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Are native apps more popular than the web? Probably not. Is it harder to make a web app to the same level of quality as a native app? Absolutely. Making a "pro

Are native apps more popular than the web? Probably not. Is it harder to make a web app to the same level of quality as a native app? Absolutely. Making a "proper responsive website" for mobile is far more difficult than it needs to be. Assuming it can even be done. Some things you simply can't do. Can you reach just short of native quality by expending significantly more time and effort? Yes! Is that stupid and wasteful? Absolutely.

woah 12y ago
It's definitely hard to do animations and touch interactions as good as native apps. Making responsive websites is really really easy for an experienced designer and/or html coder.
- lftl 12y ago
  Absolutely. I think the disconnect is when some people compare native vs. web, they mean a web app that closely mimics a native app. That's absolutely hard to do, and often not worth the effort. But building a responsive website that simply functions well even if it doesn't try to feel native on every platform is not a major undertaking.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - hiphopyo 12y ago
    > That's absolutely hard to do, and often not worth the effort. I'm not sure I agree. The JS libs are out there, you just need to find them.
    - hiphopyo 12y ago
      My GitHub search skills aren't the best, but here are some of the nicer ones I've found: Dynamic Physics Interactions for the Mobile Web: https://github.com/luster-io/impulse https://github.com/luster-io/impulse Facebook and Path style side menus: https://github.com/jakiestfu/Snap.js/ https://github.com/jakiestfu/Snap.js/ Smooth scrolling: https://github.com/cubiq/iscroll https://github.com/cubiq/iscroll Add to home screen call-out for mobile devices: https://github.com/cubiq/add-to-homescreen https://github.com/cubiq/add-to-homescreen Cross-browser usage of the JavaScript Fullscreen API: https://github.com/sindresorhus/screenfull.js/ https://github.com/sindresorhus/screenfull.js/ Anybody know of any more?
- chinathrow 12y ago
  This. And don't forget fastclick. https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick
  - hiphopyo 12y ago
    Note that this behavior is already default in mobile web frameworks such as jQuery Mobile.
    - chinathrow 12y ago
      Right. But I guess I can't include jQuery Mobile alongside jQuery on a fully responsive app (no specific mobile version at this point of time), can I?
      - hiphopyo 12y ago
        Why would you not be able to use jQuery Mobile alongside jQuery in a fully responsive app?
  - paulirish 12y ago
    Off-topic but fastclick is mostly uncessary at this point: http://developer.telerik.com/featured/300-ms-click-delay-ios-8/ http://developer.telerik.com/featured/300-ms-click-delay-ios...
    - chinathrow 12y ago
      "Mostly" - but iOS 8 makes it mandatory, not? "That being said, it is unfortunate that we still need to include a JavaScript library to workaround a limitation of the mobile web." Thanks for the great link though!
- forrestthewoods 12y ago
  I disagree simply because almost major website has significant usability issues with mobile. Often relating to touch input. I'm genuinely surprised anytime an image gallery is swipeable and it even half works. It's easy to say that obviously they are shitty designers and/or coders and all they have to do is take the time to do it right. Well doing it right takes too much effort. And doing it right still doesn't get you all the way there. For any site with even a moderate degree of complexity there are always little bugs. It's just a fact of life in the HTML/CSS world.
  - hiphopyo 12y ago
    > Well doing it right takes too much effort. Who told you that? It doesn't take any more effort than a normal desktop site given the right tools.
    - forrestthewoods 12y ago
      No person said it with words. Websites said it with their behavior. There isn't even a widely supported, idiomatic way to switch between high dpi and low dpi images for crying out loud. It's been at least 5 years since such devices were common and wide spread.
      - hiphopyo 12y ago
