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Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat

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

#141

Post by lgieron »

Fr0styMatt8 wrote: post #135
fizk wrote: post #42

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…

It's interesting that you mention YouTube, because the thing that finally convinced me that a 'web app' could be indistinguishable from a native app was YouTube's Leanback interface (YouTube TV). Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/tv Video player functionality aside (I understand the complaints), that thing full-screened just feels like a native app.

For me, it was the Netflix web client. Feels 100% as smooth as a good native app.

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

#142

Post by fabean »

jsingleton wrote: post #117
pavlov wrote: post #28

I feel we’ve gone too far in emulating native apps. Conceding defeat will force us to rethink the web’s purpose and unique strengths — and that’s long overdue. This, a million times. Mobile websites and mobile apps have completely different strengths. The current trend is to develop them both with the same HTML-based toolchains and make them as similar as possible, which ends up being to the detriment of both. Users…

What do people think of frameworks like https://jquerymobile.com and similar? I tend to think it's good when running in a browser but not when it's made mobile web app capable and running full screen without native controls. Unless it's a super simple single page app. At the other end there are things like Instagram where you basically can't do anything on the website (can't sign-up, can't upload photos). Everything…

I absolutely hate jquerymobile, you should just make your website responsive with CSS media queries then pepper in a little bit of javascript to handle things like slide out navigations.

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

#143

Post by stuartmemo »

pjmlp wrote: post #122
drinchev wrote: post #72

But what should the author explain to Chromebook users? They can only have web applications on their desktop as an icon. Actually I think they're doing pretty good with that.

I never saw anyone with one in Germany, besides computer stores trying to get rid of them with massive discounts and still they gather dust.

Amazon's best selling laptops - http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories-Lap...

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

#144

Post by the8472 »

adamc wrote: post #124
the8472 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look at a site like YouTube today. And yet any media player beats it at its core functionality: video playback. Often I find myself using youtube-dl to fetch a youtube video and just play it in a regular media player because it just works better than what browsers have to offer. There even are addons to export YT playlists to VLC and stream them. pdfjs is great. but every 3rd scientific paper I read tends to be som…

I think media playback is only part of the core functionality. The other key piece is discoverability, and on that front, YouTube is far, far better than a native media player. It also benefits hugely from urls, which allow users to share what they've found. So, arguably, YouTube's success is more about what the web does well than about it's media playback -- it just has to be "good enough" on that front.

> It also benefits hugely from urls, which allow users to share what they've found.

how about http://some.storage.service.tld/path/to/video.mkv or even rtmp://some.streaming.service.tld/path/to/stream ?

For sharing that would be sufficient.

Of course there are some business realities (ads, copyright, paying for storage) that make direct, free access to videos unlikely. But that's basically arguing that the web is a superior platform for monetizing things, not necessarily a superior platform as far as user-experience goes.

> The other key piece is discoverability, and on that front, YouTube is far, far better

I'll give you that one.

But then again there are dedicated media-discovery-sites (imdb, last.fm) that do not have playback as their core functionality, even though they may offer some playback.

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

#145

Post by pjc50 »

jsingleton wrote: post #125
mreiland wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe sometimes it would be better to provide better integration with native applications? That's it exactly. The author claims it's an unsolved problem, I think it's the inevitable solution (that web and native will merge).

You can always use custom protocols much like mailto: e.g. a link with sms: can send a text message from a mobile web browser.

Or Android intents, whereby applications can intercept particular URL schemes to e.g. play Youtube videos in the app rather than in the browser.

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

#146

Post by Margh »

pjc50 wrote: post #9

Four points: a) Tooling: yes, it's still much easier to debug a native app than a pseudo-native app. b) "Emulating native leads to bad UX": this section is absolutely right. Stop hijacking scrolling and building in cruft. c) "Hassle-free web": absolutely right. You don't need an app for that. Just give us the information and let us have the basic interaction we want. No, you shouldn't present your menu as a PDF eithe…

> It's hard to deep-link into an app.

Disagree. Case in point: steam://friends https://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes/prov/steam

/s/ steam for news://home or news://business/26-05-2015-oil-prices

The content could (and definitely should) still be html, obviously not everybody you link to is going to want to install the news app and it should fall back to opening in a browser, but if you want to wrap a fancy interface around what should just be text there's your solution.

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

#147

Post by lotsofmangos »

coldpie wrote: post #126
xt wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what you want => http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

> A little less contrast > Size Matters Strong disagree on both of these points. I view most webpages (including that one) at around 66% zoom these days, because the text is so goddamn big. And anyone advocating for less contrast needs a shovel to the head.

anyone advocating for less contrast needs a shovel to the head.

Or they have the thing where high contrast makes the letters jiggle and therefore difficult to read. I get that when tired.

Maximum contrast does not make for good general usability, even if you happen to like it.

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

#148

Post by kuboa »

pswenson wrote: post #138
fizk wrote: post #42

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…

sadly and inexplicably, youtube still uses flash for video on the desktop...

They had HTML5 video as a beta option for quite a while, and actually dropped Flash in favor of it as the default player about 4 months ago: http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/27/7926001/youtube-drops-flas...

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

#149

Post by provemewrong »

EdiX wrote: post #61
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 As far as I am concerned those things only exist to inflate ad views, they have negative usability impact. I don't really see why a long document should be broken up in pages to be readable. > The same with photo galleries - after 25 years, why isn't there a standard user experience for viewing photos rela…

> There is one: right click → open in new tab. It work very well, much better than the jquery kludges that people come up with.

Except when people nest the images as deep as posible and overlay other elements in front of the images so you can't simply right click the image, you have to inspect source and hunt for that image URL (or check resources tab in developer mode, or whatever).

/rant

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

#150

Post by jasode »

weland wrote: post #129
jasode wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying I like for "the web" to be interchangeable with "the internet". Instead, I'm pointing out that the world out there without permission from any savvy HN readers has moved on. The "web" has become the "internet" for both documents and applications . It's descriptive, not prescriptive. (See my other replies to illustrate how usage of http has evolved to coexist with corporate firewalls that lock down port…

> Instead, I'm pointing out that the world out there without permission from any savvy HN readers has moved on. The world has not moved on. Part of the world has dug itself into a technological hole. Most of the people who work in it have never seen what's outside it, so they think the solution to all their problems is to keep digging. Edit: crap, I sounded so snarky and aggressive. Sorry about that. It's not somethi…

>The world has not moved on.

To clarify, I'm not saying "moved on" as an objective measure of superior technical progress.

The "moved on" is referencing a descriptive (not prescriptive) state of affairs with how the world now defines "the web". The existence of sliding around map tiles in maps.google.com, syncing folders in Dropbox, etc is evidence that the world does not think of "web" the way Tim Berners-Lee thought of hyperlinked documents in 1993.

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