Live data from Hacker News

Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

sencha.com

61–70 of 166 posts

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#61

I ran the HTML5 app on my iTouch 4G running iOS 6 (roughly equivalent to iPhone 3GS) and compared it to the native FB app. The HTML5 app had noticeable lag in the swipe transitions. It also crashed once when loading a photo (only once though). Not to mention that they implement almost everything differently and leave out 90% of FB's features. That being said, it was really smooth on my iTouch 5G. The demo HTML5 app a…

Even when browsers are powerfull enough the mess what is trying to shoehorn technologies created for hyperlinked text into apps development will still be a mess. It may appeal for those who know only the said technologies, but frankly, they would be better of by just learning the native instead of spending time traying to fight quirks. As for the appeal "run everythere"—that's just some more quirks. Good luck with th…

What mess? HTML/CSS/JS is exceptionally good at building user interfaces. And you're on the right side of technology by attaching yourself to the HTML bandwagon. I would go as far as to say that if you're starting development on a new ("form-based") native app, your first choice should be HTML. You only go native if you have a very good reason to do so.

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#62
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when browsers are powerfull enough the mess what is trying to shoehorn technologies created for hyperlinked text into apps development will still be a mess. It may appeal for those who know only the said technologies, but frankly, they would be better of by just learning the native instead of spending time traying to fight quirks. As for the appeal "run everythere"—that's just some more quirks. Good luck with th…

It's all about who is able to get their VM in the most places; Java already lost that battle and Flash is on the way out. It seems like JavaScript is the new ActionScript.

>It seems like JavaScript is the new ActionScript

Not even close.

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this argument makes no sense. When you go native, you have to write N number of apps for N number of platforms you want to support. The point is that making a great mobile app is hard no matter what stack you choose to use. It's also a bit disingenuous to say you are forced to optimize every HTML5 app. The whole point of Sencha's blog post is to advertise the fact that they've abstracted away all those optimizati…

Maybe people that make this argument only care about supporting one (or two) platforms.

IMO as soon as you want to support two platforms natively you've nearly doubled your work.

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#64

Where are the benchmark reports on phone's from 1.5 to 4.1? 64% of android phone's are still pre-honeycomb(3.0). HTML5 on Android is good now but it sucks on those earlier phones. I am sure Facebook has to take care of everyone.

For those who need a source for segmentation of android versions in use: http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#65
post #10

Why do we see plenty of articles saying that HTML5 can be as good or better than native code and no actual applications doing it? Facebook and Google tried and miserably failed, LinkedIn and Twitter are probably the ones closest to actually doing it, but users still prefer the native version, why? One I think is a big reason is clearly visible in the video: scrolling physics are different. It's annoying and feels wro…

Google has failed miserably? You might want to tell them that. I'm pretty sure their iOS dept will be shocked to hear that. The scrolling physics are wrong because they made the horrid decision to emulate that stupid bouncy scrolling. The damn stuff makes my head hurt compared to the subtle, glow effect rather than shit bouncing around my screen. If they would let Chrome for Android handle the scrolling natively, I'm…

Why so angry?

Google's current iOS apps are great, the previous releases, the ones with heavy HTML use, were definitely not. I don't think they would be shocked by this, a guess supported by the fact that they have new, completely different ones.

It's wrong for Sencha to force the bounce where it doesn't belong, but that's not what I was referring to and the physics are wrong on iOS too.

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#66
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has failed miserably? You might want to tell them that. I'm pretty sure their iOS dept will be shocked to hear that. The scrolling physics are wrong because they made the horrid decision to emulate that stupid bouncy scrolling. The damn stuff makes my head hurt compared to the subtle, glow effect rather than shit bouncing around my screen. If they would let Chrome for Android handle the scrolling natively, I'm…

Why so angry? Google's current iOS apps are great, the previous releases, the ones with heavy HTML use, were definitely not. I don't think they would be shocked by this, a guess supported by the fact that they have new, completely different ones. It's wrong for Sencha to force the bounce where it doesn't belong, but that's not what I was referring to and the physics are wrong on iOS too.

I'm not angry, you're just confused.

>Google's current iOS apps are great, the previous releases, the ones with heavy HTML use, were definitely not

I'd check again (they're still largely html5).

>but that's not what I was referring to and the physics are wrong on iOS too.

Right, but that's because they're completely hijacking the scroll behavior to be able to do the "fancy" inertial and bounce scrolling...

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#67

I ran the HTML5 app on my iTouch 4G running iOS 6 (roughly equivalent to iPhone 3GS) and compared it to the native FB app. The HTML5 app had noticeable lag in the swipe transitions. It also crashed once when loading a photo (only once though). Not to mention that they implement almost everything differently and leave out 90% of FB's features. That being said, it was really smooth on my iTouch 5G. The demo HTML5 app a…

Safari uses a tracing JIT compiler, meaning that it's taking pieces of javascript and, in real time, turning them into machine code and executing the machine code. It then will save these "traces" and reuse them for recurring pieces of code.

This requires special permission to add execute permission to memory that the app had allocated and used for data, which is pretty dangerous. So Safari gets it and 3rd party apps do not.

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#69
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when browsers are powerfull enough the mess what is trying to shoehorn technologies created for hyperlinked text into apps development will still be a mess. It may appeal for those who know only the said technologies, but frankly, they would be better of by just learning the native instead of spending time traying to fight quirks. As for the appeal "run everythere"—that's just some more quirks. Good luck with th…

It's all about who is able to get their VM in the most places; Java already lost that battle and Flash is on the way out. It seems like JavaScript is the new ActionScript.

Uhh, what?

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#70
post #10

Why do we see plenty of articles saying that HTML5 can be as good or better than native code and no actual applications doing it? Facebook and Google tried and miserably failed, LinkedIn and Twitter are probably the ones closest to actually doing it, but users still prefer the native version, why? One I think is a big reason is clearly visible in the video: scrolling physics are different. It's annoying and feels wro…

Add Tumblr to that list as well. They recently converted their iOS app from essentially pure HTML5 to pure native, which was no easy feat considering the dynamic nature of blog posts on Tumblr, which can contain almost arbitrary HTML content.

http://engineering.tumblr.com/post/35271768127/tumblr-for-ip...

Of course, HTML5 proponents will continue to ignore these major data points.

Post reply on HN