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Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#51

Post by jpsim »

Here's what I've tried (mostly just for kicks) and my thoughts:

1. Native (iOS/Android)

2. Native (iOS/Android) with some content in webviews

3. PhoneGap (iOS & Android, cross platform, same app)

4. Xamarin (iOS)

5. RubyMotion (iOS)

I recommend 1 & 2 if you have the resources (time to learn native iOS/Android or an experienced developer available). A good approach is to write all the structure/navigation natively and individual content in webviews. LinkedIn's mobile team uses this technique exhaustively.

Xamarin and RubyMotion (4 & 5) are both great 2nd choices if you dislike the Objective-C / Java languages or your team is well versed in C#/ruby, but you'll still have to learn the SDKs. There isn't much you can't do in these frameworks that you could do "natively", since you're still hooking into the native runtimes (loosely speaking). Xamarin is a bit more stable than RubyMotion, imho.

I'd stay away from PhoneGap if possible. My main takeaway is that "write once, run everywhere, sdk agnostic" is a pipe dream. You'll be disappointed when you're investing tons of time in the last 10-20% of development, working with fringe cases on different platforms. If you find yourself considering PhoneGap, consider whether or not being on the App Store is necessary at all, or if you can get away with a standard web app through the browser.

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#52

Post by albertoavila »

My vote goes for native, i've built a series of wrapped html applications and the experience always is awful, as soon as you try to target something other than an iOS device you get tons of hard to fix bugs, awful performance and a bunch of weird glitches.

Going native takes only some more time at the beginning, but as every technology you can only get better at it with time, I would totally recommend avoiding wasting your time with hybrid solutions (Cordova) and go straight native (I know i wish i had).

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#54

Post by kronholm »

fungi wrote: post #38
fijter wrote: post #13

I've created native iOS apps, native Android apps, HTML5 apps and I've used wrappers (Titanium Mobile and PhoneGap) over the last few years and these are my findings: - Native apps take a lot of time to build, especially when you are a web-developer without in-depth knowledge of the extensive frameworks available to the native platforms. - Wrappers work, but are not nearly as great and snappy as native apps; They mig…

> HTML5 only apps are not available in the market/store where exactly does the cut off line exist? native/html5 is kinda gray.

I define the line at webview = html, no webview = native.

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#55

Post by chrisdevereux »

Intestesting that the poll results (currently) only give a slight edge to native, but the comments are overwhelmingly pro-native.

I can see two possible reasons for this:

1) Native developers are the more opinionated of the two.

2) People who actually have experience to communicate prefer native

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#56

Post by daraosn »

fijter wrote: post #13

I've created native iOS apps, native Android apps, HTML5 apps and I've used wrappers (Titanium Mobile and PhoneGap) over the last few years and these are my findings: - Native apps take a lot of time to build, especially when you are a web-developer without in-depth knowledge of the extensive frameworks available to the native platforms. - Wrappers work, but are not nearly as great and snappy as native apps; They mig…

You can also access the camera on iOS using HTML5, a bit buggy though: https://github.com/daraosn/Cordova-CanvasCamera, anyways I also second you, native development is always better, imo.

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#57

Post by kronholm »

fijter wrote: post #13

I've created native iOS apps, native Android apps, HTML5 apps and I've used wrappers (Titanium Mobile and PhoneGap) over the last few years and these are my findings: - Native apps take a lot of time to build, especially when you are a web-developer without in-depth knowledge of the extensive frameworks available to the native platforms. - Wrappers work, but are not nearly as great and snappy as native apps; They mig…

I'm curious in how you put Titanium next to PhoneGap (Disclaimer: I may be reading too much into that, or not understanding your meaning - 2nd language etc.).

My experience with Titanium is that you code in js or Alloy, then when building and deploying, you get native code, with native elements and everything.

Comparing it to PhoneGap, which purely runs in a slowish WebView isn't quite fair I think. Or has your experience been different?

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#58

Post by Cookingboy »

chrisdevereux wrote: post #55

Intestesting that the poll results (currently) only give a slight edge to native, but the comments are overwhelmingly pro-native. I can see two possible reasons for this: 1) Native developers are the more opinionated of the two. 2) People who actually have experience to communicate prefer native

Right, I think there are just overall more web developers than mobile developers out there (one has been around for much longer), and people who have had real experiences building mobile apps are still in the minority.

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#59

Post by AbsoluteDestiny »

ghaven wrote: post #26

How about kivy ( http://kivy.org/#home ) for something of a middle ground? It's a python graphical framework making heavy use of opengl via an optimised cython interface. It has fairly powerful access to the android api through pyjnius (which gives direct access to java classes) or pyobjus on ios (which is less mature but has the same idea). On the plus side, since it's native to the device (albeit with a different i…

The biggest downside I found with kivy is the amount of time it takes to launch the app as it has to set up the python environment et al. If that's improved with newer versions of kivy I might go back to see what it can do.

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#60

Post by nilliams »

kronholm wrote: post #57
fijter wrote: post #13

I've created native iOS apps, native Android apps, HTML5 apps and I've used wrappers (Titanium Mobile and PhoneGap) over the last few years and these are my findings: - Native apps take a lot of time to build, especially when you are a web-developer without in-depth knowledge of the extensive frameworks available to the native platforms. - Wrappers work, but are not nearly as great and snappy as native apps; They mig…

I'm curious in how you put Titanium next to PhoneGap (Disclaimer: I may be reading too much into that, or not understanding your meaning - 2nd language etc.). My experience with Titanium is that you code in js or Alloy, then when building and deploying, you get native code, with native elements and everything. Comparing it to PhoneGap, which purely runs in a slowish WebView isn't quite fair I think. Or has your exper…

I think you're right to make this distinction. Titanium doesn't belong in the 'wrappers' family and would be better grouped with other 'cross-platform native' solutions like Xamarin [1], perhaps a 4th category in parent's list.

[1] http://xamarin.com/

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