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Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat

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Re: Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat

#41

Post by aliakhtar »

sytelus wrote: post #33

Web APIs are in essence becoming an abstraction layer between OS and applications. It's not just about browser anymore. Browser is just one of the host for these APIs. In next decade or so, we should have all the power built in to standards that eliminates pretty much any advantage that native application can possibly have - even for heavy duty 3D gaming and offline video editing scenarios. Web APIs will and should b…

> In next decade or so, we should have all the power built in to standards that eliminates pretty much any advantage that native application can possibly have

Agreed. I was just watching this talk the other day called 'Making web apps appy' froom Chrome Dev Summit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbuLq4f6DGQ

It talks about a lot of new incoming features, like push notifications from the browser, adding icons to home screen directly, offline access, etc.

Re: Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat

#42

Post by fizk »

Remember Flash? Narrow the gap, add a bit of Steve Jobs and Boom! The web Won.

Look at a site like YouTube today. All the tooling we've created and all the progress of the open web platform that has made that site happen is incredible. If we've just given up 10 years ago, saying to ourselves that the web should only be for documents, then we would be missing out big time right now.

It’s not for every site to try and push the envelope. And mimicking native can often lead to bad results. But to go from that and say that we shouldn’t try. That’s just sad.

Re: Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat

#43

Post by pestaa »

mozumder wrote: post #19

The web works best as a document platform. All the UI tricks that web developers work on all end up managing something related to just browsing/reading a document. It's amazing that modern browsers/HTML just don't have this basic user experience down. Why is it virtually impossible to read long articles on a web browser? After 25 years, why do web designers need to create their own page transition mechanics for long-…

Don't forget that you can specify related pages as and let the browser handle pagination.

I recall when I used Opera, you could scroll down, hit space, and it would go to the next page as long as the website provided that information (forum softwares often do.)

Re: Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat

#44

Post by nly »

It's HTML and CSS holding 'web apps' back. It's like we're all trying to sharpen our pencils with spoons.

I think the future of remote web-like apps lies in something like QML[0]. A completely native UI with full access to the desktop widget suite can be downloaded in QML in a few kilobytes. Stick a browser like loader on the front of it, and provide a decent (seamless) asynchronous RPC, and you've got yourself a replacement.

[0] http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qmlapplications.html

Re: Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat

#45

Post by userbinator »

Navarr wrote: post #6

> Native apps talk directly to the operating system, while web apps talk to the browser, which talks to the OS. Thus there’s an extra layer web apps have to pass, and that makes them slightly slower and coarser than native apps. This problem is unsolvable. But what if the browser is the OS? I agree with the point though that we shouldn't be trying to emulate native to the T with web applications, that we shouldn't be…

But what if the browser is the OS?

There's still an extra layer, because the browser's API is far more complex and higher level than that of an OS.

Re: Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat

#46

Post by aliakhtar »

mahouse wrote: post #7
onion2k wrote: post #5

Unless you're making something that needs really good performance (3D gaming for example) building a hybrid app wins every time. Something based on Cordova (eg PhoneGap, Ionic) with Crosswalk can get you to about 90% of the performance of a native app, with about 1/2 of the development time because it's all built with web technology. 90% is easily good enough for most applications. Cordova wraps a uiWebView in some b…

Seeing you saying good things about Cordova makes me think you have never used Cordova.

I have, and I agree with what he said. One thing which isn't that great, are the plugins. I feel like there could be easier ways to access / write plugins. But overall, everything said was pretty spot on.

Re: Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat

#47

Post by zhte415 »

mozumder wrote: post #19

The web works best as a document platform. All the UI tricks that web developers work on all end up managing something related to just browsing/reading a document. It's amazing that modern browsers/HTML just don't have this basic user experience down. Why is it virtually impossible to read long articles on a web browser? After 25 years, why do web designers need to create their own page transition mechanics for long-…

There's an answer to your questions. It is documented here: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

Re: Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat

#48

Post by mozumder »

pestaa wrote: post #43
mozumder wrote: post #19

The web works best as a document platform. All the UI tricks that web developers work on all end up managing something related to just browsing/reading a document. It's amazing that modern browsers/HTML just don't have this basic user experience down. Why is it virtually impossible to read long articles on a web browser? After 25 years, why do web designers need to create their own page transition mechanics for long-…

Don't forget that you can specify related pages as and let the browser handle pagination. I recall when I used Opera, you could scroll down, hit space, and it would go to the next page as long as the website provided that information (forum softwares often do.)

That's just one UX issue among thousands.

I also mentioned the column width because this site has the obvious problem of long horizontal text, which is a no-no. People naturally read in chunks of 10-15 words scanning vertically. Long, horizontal text is easy to lose track of location.

Re: Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat

#49

Post by nkuttler »

mozumder wrote: post #19

The web works best as a document platform. All the UI tricks that web developers work on all end up managing something related to just browsing/reading a document. It's amazing that modern browsers/HTML just don't have this basic user experience down. Why is it virtually impossible to read long articles on a web browser? After 25 years, why do web designers need to create their own page transition mechanics for long-…

> After 25 years, why do web designers need to create their own page transition mechanics for long-form articles

Why do you need page transitions for articles at all? The only reason I can think of is for more ad displays. Ok, if you have, say, a long manual with multiple chapters that would be several hundred pages when printed it can be nice to break it up, but that's probably not what you meant.

> photo galleries - after 25 years, why isn't there a standard user experience for viewing photos related to articles?

Because there's no one size fits all solution. Look into magazines, newspapers, etc. After a few centuries there is still no standard. Grouped, with captions, position, size, etc.

> why do we need to write CSS to create a basic readable document in the first place

You don't. Browsers can display semantic markup just fine without any CSS. The fact that you even ask this question is why you write CSS, because different people in different times expect different styling, and they don't think the default style is pretty. I agree that the default styles could be improved though after 20 years, but that could lead to breakage of current CSS styles, and why risk that if everybody uses CSS anyway?

And the fact that I wrote this comment is just another reason why you have to write CSS: because not everybody agrees on how the web should look.

Re: Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat

#50

Post by [deleted] »

zhte415 wrote: post #47
mozumder wrote: post #19

The web works best as a document platform. All the UI tricks that web developers work on all end up managing something related to just browsing/reading a document. It's amazing that modern browsers/HTML just don't have this basic user experience down. Why is it virtually impossible to read long articles on a web browser? After 25 years, why do web designers need to create their own page transition mechanics for long-…

There's an answer to your questions. It is documented here: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

[deleted]
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