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Honestly, it is kind of sad, rather disastrous, that a leading site such as Linkedin is unable to stir things up a bit and come out with the exact truth. When

Honestly, it is kind of sad, rather disastrous, that a leading site such as Linkedin is unable to stir things up a bit and come out with the exact truth. When he says "... we’re seeing that more and more people are spending more time in the app, and the app is running out of memory ..." what he means here is that memory allocation to the browser on iPad (for example) is too little to handle the volume of user interest. Mark his words, users ARE interested to see the wild wild web through their browsers, even porn, but it is the vendors of these closed gardens that have made it difficult for everyone. This is certainly not the fault of HTML5/web developers, or lovers of open web, but only of the vendors who have not provided sufficient resources or enough support for web standards on their stack. We're actually back into 1995, I think, with every other for-profit firm talking about its own "experience" and "standards" these days. Edit: This discussion is meant specifically for browsers supplied on iPad/Android tablets. Not the desktop browsers which are not only good but also in an extremely competitive space (Thanks to Firefox!).

nashequilibrium 14y ago
It is very frustrating, mobile web is being held back to allow the walled Gardens to prosper. They expect the web to die and apps to rule the world but this is a fallacy since we will loose so much freedom and info if this had to happen. Also we are seeing the bad side of apps which are "redundancy" and a lot of pointless apps that should actually just be web apps. These apps don't use any of the device capabilities. Also apps decay really quick, if you have an older device you find that you end up updating the app and it runs really bad whereas on the web you can still use a Pentium 2 and browse the web. At some point i am hoping that the market moves towards providing the browsers access to the device api's, until then we have to crank out the objective C and Java!
- namespace 14y ago
  With Firefox and Tizen OS the dream of web first should move closer to reality. Count on Mozilla to move the web forward!
threeseed 14y ago
Really Apple hasn't given enough support for web standards ? Because I wonder where the world would be today without WebKit.
- venomsnake 14y ago
  In the same place ... the webkit revolution started with V8 when we saw how fast web stuff and javascript can be. As long as there was any kind of layout engine for google to stitch their VM to the revolution would have happened.
- harshal 14y ago
  Apple deserves a lot of credit for their support for WebKit, particularly in its early days. But even old time apple webkit devs will readily admit that the existence of Mozilla made WebKit much more viable back in the day. Mac's had practically no marketshare during those days. The fact that Mozilla existed and had a reasonable amount of marketshare across platforms made it possible for Apple to ship anything other than IE as a default browser on Mac. Mozilla maintained the incentive for webdevs to support non-IE browsers, and use standards-compliant CSS. Desktop Safari as a default browser would not have been a viable product if so many webdevs had not already worked to make their sites work well with Gecko/Firefox. Webkit sends "like Gecko" in its user-agent string for a very good reason. In other words, a lot of the web kept using standards (and not IE proprietary stuff) since they wanted to work in Mozilla browsers. And all of this content tended to also work well in webkit as well. This made Safari useful and viable. So, its at least somewhat reasonable to say that Mozilla and Firefox are perhaps primarily responsible for keeping the desktop browser market open for non-IE products. Their existence and marketshare allowed the newer browsers to compete on the basis features and performance and not be hobbled by poor website compatibility.
- jasonlotito 14y ago
  Just fine. It wasn't WebKit that helped prop up web standards. It was Mozilla.
JackdawX 14y ago
> When he says "... we’re seeing that more and more people are spending more time in the app, and the app is running out of memory ..." what he means here is that memory allocation to the browser on iPad (for example) is too little to handle the volume of user interest. He's probably saying that the entire app is a single html page, and all the content is loaded using ajax and created programatically. This process naturally leaks memory unless you're very, very careful. Many ordinary websites have problems with leaks, but nobody notices until you're on a phone with limited RAM. Basically, this is the wrong way to write a mobile app or mobile website (or any website). > This is certainly not the fault of HTML5/web developers, or lovers of open web, but only of the vendors who have not provided sufficient resources I don't think theres any walled-garden conspiracy going on here - I honestly think this is the fault of the linkedin devs (or more likely project managers). What does a linkedin app need to do? Mostly they just need to do is display profile text and a few images inline. A mobile browser can display text and images perfectly fine - thats its bread and butter functionality. If you're having problems there, you done fucked up. I bet the app had a bunch of unnecessary css animations, js widgets replacing html components, custom layouts done in javascript, etc. Was the old app ever released? Did anyone have a chance to use it?
- kalleboo 14y ago
  > I bet the app had a bunch of unnecessary css animations, js widgets replacing html components, custom layouts done in javascript, etc These things are required to make an attractive app. If HTML5 can't hack it and native apps can, then HTML5 is a failure.
  - robmcm 14y ago
    Well said, there is a difference between website and web app. It's a hard line to find, but there is a big difference between Gmail and Hacker News.
    - oftenwrong 14y ago
      FWIW, the mobile web version of Gmail works well.
rimantas 14y ago
> users ARE interested to see the wild wild web through > their browsers, even porn, but it is the vendors of these > closed gardens that have made it difficult for everyone They can do. Fire away mobile safari and browse whatever you want. > This discussion is meant specifically for browsers supplied on > iPad/Android tablets Then this is so wrong. Take a look where the first appearance of <canvas>, hardware accelerated CSS transforms and animations took place.

