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Go native, HTML5 is going to lag for a while

blog.suthakamal.com

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Re: Go native, HTML5 is going to lag for a while

#61

Post by no_more_death »

batista wrote: post #53
recoiledsnake wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On iOS you are, as you say, SOL because Apple has literally crippled the options you have down to one: The one they supply and update, once a year Especially egregious given Steve Jobs' memo about not supporting Flash on iOS. http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ Some choice quotes: >Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining…

> It's been two and a half years since that, and still HTML5 has major issues. Given Apple's engineering prowess, I doubt that HTML5 is a priority for them, or else they would've had a great implementation by now. Well, noticed how Android's own web browser is even worse in HTML5 than Mobile Safari? And this is Google, the guys that really like mobile html5 apps. Fact is, it's not that easy to make a good mobile brow…

Picking on one point: "Well, noticed how Android's own web browser is even worse in HTML5 than Mobile Safari"

The stock Android browser fell behind in late 2010. If you follow PPK of quirksmode.org you know this (e.g., the following article was authored just before stock android fell behind: http://www.quirksmode.org/mobile/browsers.html). After that article he really began hating all over Android due to the fall-behind.

Basically, Google mostly abandoned the stock browser because they wanted to focus everything on Chrome for Android. They accomplished this last year, and it fixed virtually all the HTML5 complaints that have been leveled against Android. Chrome is only supported on Android 4+. Android 4+ devices are on track to become the best-selling Android phones of all time, such as the S3 which singlehandedly outsold the iPhone in August. In a year Android 2 & 3 will have negligible market share, as Froyo does today (15%).

Android with Chrome is at least as good as the iOS browser -- probably better. So this isn't a problem here.

Re: Go native, HTML5 is going to lag for a while

#62

Post by no_more_death »

SunboX wrote: post #49
josteink wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Android, you can install updated browsers like Firefox and Chrome. Not sure about how well their mobile counter-parts actually support HTML5, but at least you have a choice for a non-system-supplied browser. On iOS you are, as you say, SOL because Apple has literally crippled the options you have down to one: The one they supply and update, once a year.

> On Android, you can install updated browsers like Firefox and Chrome. But these Updates won´t affect UIWebViews :( (hybrid apps)

UIWebView on iPhone stinks pretty badly, too. Which, indeed, bears out the GP's point.

Re: Go native, HTML5 is going to lag for a while

#63

Post by andybak »

batista wrote: post #53
recoiledsnake wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On iOS you are, as you say, SOL because Apple has literally crippled the options you have down to one: The one they supply and update, once a year Especially egregious given Steve Jobs' memo about not supporting Flash on iOS. http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ Some choice quotes: >Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining…

> It's been two and a half years since that, and still HTML5 has major issues. Given Apple's engineering prowess, I doubt that HTML5 is a priority for them, or else they would've had a great implementation by now. Well, noticed how Android's own web browser is even worse in HTML5 than Mobile Safari? And this is Google, the guys that really like mobile html5 apps. Fact is, it's not that easy to make a good mobile brow…

It's slightly more complex than that. Google has made an effort to make Chrome the default browser going forward. However this will only affect Jelly Bean (and to a lesser extent ICS as it is an optional install there).

However I believe that apps still have to use the built in rendering engine when using the WebView control.

I'm not sure whether this is a strategic or technical decision from Google but I suspect the latter. Changing the WebView engine would have a major effect on compatibility for existing apps.

Re: Go native, HTML5 is going to lag for a while

#64

Post by _urga »

One way to help is to ask for lower level OS apis to be exposed by browsers, so that the open source community can do the rest:

1. Ask for UDP to be exposed to trusted web apps installed by the user. This will let the P2P community race ahead without having to wait for WebRTC to get released and then fixed.

2. Ask for TCP to be exposed to trusted web apps installed by the user. This will instantly enable things like SMTP clients running in the browser without the need for WebSocket proxies/proprietary gateway servers.

3. Ask for POSIX to be exposed to trusted web apps installed by the user. This will lead to an explosion of database innovation in the browser. IndexedDB is design-by-committee. Insist on proper POSIX not the FileSystem API. Borrow from the Node API. Impedance mismatch is crippling browser storage.

