Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by zokier » Tue, May 26, 2015, 6:59 PM UTC

Too wrote: post #377

dasil003 wrote: post #252

I get where he's coming from, but I don't think it gets to the root issue: Why does everything need to be a "rich experience"? Note I didn't say app-like, because many apps themselves are straightforward. If we don't make that distinction then we risk throwing out the baby with the bathwater. He cites having to build "2 native apps" instead of one website, but that's only true if you ignore everyone who is not on rec…

The no-install, and especially the sandboxed environment, is an argument that hasn't been discussed much here yet but which i think is a big factor to take into account. Sure, device and browser compatibility is nice but really, being able to open a news site without having to share my contact list, my location and my photo album is what makes the web a no-brainer. If native installs could cater more for this scenari…

Java offered no-install sandboxed apps well before the webapp craze. But of course being based on Java made that attempt quite stillborn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Web_Start

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

#392

Post by coldtea » Tue, May 26, 2015, 7:00 PM UTC

pcwalton wrote: post #277

coldtea wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. What exactly is incredible about YouTube today (apart from it being a huge repository of videos, of course)? That it almost works like a 2000 era video player, only slower and clunkier? The new fangled DRM? That it can bring a decent computer to its knees with…

Discoverability, and elimination of the downloading friction. YouTube is about as proven as you can get. The fact is that it didn't just edge past 2000-era video players in popularity, it totally trounced them. I think we should try to figure out why that is instead of arguing against YouTube's viability—it's about a decade too late for the latter.

>The fact is that it didn't just edge past 2000-era video players in popularity, it totally trounced them.

How many people watch movies on YouTube? Because that's what video players are used for, not for small videos, music clips and curios.

>I think we should try to figure out why that is instead of arguing against YouTube's viability—it's about a decade too late for the latter.

We were talking about it's performance compared to native, not it's viability.

YouTube rules as a huge video repository. Other "web" apps that don't have that stronghold, don't fare so well compared to their native counterparts, especially on mobile.

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

#393

Post by sixQuarks » Tue, May 26, 2015, 7:02 PM UTC

If native won, then why didn't "native" desktop software win? Everything on desktop has moved to SAAS and on the web.

We're being way too short-sighted here. In 5-10 years, I don't think smartphones will be the primary way we get information anymore. Yes, we will have mobile, but it might be mobile VR, with an infinite canvas.

I think the reason native works well on mobile today is simply because there isn't much room to work with. Once the viewports start getting larger again, the web will take over.

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

#394

Post by dbpokorny » Tue, May 26, 2015, 7:03 PM UTC

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.

But can you build a democratic 24/7 music/video feed with a native video playback app? Maybe, but it is much easier with the web. And it has already been done:

http://botwillacceptanything.com:3000/video

https://github.com/botwillacceptanything/botwillacceptanythi...

I invite anyone with the time and inclination to submit a pull request that changes the content of the video feed.

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

#395

Post by s73v3r » Tue, May 26, 2015, 7:05 PM UTC

thatcat wrote: post #246

jamespo wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The business realities make direct, free, downloadable videos impossible rather than unlikely at scale.

>business realities make direct, free, downloadable videos impossible at scale And yet it's existed for years using p2p/torrents. So they're more like business fictions

I wouldn't use that as any evidence for business reality, considering most of them have none of the pressures of actual business to consider.

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

#396

Post by pavlov » Tue, May 26, 2015, 7:06 PM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #359

pavlov wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the point of comparing HN apps. HN is a website and doesn't do anything meaningful as an app. Android 5.x has less than 10% marketshare, and 4.x seems quite resilient in low-end devices. It's going to take a while until you can build hybrid apps exclusively for Lollipop. If you don't think mobile browsers have performance issues, you must use high-end devices exclusively.

> Android 5.x has less than 10% marketshare, and 4.x seems quite resilient in low-end devices. Folks were saying the same exact thing about 2.x when 4.x came out. By the time 6.x comes out, everyone will be yammering on about how 5.x marketshare is still strong and "seems quite resilient in low-end devices", blissfully ignoring the point in time when 4.x - like 2.x - fades out of view as it's increasingly ignored by…

In the real world, Firefox OS has zero marketshare at the low-end. Mozilla announced just a day or two ago that they're abandoning the low-end strategy.

Featurephones are largely gone. Microsoft bought Nokia's featurephone business, shut down further development and has been converting it to low-end Lumias as fast as they can, but Android is nibbling away most of that market.

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

#397

Post by kokoloko » Tue, May 26, 2015, 7:06 PM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #258

archagon wrote: post #62

It's clear that the web has outgrown its original intent. Instead of just being a simple substrate for linked documents, many (if not most) websites are now trying to emulate applications, platforms, and services using the poor, ill-suited DOM. But I don't think the solution is to give up. Native apps are great, but there's a vast gulf between the binary running on your device and the server you got it from. Download…

What layer can you realistically have below the DOM? If you get rid of it, how can you realistically avoid reimplementing everything? I don't think this makes sense.

I think it should be a subset of DOM / CSS designed for speed and flexibility. A normal browser could render the page correctly but an optimized browser for apps would be able to make some assumptions to render everything much faster. Something like asm.js but for DOM/CSS.

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

#398

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, May 26, 2015, 7:09 PM UTC

sixQuarks wrote: post #393

If native won, then why didn't "native" desktop software win? Everything on desktop has moved to SAAS and on the web. We're being way too short-sighted here. In 5-10 years, I don't think smartphones will be the primary way we get information anymore. Yes, we will have mobile, but it might be mobile VR, with an infinite canvas. I think the reason native works well on mobile today is simply because there isn't much roo…

Disagree. Currently I'm running Audacity, Sococo (network conferencing tool; soon to be a web app), NetMon, Outlook, WeatherEye and a few services. Also have 3 browser tabs open.

So from here it looks like native apps are winning. Especially since I despise two of the three web apps (TeamCity, Jira) for being laggy, buggy and very slow.

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

#399

Post by mike_hearn » Tue, May 26, 2015, 7:11 PM UTC

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…

Yeah? Spotify, Skype, Google Earth, any developer tool, iTunes, Sonos, Keynote, MS Office, Photoshop, any video game ..... there are plenty of popular native desktop apps out there. I'd say there'd be more too, if the industry made them more frequently. But all we churn out are web apps these days - not because that's what users demand but for all sorts of other reasons.

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

#400

Post by sixQuarks » Tue, May 26, 2015, 7:20 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #398

sixQuarks wrote: post #393

If native won, then why didn't "native" desktop software win? Everything on desktop has moved to SAAS and on the web. We're being way too short-sighted here. In 5-10 years, I don't think smartphones will be the primary way we get information anymore. Yes, we will have mobile, but it might be mobile VR, with an infinite canvas. I think the reason native works well on mobile today is simply because there isn't much roo…

Disagree. Currently I'm running Audacity, Sococo (network conferencing tool; soon to be a web app), NetMon, Outlook, WeatherEye and a few services. Also have 3 browser tabs open. So from here it looks like native apps are winning. Especially since I despise two of the three web apps (TeamCity, Jira) for being laggy, buggy and very slow.

OK, but are you a mainstream consumer? No, you're a developer and have specific needs that are solved better with native desktop software.