really not a difference. It’s the interactions that matter.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > maybe not the best example for what can be done with web APIs. Well, the page sucks. If they can't make such a simple thing right, perhaps wait before making something else? BTW almost all such pages on the web suck (Twitter comes to mind) and are worse than native versions
- spiffytech 5y ago
  > You can spot a mobile app built with crappy web tech, because it is very slightly crappy. An app using web tech well would be indistinguishable from a native one. I've seen many people remark that they can reliably spot a web-based mobile app, and this response is exactly what goes through my mind. My core rebuttal is that we generally don't get feedback about our guesses - we don't get corrected if we guess wrong about what powers an app. So maybe we'll correctly guess the most obvious cases, but that gives us false confidence about our overall accuracy.

dariosalvi78 5y ago

a simple web app with a good CSS framework can be hardly distinguishable from a native one. There will always be some UI quirks, for example how the back button in Android is handled, but probably few users will notice them.