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Yes, yes, a million times yes. Facebook is very resource intensive (in terms of data+media loading over the wire) but there are certainly ways to work around th

Yes, yes, a million times yes. Facebook is very resource intensive (in terms of data+media loading over the wire) but there are certainly ways to work around this. Yahoo mail's mobile site (at least on my iPhone 4 with ios5) is a good example of this. The main problem with HTML5 media apps today is that they must be developed with a primary focus on optimization from the start. This is unfortunate, and will hopefully change, but it is possible. But seriously, saying "HTML5 failed you" when you don't even compile your scripts and initial resources to require a minimal amount of requests is just ludicrous. To clarify: I'm not saying that facebook's HTML5 developers can't hold their own -- they produced a great looking mobile app with a truckload of functionality (and believe me, I understand code bloat). Maybe someday it will run flawlessly on mobile. But right now to produce a nice experience in HTML5 you must optimize from the start. Run your code on the device from day 1, not in Chrome with the vertical web inspector! Host your scripts on dev servers with artificial lag. Figure out what's slowing you down on day 1 and work around it! And one day you won't have to :)

batista 14y ago
>Yahoo mail's mobile site (at least on my iPhone 4 with ios5) is a good example of this. An app which all of 50 people use --and many of them curse while doing it.
- TallGuyShort 14y ago
  On the Kindle Fire (and my Android phone) at least, their mail app puts most others to shame. It's one thing they've done extremely well.
- rodion_89 14y ago
  According to comScore, Yahoo Mail is the third largest mail provider with over 300 million users. Kicker: > in the U.S., Yahoo is No. 1, with 96.6 million active users http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20114975-52/microsoft-aiming-to-clean-up-hotmail-users-inboxes/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20114975-52/microsoft-aimi...
- arrowgunz 14y ago
  50? It's more than 50 million if I am not wrong. Get your facts right.
waterlesscloud 14y ago
But that more or less just leads to the question: If HTML5 requires extra work to get right, isn't that what Zuckerberg was saying?
- nostrademons 14y ago
  It's not really that HTML5 requires extra work, it's that it lets you get away with not putting in extra work that you have to put in anyways with native mobile apps, and then the lack of that work ends up biting you in the end. One of the big promises of mobile HTML5 was that you could just take your desktop web apps, scale them down, give them new CSS, and they'd "just work". It doesn't work that way. You need to test on actual mobile devices from the start, you need to account for the lower CPU performance of them, you need to figure in higher latency over 3G connections vs. wired LANs. You have to do all of this on native apps anyway, but you know you have to do it from the start, otherwise you can't even get your app to display, and the frameworks are built with this in mind. There're still some areas where HTML5 wins - it's easier to update the app, for one, and it's more familiar to web developers. But the developer-convenience scales were not shifted as far to the HTML5 side as people hoped they were. I'm still not sure which technology is, on the whole, better for mobile apps. But one of the signs that you actually understand a problem domain is that you can give advice more specific than just "Competing technology X is better than competing technology Y". We aren't going to get that in a TechCrunch soundbite; there're a lot of specifics that depend upon exactly what your market is.
  - DeepDuh 14y ago
    So why bothering at this point? If I have to optimize for a given platform, I'd rather use the programming environment that gives me the best tooling.
    - nl 14y ago
      It depends on exactly how much you end up having to optimize for each platform, and how much reuse you get between platforms. If your app is a simple broacherware+notifications app, then HTML5 is probably the way to go. If you can afford expert developers for every platform and mobile is critical to your success then 100% native makes sense. There just isn't a simple answer here. To quote nostrademons: I'm still not sure which technology is, on the whole, better for mobile apps. But one of the signs that you actually understand a problem domain is that you can give advice more specific than just "Competing technology X is better than competing technology Y"
deleted 14y ago
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batista 14y ago

>Yahoo mail's mobile site (at least on my iPhone 4 with ios5) is a good example of this. An app which all of 50 people use --and many of them curse while doing it.

TallGuyShort 14y ago
On the Kindle Fire (and my Android phone) at least, their mail app puts most others to shame. It's one thing they've done extremely well.
rodion_89 14y ago
According to comScore, Yahoo Mail is the third largest mail provider with over 300 million users. Kicker: > in the U.S., Yahoo is No. 1, with 96.6 million active users http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20114975-52/microsoft-aiming-to-clean-up-hotmail-users-inboxes/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20114975-52/microsoft-aimi...
arrowgunz 14y ago
50? It's more than 50 million if I am not wrong. Get your facts right.

waterlesscloud 14y ago

But that more or less just leads to the question: If HTML5 requires extra work to get right, isn't that what Zuckerberg was saying?

nostrademons 14y ago
It's not really that HTML5 requires extra work, it's that it lets you get away with not putting in extra work that you have to put in anyways with native mobile apps, and then the lack of that work ends up biting you in the end. One of the big promises of mobile HTML5 was that you could just take your desktop web apps, scale them down, give them new CSS, and they'd "just work". It doesn't work that way. You need to test on actual mobile devices from the start, you need to account for the lower CPU performance of them, you need to figure in higher latency over 3G connections vs. wired LANs. You have to do all of this on native apps anyway, but you know you have to do it from the start, otherwise you can't even get your app to display, and the frameworks are built with this in mind. There're still some areas where HTML5 wins - it's easier to update the app, for one, and it's more familiar to web developers. But the developer-convenience scales were not shifted as far to the HTML5 side as people hoped they were. I'm still not sure which technology is, on the whole, better for mobile apps. But one of the signs that you actually understand a problem domain is that you can give advice more specific than just "Competing technology X is better than competing technology Y". We aren't going to get that in a TechCrunch soundbite; there're a lot of specifics that depend upon exactly what your market is.
- DeepDuh 14y ago
  So why bothering at this point? If I have to optimize for a given platform, I'd rather use the programming environment that gives me the best tooling.
  - nl 14y ago
    It depends on exactly how much you end up having to optimize for each platform, and how much reuse you get between platforms. If your app is a simple broacherware+notifications app, then HTML5 is probably the way to go. If you can afford expert developers for every platform and mobile is critical to your success then 100% native makes sense. There just isn't a simple answer here. To quote nostrademons: I'm still not sure which technology is, on the whole, better for mobile apps. But one of the signs that you actually understand a problem domain is that you can give advice more specific than just "Competing technology X is better than competing technology Y"

deleted 14y ago

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