4 ms·

The thing is, the web will never ever catch up to native. The web is too fragmented, has too many libraries, differing philosophies and paradigms, and is too fa

The thing is, the web will never ever catch up to native. The web is too fragmented, has too many libraries, differing philosophies and paradigms, and is too far removed from the hardware to even compete. You think you'll ever see something like Flipboard built on Phonegap? Pretty unlikely.

pbreit 12y ago
Actually, a pure content app like Flipboard I could easily see being developed on Famous/PhoneGap.
- argonaut 12y ago
  There's a big argument against doing something like that in PhoneGap. Phonegap/JS does not have (low-overhead, easy to use) multithreading. I can guarantee you that something like Flipboard is loading/marshalling all the content and data in a background queue of some sort. Maybe even doing some background rendering. It bears noting that running background tasks in iOS is extremely easy for developers.
  - nicholasreed 12y ago
    I bet a Flipboard-clone wouldn't be too difficult for a few engineers to bang out in Famo.us. But then again, the value of Flipboard isn't in being a beacon of iOS beauty and functionality, but instead lies in the apps wonderfully-curated content.
    - argonaut 12y ago
      If Flipboard had any regular, perceptible lag, no one would use it.
  - pbreit 12y ago
    You don't think that's possible on JavaScript/PhoneGap?
    - argonaut 12y ago
      It's not currently possible today (Web Workers are high-overhead and quite limited) and I haven't seen it in any of the standards for browsers that will be implemented for the foreseeable future. Are there any solutions you can think of?
      - pbreit 12y ago
        Famo.us?
        argonaut 12y ago
        Does famo.us do multithreading? (hint: no, because JS can't do multithreading except for high-performance-overhead, clunky Web Workers)
adamcmiel 12y ago
Hey guys, I work at Famo.us and we've recreated the Flipboard flipping interaction in Famo.us as an internal demo and wrapped it in Cordova with great success. I'll look into publishing this as a demo or making it public.
- brandon272 12y ago
  Look forward to seeing it. Thanks!
malandrew 12y ago
The thing is that the web doesn't need to catch up to native. The web just needs to satisfy the definition of "quality" held by the majority of users, where "quality" is defined as "fitness for use". It's not only possible, but almost certain that the web will achieve acceptable performance for 99% of use cases in the next 1-2 years. After that, the web ends up with greater "fitness for use", since they can be ephemeral (instant, on-demand, no installation required), which native apps cannot do. The only place where native is likely to hold out for the long term is 3D head mounted displays like the Oculus Rift.

pbreit 12y ago

Actually, a pure content app like Flipboard I could easily see being developed on Famous/PhoneGap.

argonaut 12y ago
There's a big argument against doing something like that in PhoneGap. Phonegap/JS does not have (low-overhead, easy to use) multithreading. I can guarantee you that something like Flipboard is loading/marshalling all the content and data in a background queue of some sort. Maybe even doing some background rendering. It bears noting that running background tasks in iOS is extremely easy for developers.
- nicholasreed 12y ago
  I bet a Flipboard-clone wouldn't be too difficult for a few engineers to bang out in Famo.us. But then again, the value of Flipboard isn't in being a beacon of iOS beauty and functionality, but instead lies in the apps wonderfully-curated content.
  - argonaut 12y ago
    If Flipboard had any regular, perceptible lag, no one would use it.
- pbreit 12y ago
  You don't think that's possible on JavaScript/PhoneGap?
  - argonaut 12y ago
    It's not currently possible today (Web Workers are high-overhead and quite limited) and I haven't seen it in any of the standards for browsers that will be implemented for the foreseeable future. Are there any solutions you can think of?
    - pbreit 12y ago
      Famo.us?
      - argonaut 12y ago
        Does famo.us do multithreading? (hint: no, because JS can't do multithreading except for high-performance-overhead, clunky Web Workers)

adamcmiel 12y ago

Hey guys, I work at Famo.us and we've recreated the Flipboard flipping interaction in Famo.us as an internal demo and wrapped it in Cordova with great success. I'll look into publishing this as a demo or making it public.

brandon272 12y ago
Look forward to seeing it. Thanks!

malandrew 12y ago

The thing is that the web doesn't need to catch up to native. The web just needs to satisfy the definition of "quality" held by the majority of users, where "quality" is defined as "fitness for use". It's not only possible, but almost certain that the web will achieve acceptable performance for 99% of use cases in the next 1-2 years. After that, the web ends up with greater "fitness for use", since they can be ephemeral (instant, on-demand, no installation required), which native apps cannot do. The only place where native is likely to hold out for the long term is 3D head mounted displays like the Oculus Rift.