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Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

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Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#151

Post by mbesto »

brianchu wrote: post #11

I ran the HTML5 app on my iTouch 4G running iOS 6 (roughly equivalent to iPhone 3GS) and compared it to the native FB app. The HTML5 app had noticeable lag in the swipe transitions. It also crashed once when loading a photo (only once though). Not to mention that they implement almost everything differently and leave out 90% of FB's features. That being said, it was really smooth on my iTouch 5G. The demo HTML5 app a…

What incentive does Apple have to make the web browser on their iOS devices better?

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#152

Post by TeeWEE »

joshtynjala wrote: post #132
TeeWEE wrote: post #130

Good work. But they are cheating in one main spot: - they use a proxy to cut down data transfer Good choice, but comparing it with the orignal app is not valid anymore (its not really html5 that is making it faster) Anyway its still a very fast mobile app, and html5 is sometimes the best choice to make. Because it is very expensive to write a different app for all platforms currently. However, currently, it is also v…

> comparing it with the orignal app is not valid anymore Facebook could have done the same thing with their app too, so I don't see how this affects validity.

If I am comparing the speed of two cars, but one car contains 5 persons while the other one only contains 1, then it's an unfair comparison right?

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#153

Post by marknutter »

RandallBrown wrote: post #131
marknutter wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting one small point: you have to write two (or more) native apps once you go that route. Hence the reason Facebook's Android native app came out roughly 6 months after their iOS native app did.

you also need to write two (or more) web apps too. Each OS has dramatically different user interface paradigms. Sure, you can run an iOS looking app on Android or Windows Phone, but it's going to be awkward and out of place.

Having a second stylesheet is not the same as re-writing the entire app from scratch.

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#154

Post by killahpriest »

macspoofing wrote: post #142
spamizbad wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HTML/CSS/JS is exceptionally good at building user interfaces Only if your background is HTML/CSS/JS. If you have no web background, figuring out the idiosyncrasies of CSS and JS, while very doable, is still very time-consuming. I can't imagine it being any faster than someone going the native route assuming they do not have an existing web skillset to leverage.

>If you have no web background, figuring out the idiosyncrasies of CSS and JS, while very doable, is still very time-consuming. That's true for anything. Objective-C is not exactly intuitive.

Actually, it's NSCounterIntuitive

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#155

Post by killahpriest »

cpdean wrote: post #105
macspoofing wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It seems like JavaScript is the new ActionScript Not even close.

I can't wait till node.js gets ported from its fringe-language to ActionScript. Asynchronous callbacks will make Flash run so much faster.

Uhh, the callbacks aren't from node. The fallbacks are from vanilla JavaScript. You just notice them more in node, because you're doing event stuff, like making http connections. You have callbacks in browser JavaScript when you use AJAX.

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#158

Post by mistercow »

pjmlp wrote: post #149
mistercow wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Making web sites that comply to customer requirements down to pixel level, across all required target browsers is a major pain. How is that a fair comparison to native apps? A native app can run on one platform. Making native apps pixel-for-pixel identical on multiple platforms is way more of a pain than doing so with HTML5.

But it is possible, while with the so called web applications you are limited to what the browser thinks you want to do.

Wait, your position is that it's impossible to make web apps function identically across different platforms?

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#159

Post by OGRammer »

yareally wrote: post #145
blub wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh really? Let's take my webkit-based mobile browser then and look at an instagram picture. Hm, it's cut in half and I can't scroll. Mobile web apps are actually iOS webapps that most of the time work on Android. Stop pretending you actually care about standards and cross-platform, you're only interested in doing less work, learning fewer things and holding users firmly by the balls in the cloud.

My issue with HTML apps (like your issue) is many developers think it's perfectly okay to use that iOS interface on Android because Android does not force you to change it. The Android ecosystem is so polluted with apps like this that it almost makes me long for Google to put their foot down and start forcing UI compliance like Apple does. It's bad enough Android users have to deal with legacy apps on their own OS th…

you are essentially saying that google should remove many of its own apps from the market? Even they follow the ios conventions a lot of times. google+ has buttons on the bottom of the screen just like iphone apps. should that be removed?

Re: Making Facebook's native mobile app faster using HTML5

#160

Post by pjmlp »

mistercow wrote: post #158
pjmlp wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is possible, while with the so called web applications you are limited to what the browser thinks you want to do.

Wait, your position is that it's impossible to make web apps function identically across different platforms?

In a consistent way down to pixel level in a 1:1 correspondence to Photoshop designs required by customers, across all required browser versions in all required operating systems, yes.
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