        > No person said it with words. Websites said it with their behavior. No doubt, the majority of mobile websites need their asses kicked.
      - Bahamut 12y ago
        That's not a good enough indicator - it is removed from important context that may be relevant.
      - milkytoast 12y ago
        img srcset + a polyfill?
- mbesto 12y ago
  > Making responsive websites is really really easy for an experienced designer and/or html coder. Migrating old websites that do not respond + adapting web based apps to mobile is however, not very easy. These two cases are probably 90% of the use cases, as opposed to the other 10% that are "really really easy".
  - Encosia 12y ago
    I agree with you, but you could say that about any site migration though, right? It's never easy to pull an old site forward to a new design/structure, responsive or not. That's been a huge pain point for as long as large sites have existed.
  - tomelders 12y ago
    You can't retro fit responsiveness. Or at least you can, but it's such a bad idea that no one should try it. It's the quickest route to legacy CSS that no one will every want to touch again. It means starting again, from design and UX all the way up to build. So for the entity that owns the website/web app it's going to be painful, but for every new website/web app, it's the norm and is pretty easy.
Encosia 12y ago
To underbluewaters' example of just getting a simple recipe on the screen, building a mobile-friendly page to display that kind of content is certainly not hard. For example, this is a recipe page that I personally worked on a few months ago (sorry, we didn't have a chicken tikka masala recipe...): http://tailgating.publix.com/recipes/29/caramel-hickory-chicken-with-crunchy-asian-slaw http://tailgating.publix.com/recipes/29/caramel-hickory-chic... On my phone, that page is every bit as quick as a native app. The presentation doesn't suffer. It's actually quite a bit better than many native apps I've had the misfortune of installing. More importantly, the content is actually discoverable from web search. The alternative is forcing the user to choose a recipes app from an opaque app store search, wait to download/install it, then search in that single silo of content and hope it has the content they want. Then, rinse/repeat if they don't find a recipe they like. Even if they happen to find a nice native app on the first try that does have a good UI, good content, and the specific content they want, that is a vastly inferior experience. Can you create a poor mobile web experience? Sure. The situation isn't very much different than janky, slow desktop sites that are laden with too many third-party scripts for ads, tracking, social, etc. Mobile does exacerbate the effect of that kind of sloppiness, but I think that stems from sites where content is secondary to advertising/social, not the feasibility or difficulty of creating a good mobile web experience. I was going to add a disclaimer to the link above asking folks to be gentle if they peeked under the hood, because I developed that site in an insanely short amount of time for how much content and functionality is there, but maybe that's an important data point in and of itself. If it were so difficult to develop a decent mobile web experience, there's no way I could have shipped that full site in about two weeks of billable hours. Not to mention, we focused a lot more on the desktop layout than mobile, based on analytics. I wouldn't say mobile was an afterthought, but the phone layout was a fairly small fraction of the overall effort.
- peterhunt 12y ago
  That app's nav menu feels sticky when you're closing it.
  - Encosia 12y ago
    It's definitely not perfect. Like I mentioned, it was developed on an incredibly tight budget/timeframe. I wish I'd had budget to polish several things like that throughout the site. I do still think a user that searches the web for a hickory chicken tailgating recipe is still a lot better served by even that imperfect mobile web page than the alternative native workflow though. Not to say that native isn't ever a better choice for some types of apps, of course, but content like this is exactly the web's sweet spot. (BTW, I've been playing with React lately and am loving it; great work. Looking forward to giving React Native a shot at replacing Cordova for some of my clients)

