30 ms·

I agree with the "long tail of details". The big wins are championed while seemingly infinite little gotchas are glossed over. Native development appears to be

I agree with the "long tail of details". The big wins are championed while seemingly infinite little gotchas are glossed over. Native development appears to be linear and straightforward because there is one language and one API - "one thing" to reason about. Contrast that to all the context switching involved in a hybrid app. Portions are written in Obj-C, portions are dynamically built using data, portions are written in JS, CSS, HTML, and Rails. What about additional tools like SASS, jQuery, JS MVC of choice, etc, etc? A lot of moving parts can be hard to juggle, and slow development as app complexity/entropy sets in.

marknutter 12y ago
> Native development appears to be linear and straightforward because there is one language and one API - "one thing" to reason about. No. There are X languages and X API's to reason about when doing native development, X being the device OS's you want to target. If you're only targeting iOS and nothing else, then I would agree with you. This is a point that's also glossed over by native app proponents.
- tluyben2 12y ago
  Still takes longer for non trivial apps to get the it right on a large array of devices of X in Html than native. Especially using something like Xamarin I would gladly take up the challenge. Hybrid has it's place ofcourse; for more complex text markup embedded in apps.
- erichocean 12y ago
  > If you're only targeting iOS and nothing else, then I would agree with you. That's becoming outdated. We've got a native iOS app and we're doing the Android port with Apportable, which provides native iOS APIs and features on Android. The dev version (which we're using) implements its own Core Animation subsystem on top of OpenGL ES 2. It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than maintaing two separate codebases and it's far easier to fix whatever platform issues there are than the equivalent "long tail of details" you encounter working with web views.
  - marknutter 12y ago
    Cool, so that covers iOS and Android (with its own long tail I'm sure). You still have Web and Windows mobile to worry about assuming that platform continues to gain popularity.
    - alttab 12y ago
      Only Microsoft is worrying about Windows Phone.
      - erichocean 12y ago
        Apportable could be ported to run on Windows Phone, there just hasn't been any interest (or so I'm told). Much of it could also run via NaCl as a Chrome Packaged App, including the UI stuff. That's a much bigger change though, since you'd be supporting mouse events, not touch. But it's still doable.
- camus2 12y ago
  The point is.You cant get a native feel with web techs,you'd have to use the official device SDK. Web techs are for webapps.
  - marknutter 12y ago
    Except that you can get a native feel, as Basecamp has clearly demonstrated, if you utilize native SDK's where needed. Did you even read the article or try out their apps?
  - malandrew 12y ago
    Native feel is a false prophet. "Fitness for use" is what you should aim for. The web didn't have a native Windows 95 feel. ExtJS tried hard to achieve interfaces that aped the "native feel" of Windows. Only hardcore interface designers that actually know what "native feel" is care about native feel, and even then they will only care about it so long as the current fashion trend is achieving a native feel. Once non-native feeling apps achieve "fitness for use" en masses, the "native feel is canon" will no longer be part of the app zeitgeist.

marknutter 12y ago

> Native development appears to be linear and straightforward because there is one language and one API - "one thing" to reason about. No. There are X languages and X API's to reason about when doing native development, X being the device OS's you want to target. If you're only targeting iOS and nothing else, then I would agree with you. This is a point that's also glossed over by native app proponents.

tluyben2 12y ago
Still takes longer for non trivial apps to get the it right on a large array of devices of X in Html than native. Especially using something like Xamarin I would gladly take up the challenge. Hybrid has it's place ofcourse; for more complex text markup embedded in apps.
erichocean 12y ago
> If you're only targeting iOS and nothing else, then I would agree with you. That's becoming outdated. We've got a native iOS app and we're doing the Android port with Apportable, which provides native iOS APIs and features on Android. The dev version (which we're using) implements its own Core Animation subsystem on top of OpenGL ES 2. It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than maintaing two separate codebases and it's far easier to fix whatever platform issues there are than the equivalent "long tail of details" you encounter working with web views.
- marknutter 12y ago
  Cool, so that covers iOS and Android (with its own long tail I'm sure). You still have Web and Windows mobile to worry about assuming that platform continues to gain popularity.
  - alttab 12y ago
    Only Microsoft is worrying about Windows Phone.
    - erichocean 12y ago
      Apportable could be ported to run on Windows Phone, there just hasn't been any interest (or so I'm told). Much of it could also run via NaCl as a Chrome Packaged App, including the UI stuff. That's a much bigger change though, since you'd be supporting mouse events, not touch. But it's still doable.
camus2 12y ago
The point is.You cant get a native feel with web techs,you'd have to use the official device SDK. Web techs are for webapps.
- marknutter 12y ago
  Except that you can get a native feel, as Basecamp has clearly demonstrated, if you utilize native SDK's where needed. Did you even read the article or try out their apps?
- malandrew 12y ago
  Native feel is a false prophet. "Fitness for use" is what you should aim for. The web didn't have a native Windows 95 feel. ExtJS tried hard to achieve interfaces that aped the "native feel" of Windows. Only hardcore interface designers that actually know what "native feel" is care about native feel, and even then they will only care about it so long as the current fashion trend is achieving a native feel. Once non-native feeling apps achieve "fitness for use" en masses, the "native feel is canon" will no longer be part of the app zeitgeist.