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Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

engineering.shopify.com

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Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#341

Post by fingerlocks »

orange8 wrote: post #334
fingerlocks wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they don't need to know any objc/swift/java/kotlin to build the product. I have a hard time believing this, and I've been making apps on both platforms for >10 years. And I love react-native. My latest day job is basically forking popular react-native packages, often rewriting them in Swift, fixing numerous bugs, and adding features specific for our company. And all this experience has taught me that in no way can…

> And all this experience has taught me that in no way can you expect anything but the most basic, ugly CRUD app from a JS dev. > I've been making apps on both platforms for >10 years. And I love react-native Doesn't this make you a JS dev too? Or how exactly do you define JS dev?

"JS dev" is shorthand for "JS-only dev".

I made Android apps in Java and iOS apps in ObjC/Swift for many years. I still mostly write native code, but now I'm writing native code in various react-native packages.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#342

Post by brailsafe »

mellosouls wrote: post #331

This is an interesting read and may be the full story, and a completely justified strategy. But at the risk of sounding cynical, I'd be interested in any political motivations - if he's a new VP, it wouldn't have been unheard of for unnecessary swashbuckling Transformation Projects to be kicked off under the new regime for no obvious reason. Complete conjecture, I have no inside knowledge, just have seen this happen…

It happens all the time. At a large corporate place I was working frontend at, our dpmt manager spent almost no time with the teams and all time concerned with outout metrics. When his boss looked to be retiring and the prospect came up to get his job, he started a new year by—seemingly with no knowledge of how things were working—by shuffling all the teams based on how he thought people should be organized. He then kicked off two or three major tight deadline high budget projects with those new teams, and proceeded to take a vacation. Needless to say there was a lot of turnover, I got terminated, projects failed, and he got his promotion somehow.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#343

Post by JamesSwift »

newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

Messenger, Mail, and Teams would be absolutely crippled without background support and notifications. Maps would be somewhat viable, and I'm not familiar with White Noise.

Also, 'native parity' is a moving goalpost. At the point you get support for all those things across all platforms, what else has been added to native that you are now missing?

This isn't even considering the fact that there is no incentive for apple to play nicely without an anti-trust ruling against them.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#344

Post by WA »

rayiner wrote: post #316
newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

Users hate web apps, especially on mobile, and it has nothing to do with functionality. Web apps on the App Store invariably provoke angry screeds about how the look and feel is not right. Native apps are even more essential on mobile. On the desktop, web apps just look weird and waste battery life. On mobile, they feel wrong. That difference in feel provokes visceral hatred.

No. Designers and some devs hate web apps for minuscule reasons your average user doesn’t care about and doesn’t notice at all.

If an app helps them to get a task done, it simply doesn’t matter if the thing is native or not. At least, if you use a somewhat reasonable UI approach like Ionic.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#345

Post by scarface74 »

troquerre wrote: post #282
newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

The power of websites is that they run cross-platform. If your website works on chrome on windows it’ll work (for the most part) on Firefox on Mac and safari on iOS. Apple is against this philosophically because it doesn’t take advantage of the unique capabilities their devices provide. It’s the same reason why Apple stopped supporting flash https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

That’s not true.

Back in 2007, Adobe claimed that they could get Flash working on the original iPhone if Apple had allowed them.

When they finally got it to run on Android years later, it required a 1Ghz processor and 1GB of RAM and it still barely ran and was horrible on battery life. The original iPhone had 128Mb of RAM and a 400Mhz processor. It wasn’t until around 2011 when there was an iPhone that met those specs.

Adobe was always late delivering Flash on mobile from Android phones and Palm phones.

It was so bad, that the Motorola Xoom was advertised to be able to browse the “real Internet” because it could support Flash. At launch it didn’t. Leaving it in the embarrassing position that you couldn’t browse the Xoom advertising page that required Flash on a Xoom.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#347

Post by scarface74 »

ohadron wrote: post #181
newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

Technically, and from user experience point of view, this makes perfect sense. Native apps are rarely actually needed. However, Apple is making a huge pile of money out of app store sales, and it has huge leverage as long as the 'app' model lives on. They are strong enough to prevent this from happening. Ever ask yourself why mobile iOS web doesn't support push notifications like Android does? It's because that will…

As I asked before, which apps have you paid for, that would have been better as a web app, and that needed push notifications?

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#348

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

JamesSwift wrote: post #343
newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

Messenger, Mail, and Teams would be absolutely crippled without background support and notifications. Maps would be somewhat viable, and I'm not familiar with White Noise. Also, 'native parity' is a moving goalpost. At the point you get support for all those things across all platforms, what else has been added to native that you are now missing? This isn't even considering the fact that there is no incentive for app…

Progressive web apps can already receive notifications.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#349

Post by wayne_skylar »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #102
newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

Only if mobile web can jump the hurdle of feel. Even the best mobile web apps still feel kinda clunky/laggy in subtle ways that the average native app doesn’t. It’s actually pretty comparable to the situation with desktop Linux where the gaps between the layers are subtly perceptible, which leads to a sort of slipshod/duct tape impression that isn’t great.

This is the right answer. You've got the web paradigm of the nav bar showing up when you scroll up (among other oddities). I think it would be very easy to have a mobile browser extension to show pages full screen in a special interactivity mode to make most mobile apps work on the web.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#350

Post by scarface74 »

brlewis wrote: post #142
EthanHeilman wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Literally all of them could be implemented as responsive pages with acceptable performance. Speaking personally I like the division between highly sandboxed websites (no GPS access, no notifications, etc...) and trusted apps.

This is only because the trust given to apps is insane. No distinction between foreground GPS and background GPS? Sure, I wouldn't want web sites to work that way either. But if permissions were sane there would be no reason not to have native apps and web apps ask for the same permissions in the same way.

There has been a distinction between the two on iOS for at least two years.
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