woah 12y ago

It's definitely hard to do animations and touch interactions as good as native apps. Making responsive websites is really really easy for an experienced designer and/or html coder.

lftl 12y ago
Absolutely. I think the disconnect is when some people compare native vs. web, they mean a web app that closely mimics a native app. That's absolutely hard to do, and often not worth the effort. But building a responsive website that simply functions well even if it doesn't try to feel native on every platform is not a major undertaking.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- hiphopyo 12y ago
  > That's absolutely hard to do, and often not worth the effort. I'm not sure I agree. The JS libs are out there, you just need to find them.
  - hiphopyo 12y ago
    My GitHub search skills aren't the best, but here are some of the nicer ones I've found: Dynamic Physics Interactions for the Mobile Web: https://github.com/luster-io/impulse https://github.com/luster-io/impulse Facebook and Path style side menus: https://github.com/jakiestfu/Snap.js/ https://github.com/jakiestfu/Snap.js/ Smooth scrolling: https://github.com/cubiq/iscroll https://github.com/cubiq/iscroll Add to home screen call-out for mobile devices: https://github.com/cubiq/add-to-homescreen https://github.com/cubiq/add-to-homescreen Cross-browser usage of the JavaScript Fullscreen API: https://github.com/sindresorhus/screenfull.js/ https://github.com/sindresorhus/screenfull.js/ Anybody know of any more?
chinathrow 12y ago
This. And don't forget fastclick. https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick
- hiphopyo 12y ago
  Note that this behavior is already default in mobile web frameworks such as jQuery Mobile.
  - chinathrow 12y ago
    Right. But I guess I can't include jQuery Mobile alongside jQuery on a fully responsive app (no specific mobile version at this point of time), can I?
    - hiphopyo 12y ago
      Why would you not be able to use jQuery Mobile alongside jQuery in a fully responsive app?
- paulirish 12y ago
  Off-topic but fastclick is mostly uncessary at this point: http://developer.telerik.com/featured/300-ms-click-delay-ios-8/ http://developer.telerik.com/featured/300-ms-click-delay-ios...
  - chinathrow 12y ago
    "Mostly" - but iOS 8 makes it mandatory, not? "That being said, it is unfortunate that we still need to include a JavaScript library to workaround a limitation of the mobile web." Thanks for the great link though!
forrestthewoods 12y ago
I disagree simply because almost major website has significant usability issues with mobile. Often relating to touch input. I'm genuinely surprised anytime an image gallery is swipeable and it even half works. It's easy to say that obviously they are shitty designers and/or coders and all they have to do is take the time to do it right. Well doing it right takes too much effort. And doing it right still doesn't get you all the way there. For any site with even a moderate degree of complexity there are always little bugs. It's just a fact of life in the HTML/CSS world.
- hiphopyo 12y ago
  > Well doing it right takes too much effort. Who told you that? It doesn't take any more effort than a normal desktop site given the right tools.
  - forrestthewoods 12y ago
    No person said it with words. Websites said it with their behavior. There isn't even a widely supported, idiomatic way to switch between high dpi and low dpi images for crying out loud. It's been at least 5 years since such devices were common and wide spread.
    - hiphopyo 12y ago
      > No person said it with words. Websites said it with their behavior. No doubt, the majority of mobile websites need their asses kicked.
    - Bahamut 12y ago
      That's not a good enough indicator - it is removed from important context that may be relevant.
    - milkytoast 12y ago
      img srcset + a polyfill?
mbesto 12y ago
> Making responsive websites is really really easy for an experienced designer and/or html coder. Migrating old websites that do not respond + adapting web based apps to mobile is however, not very easy. These two cases are probably 90% of the use cases, as opposed to the other 10% that are "really really easy".
- Encosia 12y ago
  I agree with you, but you could say that about any site migration though, right? It's never easy to pull an old site forward to a new design/structure, responsive or not. That's been a huge pain point for as long as large sites have existed.
- tomelders 12y ago
  You can't retro fit responsiveness. Or at least you can, but it's such a bad idea that no one should try it. It's the quickest route to legacy CSS that no one will every want to touch again. It means starting again, from design and UX all the way up to build. So for the entity that owns the website/web app it's going to be painful, but for every new website/web app, it's the norm and is pretty easy.

Encosia 12y ago

To underbluewaters' example of just getting a simple recipe on the screen, building a mobile-friendly page to display that kind of content is certainly not hard. For example, this is a recipe page that I personally worked on a few months ago (sorry, we didn't have a chicken tikka masala recipe...): http://tailgating.publix.com/recipes/29/caramel-hickory-chicken-with-crunchy-asian-slaw http://tailgating.publix.com/recipes/29/caramel-hickory-chic... On my phone, that page is every bit as quick as a native app. The presentation doesn't suffer. It's actually quite a bit better than many native apps I've had the misfortune of installing. More importantly, the content is actually discoverable from web search. The alternative is forcing the user to choose a recipes app from an opaque app store search, wait to download/install it, then search in that single silo of content and hope it has the content they want. Then, rinse/repeat if they don't find a recipe they like. Even if they happen to find a nice native app on the first try that does have a good UI, good content, and the specific content they want, that is a vastly inferior experience. Can you create a poor mobile web experience? Sure. The situation isn't very much different than janky, slow desktop sites that are laden with too many third-party scripts for ads, tracking, social, etc. Mobile does exacerbate the effect of that kind of sloppiness, but I think that stems from sites where content is secondary to advertising/social, not the feasibility or difficulty of creating a good mobile web experience. I was going to add a disclaimer to the link above asking folks to be gentle if they peeked under the hood, because I developed that site in an insanely short amount of time for how much content and functionality is there, but maybe that's an important data point in and of itself. If it were so difficult to develop a decent mobile web experience, there's no way I could have shipped that full site in about two weeks of billable hours. Not to mention, we focused a lot more on the desktop layout than mobile, based on analytics. I wouldn't say mobile was an afterthought, but the phone layout was a fairly small fraction of the overall effort.

peterhunt 12y ago
That app's nav menu feels sticky when you're closing it.
- Encosia 12y ago
  It's definitely not perfect. Like I mentioned, it was developed on an incredibly tight budget/timeframe. I wish I'd had budget to polish several things like that throughout the site. I do still think a user that searches the web for a hickory chicken tailgating recipe is still a lot better served by even that imperfect mobile web page than the alternative native workflow though. Not to say that native isn't ever a better choice for some types of apps, of course, but content like this is exactly the web's sweet spot. (BTW, I've been playing with React lately and am loving it; great work. Looking forward to giving React Native a shot at replacing Cordova for some of my clients)