4. Low-hanging fruit: ask for LevelDB to be exposed directly (http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=128865). Most of the browser vendors are using LevelDB underneath IndexedDB, and just exposing LevelDB directly would already be a huge leap forward. No need to wait for the many IndexedDB bugs to get fixed by browser vendors.

Browser vendors are trying to do too much. Innovation needs to move from top-down to bottom-up. Browser vendors need to provide just basic access to bare metal and let OSS do the rest. UDP, TCP, POSIX would be a great start.

Re: Go native, HTML5 is going to lag for a while

#65

Post by jrajav »

johnx123-up wrote: post #36
focuser wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a sense, PhoneGap apps are actually NOT Web apps, they are native apps built using Web technologies.

No; they're webapps embedded in web browser aka WebView. Refer http://phonegap.com/2012/05/02/phonegap-explained-visually/

No they aren't, they use hooks to native phone functions. You can't write once, run everywhere.

They're native apps written in HTML, CSS, and Javascript. That doesn't mean they're web apps.

Re: Go native, HTML5 is going to lag for a while

#66

Post by rimantas »

ender7 wrote: post #13

Sadly, Apple and/or Google have the power to retard the adoption of HTML5 as long as they like. "But ender7," you say, "both Mobile Safari and Chrome have great support for HTML5." Yes, they do. Sort of. Except for the crippling bugs in many of their implementations. Some of these bugs render the APIs in question essentially useless on mobile. Or just a giant pain in the ass to work around. Or have performance issues…

  > How quickly these bugs (and perfomance issues) get fixed
  > will have a huge effect on HTML5 vs. native adoption.
Hardly. I say that as a guy who've spent more than a dozen years making web. HTML does not scare me, I like CSS and can do fancy stuff with it, I have no problem with JavaScript.

I am moving however to Objective-C and Cocoa world. It is so clean and tidy compared to the mess the web technologies stack is. And no matter how great support for HTML5 will be, no matter how performant it becomes—it will be well adopted and very performant mess. We can bring in frameworks and libraries, duct-tape things together, but we are long past the point where we could get rid of all the ugly heritage.

My feeling is, that web technologies will be used mostly for the content leaning apps, and for "apply" the native will be a clear choice.

Then there is this "cross-platform development" thing. Well, not sure about this one. I guess we are bound either to have mediocre solution for all, or bite the bullet and do native for each platform if best results are desirable.

Re: Go native, HTML5 is going to lag for a while

#67

Post by rimantas »

josteink wrote: post #59
batista wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's been two and a half years since that, and still HTML5 has major issues. Given Apple's engineering prowess, I doubt that HTML5 is a priority for them, or else they would've had a great implementation by now. Well, noticed how Android's own web browser is even worse in HTML5 than Mobile Safari? And this is Google, the guys that really like mobile html5 apps. Fact is, it's not that easy to make a good mobile brow…

Well, noticed how Android's own web browser is even worse in HTML5 than Mobile Safari? "Android's browser"? Care to elaborate on which browser that is? The one built from source? Which version of the source would that be? Or would it be Chrome? Or Firefox? Or Opera? Or Dolphin? Or Maxthon? or MIUI browser? Or the one included with TouchWiz? In which case, which version of Touchwiz? And how is it "even worse"? You mea…

> I'm not debating the correctness of your statement,

Actually you are.

> but when you start out with something as mindblowingly > pointless as "Android's browser is even worse" it's hard > to take the rest of your point seriously.

It is not pointless. Don't pretend to be silly as not to understand what "Android browser" is.

Re: Go native, HTML5 is going to lag for a while

#69

Post by rimantas »

jmitcheson wrote: post #37

Saying HTML5 won't be 'production ready' for a while, and saying that HTML5 will never be production ready are two very different things, but I feel people conflate the arguments all the time. If you do believe that HTML5 will eventually be production ready, even if not for another 2 years, ask yourself this: when that time comes, do you want to be the guy with 2 years experience or the guy with none? When the indust…

I am guy with more than 10 years experience, I am on WHATWG list since prehistoric times, when HTML5 was still called "Web Applications 1.0" and I will gladly use it for web content, but for mobile applications I choose native.
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