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Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#61

Post by kronholm »

chrisdevereux wrote: post #55

Intestesting that the poll results (currently) only give a slight edge to native, but the comments are overwhelmingly pro-native. I can see two possible reasons for this: 1) Native developers are the more opinionated of the two. 2) People who actually have experience to communicate prefer native

Maybe it's due to the phrasing of the question. I certainly prefer native (ok semi-close-ish native, I use Titanium), but I _will_ in the future prefer to be using HTML5, once it's ready.

HTML5 isn't ready yet in my opinion, as it takes too much effort (read: hours, money) and many workarounds to get a polished, fast and responsive app out of it to rival native. Sure it's awesome for fast prototyping, but it's still too hard to get "dat native feel".

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#62

Post by easy_rider »

Antwan wrote: post #11
sidcool wrote: post #4

If facebook's HTML5 fiasco is any lesson, I would rather go with Native.

fb.html5isready.com

fastbkapp will receive the following info: your public profile, friend list, email address, custom friends lists, messages, friend requests, News Feed, relationships, relationship interests, birthday, chat status, notes, work history, status updates, education history, events, groups, hometown, interests, current city, Photos, religious and political views, videos, website, personal description and likes and your friends' relationships, relationship interests, birthdays, chat statuses, notes, work histories, status updates, education histories, events, groups, hometowns, interests, current cities, photos, religious and political views, videos, websites, personal description and likes.

hmm, nah.

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#63

Post by asdasf »

Why is this an either/or question? Do you prefer native or html for PC apps? It depends on the app, I prefer whichever is appropriate for the application in question. This is just as true with a pocket sized computer as it is with a laptop or desktop computer.

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#64

Post by ryanSrich »

kronholm wrote: post #57
fijter wrote: post #13

I've created native iOS apps, native Android apps, HTML5 apps and I've used wrappers (Titanium Mobile and PhoneGap) over the last few years and these are my findings: - Native apps take a lot of time to build, especially when you are a web-developer without in-depth knowledge of the extensive frameworks available to the native platforms. - Wrappers work, but are not nearly as great and snappy as native apps; They mig…

I'm curious in how you put Titanium next to PhoneGap (Disclaimer: I may be reading too much into that, or not understanding your meaning - 2nd language etc.). My experience with Titanium is that you code in js or Alloy, then when building and deploying, you get native code, with native elements and everything. Comparing it to PhoneGap, which purely runs in a slowish WebView isn't quite fair I think. Or has your exper…

Have you got experience with Titanium? How is it? I've had a few clients inquire about mobile applications as of late and I'd like to start exploring options for me as a web developer.

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#66

Post by nicholaides »

eonil wrote: post #22

Always goes only for native. Here're why I don't go HTML5. (1) Access to low-level and platform-specific features. Whatever I do, I always eventually need it as program gets specialized, and always be frustrated on non-native platforms. Usually cross platform stuffs lack this or needlessly painful even they offer it. Also you still have to write platform specific code even they support it. (2) Freedom of development.…

> There's no computing platform doesn't support C/C++

Does that include Android devices?

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#67

Post by brodney »

nicholaides wrote: post #66
eonil wrote: post #22

Always goes only for native. Here're why I don't go HTML5. (1) Access to low-level and platform-specific features. Whatever I do, I always eventually need it as program gets specialized, and always be frustrated on non-native platforms. Usually cross platform stuffs lack this or needlessly painful even they offer it. Also you still have to write platform specific code even they support it. (2) Freedom of development.…

> There's no computing platform doesn't support C/C++ Does that include Android devices?

NDK on Android supports C/C++.

http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#68

Post by felxh »

Not having much experience with developing native mobile apps, I can only say what a pain it is to develop non trivial HTML5 apps that need to support a wide array of browsers. Your initial euphoria of 'oh wow I could make this thing for [insert browser of you choice] in less than [x amount of time]' is quickly mitigated when you try it on other browsers. Different browsers _will_ vary greatly in performance for different approaches and at least one browser _will_ have a bug. Fixing these performance issues (and not killing performance on other browsers again) and finding workarounds for bugs will then take 80% of the entire development time.

Having said that, things have improved the last years, especially when you don't need to support older android versions (> 4). However, performance will always be suboptimal and I found that people who claim the opposite simply have a lower bar for what good UI performance means - as harsh as it sounds. There is also a great number of tips and knowhow on how to make 'blazing fast' HTML5 apps, which people are quick to point out. Many of these help, but they don't always work for all browsers and they potentially limit you in what you can achieve (my favourite: don't use images. But what if the whole point of my app is to work with large images!?)

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#69

Post by enscr »

The question leaves room for ambiguous response & misinterpretation of results. You ask : which one will you 'prefer' to use. From a personal standpoint, my preference would be html 5, however from a logical standpoint, my preference would be native.

This should be split into two polls:

1) Which one would you want to use ideally

2) Which one do you end up using

Re: Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

#70

Post by kronholm »

ryanSrich wrote: post #64
kronholm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious in how you put Titanium next to PhoneGap (Disclaimer: I may be reading too much into that, or not understanding your meaning - 2nd language etc.). My experience with Titanium is that you code in js or Alloy, then when building and deploying, you get native code, with native elements and everything. Comparing it to PhoneGap, which purely runs in a slowish WebView isn't quite fair I think. Or has your exper…

Have you got experience with Titanium? How is it? I've had a few clients inquire about mobile applications as of late and I'd like to start exploring options for me as a web developer.

There's a slight learning curve, but it's overall very nice to work with. Been making a living from it for a year now, so I'm rather comfortable with it.

You have to get in a kind of different mindset than with HTML, where you use div's for everything - here you create windows and views - but shouldn't take more than a couple days to get dangerous with it :)

There's a few quirks though - differences between iOS/Android for a small number of things, when coding, which can take up a lot of your time to troubleshoot.

An example of such an issue can be on Android, an imageView which you've applied rotation to, suddenly appears to be not rotated, if you put a backgroundColor on it as well as rounded corners. The fix here could be to use a regular view instead, and use a backgroundImage. Thankfully those kinds of weird things aren't as plentyful any longer, the company behind, Appcelerator, are in my experience pretty helpful and fast with bugfixes.

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