nashequilibrium 14y ago

It is very frustrating, mobile web is being held back to allow the walled Gardens to prosper. They expect the web to die and apps to rule the world but this is a fallacy since we will loose so much freedom and info if this had to happen. Also we are seeing the bad side of apps which are "redundancy" and a lot of pointless apps that should actually just be web apps. These apps don't use any of the device capabilities. Also apps decay really quick, if you have an older device you find that you end up updating the app and it runs really bad whereas on the web you can still use a Pentium 2 and browse the web. At some point i am hoping that the market moves towards providing the browsers access to the device api's, until then we have to crank out the objective C and Java!

namespace 14y ago
With Firefox and Tizen OS the dream of web first should move closer to reality. Count on Mozilla to move the web forward!

threeseed 14y ago

Really Apple hasn't given enough support for web standards ? Because I wonder where the world would be today without WebKit.

venomsnake 14y ago
In the same place ... the webkit revolution started with V8 when we saw how fast web stuff and javascript can be. As long as there was any kind of layout engine for google to stitch their VM to the revolution would have happened.
harshal 14y ago
Apple deserves a lot of credit for their support for WebKit, particularly in its early days. But even old time apple webkit devs will readily admit that the existence of Mozilla made WebKit much more viable back in the day. Mac's had practically no marketshare during those days. The fact that Mozilla existed and had a reasonable amount of marketshare across platforms made it possible for Apple to ship anything other than IE as a default browser on Mac. Mozilla maintained the incentive for webdevs to support non-IE browsers, and use standards-compliant CSS. Desktop Safari as a default browser would not have been a viable product if so many webdevs had not already worked to make their sites work well with Gecko/Firefox. Webkit sends "like Gecko" in its user-agent string for a very good reason. In other words, a lot of the web kept using standards (and not IE proprietary stuff) since they wanted to work in Mozilla browsers. And all of this content tended to also work well in webkit as well. This made Safari useful and viable. So, its at least somewhat reasonable to say that Mozilla and Firefox are perhaps primarily responsible for keeping the desktop browser market open for non-IE products. Their existence and marketshare allowed the newer browsers to compete on the basis features and performance and not be hobbled by poor website compatibility.
jasonlotito 14y ago
Just fine. It wasn't WebKit that helped prop up web standards. It was Mozilla.

JackdawX 14y ago

> When he says "... we’re seeing that more and more people are spending more time in the app, and the app is running out of memory ..." what he means here is that memory allocation to the browser on iPad (for example) is too little to handle the volume of user interest. He's probably saying that the entire app is a single html page, and all the content is loaded using ajax and created programatically. This process naturally leaks memory unless you're very, very careful. Many ordinary websites have problems with leaks, but nobody notices until you're on a phone with limited RAM. Basically, this is the wrong way to write a mobile app or mobile website (or any website). > This is certainly not the fault of HTML5/web developers, or lovers of open web, but only of the vendors who have not provided sufficient resources I don't think theres any walled-garden conspiracy going on here - I honestly think this is the fault of the linkedin devs (or more likely project managers). What does a linkedin app need to do? Mostly they just need to do is display profile text and a few images inline. A mobile browser can display text and images perfectly fine - thats its bread and butter functionality. If you're having problems there, you done fucked up. I bet the app had a bunch of unnecessary css animations, js widgets replacing html components, custom layouts done in javascript, etc. Was the old app ever released? Did anyone have a chance to use it?

kalleboo 14y ago
> I bet the app had a bunch of unnecessary css animations, js widgets replacing html components, custom layouts done in javascript, etc These things are required to make an attractive app. If HTML5 can't hack it and native apps can, then HTML5 is a failure.
- robmcm 14y ago
  Well said, there is a difference between website and web app. It's a hard line to find, but there is a big difference between Gmail and Hacker News.
  - oftenwrong 14y ago
    FWIW, the mobile web version of Gmail works well.

rimantas 14y ago

> users ARE interested to see the wild wild web through > their browsers, even porn, but it is the vendors of these > closed gardens that have made it difficult for everyone They can do. Fire away mobile safari and browse whatever you want. > This discussion is meant specifically for browsers supplied on > iPad/Android tablets Then this is so wrong. Take a look where the first appearance of <canvas>, hardware accelerated CSS transforms and animations took place.