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It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

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Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#111
post #23

"You want mobile notifications? Sure, but not on mobile Safari." You can do this with PhoneGap. "Multiple line ellipsis? Sure, but only on webkit." Okay, yeah, this sucks. "Consistent rendering size across browsers? Just fuck off." This is probably your fault. "We fix a layout bug on Safari and break something on Edge." This is probably your fault. "We change font size on Chrome and now all you can see on Firefox is…

Did we read the same article? What is this condescending bullshit. Nobody is arguing these things CAN'T be done, just that it's too much effort on the web, and the only web devs that know the ins and outs of every browser enough to make it work are unaffordable and unavailable.

> and the only web devs that know the ins and outs of every browser enough to make it work are unaffordable and unavailable.

Really? More unaffordable and unavailable than at least one native developer for each platform you're targeting? I find that hard to believe.

Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#112
post #23

"You want mobile notifications? Sure, but not on mobile Safari." You can do this with PhoneGap. "Multiple line ellipsis? Sure, but only on webkit." Okay, yeah, this sucks. "Consistent rendering size across browsers? Just fuck off." This is probably your fault. "We fix a layout bug on Safari and break something on Edge." This is probably your fault. "We change font size on Chrome and now all you can see on Firefox is…

Did we read the same article? What is this condescending bullshit. Nobody is arguing these things CAN'T be done, just that it's too much effort on the web, and the only web devs that know the ins and outs of every browser enough to make it work are unaffordable and unavailable.

What I thought the author was trying to say was that you can make a car that floats. It's just a much better understood problem to buy a car and a boat, then call it a day.

Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#113
post #95

'www' should stand for wild, wild, web. In many ways, the web is a technology frontier, with all the frustration and liberation that goes along with it. I sympathize with the author. The problem is trying to tame the web, as opposed to embracing it for what it is.

It would appear that "what it is" is "not good enough", and that the sort of functionality and control over behaviour an layout is so hard to achieve on the browser that it's just not possible for any reasonably complex app and for a sensible price.

Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#114
Mobile Chrome + Mobile Safari would be a great way to cover enough bases to make a good responsive web app reach a huge audience. The core problem is that Mobile Safari is really quite frustrating in a lot of ways.

As a simple example, I had a bug with some of the dialogs and menu popups I was using not rendering in Mobile Safari. It turns out that if you have a div that is a child (in the DOM) of a div that has overflow: hidden, that child will not be rendered outside of the clipping box of the parent, even if the child div is position: absolute and at a higher z-index than the parent. This works differently in chrome.

There are plenty of workarounds available, but the basic strategy of creating a position: relative context and having a position: absolute floating menu / dialog that's rendered near the button that creates it won't work if your menu bar has overflow: hidden on it. But then you have to make sure you've got your menubar set up well so that it doesn't become super-tall in narrow screens, because you specified overflow: visible. Or you have to put your floating divs elsewhere in the DOM tree and specify their position as fixed and manually calculate where to put them using javascript.

It's things like this that frustrate me the most in working with safari - I'm constantly wrestling with a rendering stack that doesn't seem to do what I want (it was only in recent versions that I could stop setting flex-basis: 0.01px instead of flex-basis: auto (on safari) like I do everywhere else on divs that had only text children that I wanted to make expand but also become multiline text instead of pushing everything way out to the right. And don't get me started on safari's support for indexeddb, let alone the other neat features that chrome is supporting to make mobile just plain better.

I'm at the point now where I'd literally be willing to tell my users: "install chrome for iOS" if it were actually chrome, instead of supporting safari. But instead, I deal with the sort of resonance back-and-forthing when I fix a safari layout bug that introduces oddities in chrome's renders.

Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#116
post #66

I don't think that's remotely true if you keep the responsive web app simple. YNGNI and KISS and what not. I've been doing this for over ten years. In that time I've seen large web applications built for under 4k; I've also seen massively overbuilt simple applications go for 50k+. It comes down to often how needlessly complex you make the stack. If you stick with solid simple guaranteed tech instead of cutting edge y…

I think the author is already addressing this:

Yes, you can build 2007 websites much better now. They will be consistent across platforms and perform great. But my 12 year olds don’t want 2007 websites. They want 2016 apps.

Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#117
post #36

Ehhhh, I really haven't had these issues with any of the meteor apps I've made. Even getting swiping and full page animation transitions has been relatively simple. My experience is anecdotal, but I actually left being android developer to do mobile web and I've found the experience to be far easier.

Easier, yes. The tools for web development are awesome and amazing, but there's so many restrictions and limitations that come with the web. Maybe the web is the way forward, but native will be kicking its ass (regarding experience) for a long time.

80% of "experience" is micro-interactions, which are mostly nice-to-haves.

Re: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

#120

One app for iOS, one for Android, and I got over 90% consumer coverage However with a huge friction point of requiring users to download and install an app.

I don't understand why people think this is a huge friction point. Installing apps is comfortable, familiar, and easy for people. By comparison, finding a mobile web application in the browser on a phone has significantly more friction.

A lot of people in the real world don't want to install apps.

Also I disbelieve on how hard it is to find a mobile web application on a phone. Find it once, save a shortcut to a web page on your home screen, and now it is as easy to launch as an app. I actually find this easier to do than it is to install an app.

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