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The Decline of the Mobile Web

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Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web

#71

Post by mikegioia »

josu wrote: post #58
msvan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a scrapeability problem; it's a freedom problem. The article mentions this. Why should the app stores decide what can and cannot be on our phones, and why should they add a 30% tax on everything that is published on mobile? There are a lot of claims that the tech industry is disrupting the big music and books businesses, for the benefit of consumers, but these new players are acting like the middlemen they a…

>Why should the app stores decide what can and cannot be on our phones This is not a freedom problem. You have the freedom to buy an Android device, and you have the freedom to install any apk you want without ever even opening the Google app store. Moreover, Google even allows 3rd party app stores on their devices. And of course these new players are acting as middlemen, but you are forgetting the fundamental differ…

    There are no gatekeepers, who decide what gets published
    and what doesn't, anymore.
Apple routinely rejects applications to their App store. Have you not read any of the numerous stories where app devs get denied?

    This is not a freedom problem. You have the freedom to
    buy an Android device, and you have the freedom to install
    any apk you want without ever even opening the Google app 
    store.
The freedom to do something like "install any app via .apk" may exist, but it is still a "freedom problem" when there's a large barrier to installing an .apk on your device. I'm speculating of course, but real world anecdotes would lead me to believe that a very small % of the population even knows what an APK is.

Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web

#72

Post by digitalengineer »

rimantas wrote: post #41
digitalengineer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR? Anyone recommend a fast frondend set? HTML5 boilerplate or Bootstrap, or...?

You don't get fast by adding frameworks, you get fast by removing them.

Ha ha correct of course. It's all about the budget though. Quick and affordable equals frameworks.

Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web

#73

Post by makmanalp »

josu wrote: post #58
msvan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a scrapeability problem; it's a freedom problem. The article mentions this. Why should the app stores decide what can and cannot be on our phones, and why should they add a 30% tax on everything that is published on mobile? There are a lot of claims that the tech industry is disrupting the big music and books businesses, for the benefit of consumers, but these new players are acting like the middlemen they a…

>Why should the app stores decide what can and cannot be on our phones This is not a freedom problem. You have the freedom to buy an Android device, and you have the freedom to install any apk you want without ever even opening the Google app store. Moreover, Google even allows 3rd party app stores on their devices. And of course these new players are acting as middlemen, but you are forgetting the fundamental differ…

Disagree. First of all, Google's practices aren't the norm, and might not remain the norm. Second of all, merely making and supporting your app multiple times for different platforms using their different visual / interaction idioms is a large economic effect. Even with cross-platform mobile frameworks, unless you decide not to test / support platforms other than your main one.

Standards are good because they bridge this gap. C runs on everything, e-mail runs on everything, the web runs on everything. Mobile web, for the most part, runs on everything.

edit: For the record, I do think that the mobile web standards need more work, but they're quite good at this point, and adoption is much better than 2 years ago. I'd like to see open standards for push notifications, for example (apparently there is some work done: http://www.w3.org/TR/push-api/).

Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web

#74

Post by diminish »

kayoone wrote: post #65

Reality is that the mobile web experience currently is worse than native mobile apps. No matter how much you want "open", or how much faster your latest web-mobile framework is, right now people still prefer the app experience. That might change, but i suspect it will take some time.

5" or larger iphone may change US iphone users attitude on app vs web decision..On my tablet and 6" phablet I avoid apps as much as I can.. Since I disagree with you I'm curious of your smartphone size..

Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web

#75

Post by bennettfeely »

untog wrote: post #19
stevewilhelm wrote: post #16

Mobile websites can not send push notifications, use location information, receive iBeacon broadcasts, etc. To provide a state of the art user experience on mobile devices, you need to write an app.

They can use location information. And gyroscope and accelerometer. The issue is that apps are diverting attention - otherwise mobile browsers might have implemented push notifications for pages by now. Firefox OS does it, and Safari on desktop has notifications. It's close, but no-one is shouting at the manufacturers to push it over the line.

HTML5 is catching up though, the Device orientation API, getUserMedia API, Notification API, etc. bring native app functionality to websites.

Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web

#76

Post by _random_ »

jsnk wrote: post #13

I wrote about this problem here ( http://serv.github.io/blog/2014/02/20/unfortunate-state-of-m... ). Mobile Web sucks because there's an incentive problem. No one really has strong incentive to make mobile web better. Performance issues are largely an effect of this root incentive problem. (edited from "cause" to "effect") - Users have a strong preconceived notion that websites on mobile just suck compared to native…

- Developers not happy using crappy legacy-compatible languages that can't be forked.

Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web

#77

Post by stonogo »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #25

It seems 'mobile apps' are like Flash was in the 90's, basically a way to take full control over the UX to achieve some particular goal. Given the preponderance of such apps it seems as if home screens are due for a make over that looks more like iPod music libraries than 'desktop.' Basically something which supports dozens if not hundreds of apps on a device.

The entirety of current web design practice is taking full control over the UX. Gone are the days when you sent a GET and got an html document back, the most interactive element of which was a textarea box.

The other reason flash was a pain, incidentally, was because it was easy to bog down a client computer with overzealous flash stuff... just like the current tendency to use javascript to do all your rendering and computation clientside -- exactly when more people than ever before are browsing on pocket devices with far less horsepower than traditional computing devices.

Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web

#78

Post by frik »

coffeecodecouch wrote: post #23

The problem is that the large majority of people, even the youth of today[0], are incredibly un-tech savvy. Unless your website or game is packaged into a simple app you just can't rely on people to visit it or even find it in the first place. [0] http://coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-comput...

Yes, that's exactly the problem. Kids that are born in the 90ies and younger see computer "gadgets" as given. They don't try to play around with it and discover its functionality. They just play casual games on smartphones and video consoles. They hate computer science classes in school, etc. And as a result they are incredibly un-tech savvy. But it's also the elder generation (60+) that just bought their first computer device (smartphones/tablets).

Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web

#79

Post by kayoone »

diminish wrote: post #74
kayoone wrote: post #65

Reality is that the mobile web experience currently is worse than native mobile apps. No matter how much you want "open", or how much faster your latest web-mobile framework is, right now people still prefer the app experience. That might change, but i suspect it will take some time.

5" or larger iphone may change US iphone users attitude on app vs web decision..On my tablet and 6" phablet I avoid apps as much as I can.. Since I disagree with you I'm curious of your smartphone size..

I want the mobile web to succeed as much as the next guy here, i am just talking about the general smartphone using population. But even for me, things like twitter/facebook/youtube are just a better experience in app form.
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