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500MB download? Why didn't Wired Magazine use HTML5 for their iPad app?

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Re: 500MB download? Why didn't Wired Magazine use HTML5 for their iPad app?

#41

Post by DrSprout »

andybak wrote: post #26
DrSprout wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, but if their intent was to show what a load of nonsense Apple's insistence that native apps are better is, it sounds like they couldn't have done a better job.

Did you RTFA? You could have made this a native app using the webkit control and bundled all the content in a 10th of the size.

Yeah, I'm saying that from what I'm reading they must have intentionally been looking to create a completely native app that is worse than the Flash-compiled one.

That or the descriptions of the app are somewhat overcritical.

Re: 500MB download? Why didn't Wired Magazine use HTML5 for their iPad app?

#42

Post by wizard_2 »

wmf wrote: post #22
ajg1977 wrote: post #12

A better article would be "Why Wired Didn't use HTML5 for their iPad App". Since that probably wouldn't have the same link-bait worthy title, I'll write one here. Why didn't Wired use HTML5? 1) a) it was built by Adobe who build it on Flash to begin with, b) the tools just aren't there yet. c) because of #2. 2) Why is the app 500MB? Because all the rich content (images, movies, audio) are bundled into the app so you…

Why is the app 500MB? Because all the rich content are bundled into the app The article says that rich content isn't the source of the bloat: Each full page is a giant image – there are actually two images for each page: one for landscape and one for portrait mode. If the app stored text as, you know, text then presumably it would require significantly less space. Eliminating the portrait/landscape duplication would…

The crazy layouts wired is somewhat famous for hardly translate to plain text with a few graphics. I don't know what they use to layout their magazine (or what they used 10 years ago!) but it's not html5. Translating, migrating, converting, or adapting their content to anything other then an image (except maybe PDF!?) would be extremely non trivial.

Re: 500MB download? Why didn't Wired Magazine use HTML5 for their iPad app?

#45

Post by neovive »

Watching all of the iPad demos, it appears very likely that publishers see this "new" format as an opportunity to monetize content that the web (HTML) has been marginalizing. At the moment, most users just want to read good articles and content, which is freely available on the web. Publishers, Wired in this example and many more likely to follow, are looking for a way to differentiate their content by building an engaging experience around it. No one really knows for sure how this work out in the long run, but I do agree with the author in that it is very reminiscent of the CD-ROM era.

Re: 500MB download? Why didn't Wired Magazine use HTML5 for their iPad app?

#46

Post by ajg1977 »

andybak wrote: post #28
ajg1977 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refer you to my last sentence: What would be the benefit in this when tools for building rich HTML5 apps are non-existent?

That's funny. As far as I can tell all the tools that are used for HTML (text editors and IDE's mainly) seem to be working pretty well for HTML5. And if you mean WYSIWYG then that market is dominated by Dreamweaver and even that has added HTML5 support.

Because you CAN churn out HTML5 in different text editors (or Dreamweaver) doesn't mean they're a GOOD way to generate rich content.

While I think Flash (the authoring tool) is a bloated mess, it's light years ahead of anything that exists for creating interactive content with HTML5/CSS/Javascript. There are no good tools for generating something like the Wired app in HTML5.

Re: 500MB download? Why didn't Wired Magazine use HTML5 for their iPad app?

#47

Post by petercooper »

alex_c wrote: post #23
petercooper wrote: post #17

Clause 3.3.1 states: Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine This means that any "interactive" elements must either be written directly in Objective C, or you're confined entirely to WebKit. If you don't fancy building new Objective C apps every time you roll out an issue of your magazine, you have two options.. do it entirely in WebKit…

I don't really understand your point, can you elaborate? That's all that's being discussed here - native app vs. HTML5 (or some hybrid, which is perfectly valid under 3.3.1).

In an ideal world, your magazine app wouldn't be solely using Webkit, because you might want to create elaborate and performant interactive elements.

However, creating these "by hand" in Objective C for each issue would be time intensive. Instead, you'd usually use a scripting language or a framework like Flash to create interactive elements that are beyond JavaScript's reach. 3.3.1 invalidates this approach requiring you either go Webkit, totally native, or, well, nowhere. There is no middle ground for scripting within apps beyond JavaScript on Webkit.

Re: 500MB download? Why didn't Wired Magazine use HTML5 for their iPad app?

#48

Post by petercooper »

ajg1977 wrote: post #24
petercooper wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the app had been based on HTML5 it would have been a 'mare to cache all of the content locally for offline viewing. HTML5 does offer local storage, but not in a way that would allow sites to cache 500MB of content. And even if they could, do you really want to wait 20 minutes for that Pixar feature to download over 3G? You can build an iPhone OS app that contains all of the data to be rendered by a Webkit UIWebVie…

I refer you to my last sentence: What would be the benefit in this when tools for building rich HTML5 apps are non-existent?

Odd. I don't remember seeing that. My apologies :-)

I don't agree the tools are non-existent, but to the "wwhat do you gain from that" part: distributing a packaged "Web site in an app" has significant App Store and UI benefits over a paywalled Web site.

Re: 500MB download? Why didn't Wired Magazine use HTML5 for their iPad app?

#49

Post by [deleted] »

jawngee wrote: post #37
betageek wrote: post #18

The fundamental argument is flawed - I find it extremely hard to believe that anyone could create the same seamless experience as the iPad Wired app in HTML5. I certainly haven't seen any demo's that would imply it's possible, saying "you could do that in HTML 5" if very easy to say, a lot harder to do. Maybe if the authors of these kinds of posts provided us with a demos I'd start taking these missives seriously.

I'm the author of the article. Have you used it? It really is pretty much a slideshow. Even if you write it using webkit, you can ape whatever wonderful interactions you seem to be having (that I must have completely missed) using multiple UIWebView's and some good ol CoreAnimation. You can also extend UIWebView with straight up Objective-C, further adding in the ability to do pretty much whatever you want. There are…

[deleted]

Re: 500MB download? Why didn't Wired Magazine use HTML5 for their iPad app?

#50

Post by JMiao »

wmf wrote: post #22
ajg1977 wrote: post #12

A better article would be "Why Wired Didn't use HTML5 for their iPad App". Since that probably wouldn't have the same link-bait worthy title, I'll write one here. Why didn't Wired use HTML5? 1) a) it was built by Adobe who build it on Flash to begin with, b) the tools just aren't there yet. c) because of #2. 2) Why is the app 500MB? Because all the rich content (images, movies, audio) are bundled into the app so you…

Why is the app 500MB? Because all the rich content are bundled into the app The article says that rich content isn't the source of the bloat: Each full page is a giant image – there are actually two images for each page: one for landscape and one for portrait mode. If the app stored text as, you know, text then presumably it would require significantly less space. Eliminating the portrait/landscape duplication would…

article could be wrong. there's a lot of high-quality video in the app.
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