Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat

quirksmode.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 515 posts

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

#331

Post by pyre »

codingdave wrote: post #293
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…

You seem to be under the misunderstanding that video playback is YouTube's core function. No, the core functionality is to drive traffic to Google-owned sites, to be monetized as they see fit. Remember, on the web, you are the product.

> Remember, on the web, you are the product.

The same goes for many other things:

- Movie theatres in the last few years (commercials before movies)

- Television since the days of black-and-white TVs.

- Radio dramas "sponsored by X" before TVs existed.

How has anything changed?

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

#332

Post by perseusprime »

netfire wrote: post #281
perseusprime wrote: post #274

Isn't a browser a one size fits all container that was never destined to last?

Couldn't you say the same about the operating system in general? That is, that apps are limited to the the container provided by the APIs given by the operating system? The browser is only limited by the restrictions given to it by the operating system. There's no reason a browser can't run frame-less graphics-intensive apps with something like WebGL or why it couldn't have access to more of the operating system and…

Wouldn't they then become emulators of app runtimes?

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

#336

Post by Nadya »

the8472 wrote: post #85
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…

> 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…

>And yet any media player beats it at its core functionality: video playback.

I would argue YouTube's core functionality is "making it easy to share videos with family, friends, and the world". Allowing playback of the videos on the page makes this functionality easier.

>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.

I do this too - although only because an addon I have causes Firefox to memleak if I leave a YouTube tab open too long. Rather than finding the problem and fixing it - I download a video I want to watch and close the YouTube tab. Honestly my video player of choice (MPC-HC) does exactly what the YouTube player does. It plays the video. Not a whole lot of bells and whistles needed to do that.

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

#338

Post by ghostly_s »

kenjackson wrote: post #314

The web already won. When was the last time someone told you about an app idea and you had any vision of a Win32 (or WPF) app? The web is the defacto app platform for desktop today. Sure, there are some legacy and niche apps that are native on desktop, but mostly everything new is web based on desktop. Mobile is a different story, but I think its due mostly to the fact that mobile HW is still changing rapidly. New se…

If someone tells me about an "app idea" without specifying platform I assume a mobile-native app. I do not think I am in the minority in this.

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

#339

Post by netfire »

perseusprime wrote: post #332
netfire wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you say the same about the operating system in general? That is, that apps are limited to the the container provided by the APIs given by the operating system? The browser is only limited by the restrictions given to it by the operating system. There's no reason a browser can't run frame-less graphics-intensive apps with something like WebGL or why it couldn't have access to more of the operating system and…

Wouldn't they then become emulators of app runtimes?

In a way, but there are advantages to running an application in a web-based platform:

- Distribution is easier and doesn't require approval from a third party (such as app stores), providing less of a barrier to entry and more freedom to create what you want to.

- It can be easier to develop and you may not have to provide support for multiple versions of your app (because you can easily ensure that everyone is running the latest codebase).

- Common components/libraries that would be used across different applications can be part of the browser itself or cached for one app and re-used for other applications, instead of having to be packaged into a downloadable runtime application.

- Depending on your application, creating a cross-platform product may be easier and require less development and have built-in functionality like copy-paste and other functionality provided by the browser (history, bookmarking, etc).

- The user and other people have more power to use your application in more flexible ways (due to browser plugins), and the content can be crawled and made searchable/discoverable by a variety of companies.

- The hyper-linking built into the web offers easy, cross-site (and application) integration that may be difficult to accomplish in a native app. In fact, you may be limited to a certain application provided by the operating system (like a particular map provider on mobile)

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

#340

Post by hrktb »

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.

I would compare and contrast the experience you are describing with a podcast player like pocketcast.

Synchronized play state and playlists on all the devices. Offline handling of the media files with streaming as an option. Feed subscription but also podcast repository and ranking/trending screens.

All media files are by definition in independant feeds, and sharing a file URL is supported.

It brings a hugely better experience than youtube pr any online video service I've seen. I actually switched to my podcast player all the youtube channels that also have a separate feed.

Post reply on HN