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

501–510 of 515 posts

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

#501

Post by 72deluxe »

piyush_soni wrote: post #299
romaniv wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine YouTube that hosts everything it hosts now, but when you click "play", opens your video player of choice and streams the video.

People had imagined and implemented that long back. They were called plugins. Thank god, media player plugins are dead.

Does anyone remember Google Video Player? I remember installing this to try and play videos and being disappointed that it was basically VLC with a rename and much functionality removed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Videos#Google_Video_Play...

The same disappointment hit me with the early releases of Chrome browser - just Firefox with stuff removed.

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

#502

Post by 72deluxe »

coldtea wrote: post #79
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. 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…

This cracked me up haha thanks

Fans blaring haha

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

#503

Post by 72deluxe »

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.

I never knew about this URL, thanks very much.

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

#504

Post by mrSugar »

yellowapple wrote: post #479
jsprogrammer wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a native app that turns that URL into less-opaque data. Like a web browser?

More like any application that interfaces with a JSON-based API. Those API calls work by talking to a server over HTTP(S) and requesting something from a URL. There's no reason why a native app can't do this - in fact, many native apps for things like YouTube and Pandora and such already do this.

But how would that serve ads to the eyeballs? You forget that most of modern webcontent is just packaging fluff for eyeballs to more easily digest the real content payload - the advertisments.

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

#505

Post by Navarr »

netfire wrote: post #455
EliRivers wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not limiting the web. You're not limiting the web. The web has limits . Actual, hard physical limitations (along with confidentiality and privacy limits); limits that something running entirely locally, directly with your actual operating system simply suffers, and will always suffer, to a much, much, much lower degree. Your opinion (and my opinion) is meaningless when confronted with actual, physical reality. Ri…

Besides having to transfer data to run the application in the browser, what limitations are inherit in a web-based application? (I acknowledged the data transfer limitation in my previous comment). Browsers (especially mobile browsers) are unnecessarily limiting what can be done on the web. Adding additional permissions could enable browsers access to more system resources and components, especially on mobile. Could…

Doesn't even necessarily have to transfer data with web workers, service workers, caching, etc.

Google IO 2015, I believe, stores it's data so that when you load it up it loads from a cache that it's service worker will reload once you have it open. Allowing it to work offline and removing the cost of transfer at the beginning.

I believe, not 100% on that.

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

#506

Post by minusSeven »

Once upon a time I would choose native over web anytime. But my experience in native has got worse over time. Now I don't even feel like it. I don't want to install 2 dozen apps when I can simply go to that website directly. Native if anything has been a failure.

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

#507

Post by yellowapple »

mrSugar wrote: post #504
yellowapple wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like any application that interfaces with a JSON-based API. Those API calls work by talking to a server over HTTP(S) and requesting something from a URL. There's no reason why a native app can't do this - in fact, many native apps for things like YouTube and Pandora and such already do this.

But how would that serve ads to the eyeballs? You forget that most of modern webcontent is just packaging fluff for eyeballs to more easily digest the real content payload - the advertisments.

That's not my problem. If it were, I'd solve it by embedding ads in the video stream itself, which is how traditional video broadcasters have done it for more than half a century. In the audio realm, Pandora already does this with third-party clients perfectly fine.

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

#508

Post by mattdeboard »

drew-y wrote: post #497
wvenable wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it also helps a bit that the API's are super easy to work with. Not in the least, you have to be comfortable in a half-dozen technologies at least to make a half-decent web application. You want performance, animations, etc then you better be an expert. And even then, your perfect container is a limited container. By comparison, building a native app is much simpler. The complication comes in with cross-platfor…

I disagree. I'm still a fairly new developer and I've tried developing both native and web apps. I found that there are thousands of great well documented frameworks that make developing web high performance web apps easy. Meteorjs for example took me about a weekend to learn, has a huge community with lots of prebuilt packages, and countless tutorials that make implementing smooth animation incredibly easy. Before M…

> I found that there are thousands of great well documented frameworks

thousands, absolutely. great and/or well-documented? Unlikely

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

#510

Post by rockdoe »

stephenr wrote: post #491
rockdoe wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did having my own data stored in regular files become "strange"? I meant your wording was strange. I had to reread it several times to understand what you meant, and I think the parent poster also didn't understand what you meant. If the data is tied to a browser, how do I back it up/save a copy of it? In Firefox, back up your profile. How do I persist it when the browsers local settings/cache are cleared (eithe…

> In Firefox, back up your profile. that's hardly the same as having a file i can copy and use anywhere. > If you clear it intentionally then why should it persist? In Safari at least, "local storage" is cleared when clearing other data like cookies etc. I would imagine that's not unique to Safari. You also failed to cover the concept of "the OS is re-installed" or "a new device is purchased". "Backup your firefox pr…

>"Backup your firefox profile" is an unbelievably short-sighted suggestion - am I supposed to keep transporting a Firefox profile around forever?

Yes?

It's like asking whether you should keep your homedir or Windows Roaming User folder around forever. If you want your data and/or settings, you do. And both of those fit the description in your last line pretty well.

You're offended at the suggestion but it's the same way it works in native apps in reality.

Post reply on HN