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Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5

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Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5

#91

Post by jfahrenkrug »

madoublet wrote: post #84
jfahrenkrug wrote: post #74

Cross-platform UI is a bad idea on the desktop. Cross-platform UI also is a bad idea on mobile. We need to learn from the past. Cross-platform UI is a conceptual mistake. An app that has an icon on the home screen is perceived by the user as "an app", no matter if it actually launches the browser without the toolbar, if it is a web app wrapped in a PhoneGap shell of if it is a native app. To the user, it's an app. It…

I think this was true a year ago, but mobile browsers are getting better and projects like this and Ionic (ionicframework.com) are quickly closing the gap between native and HTML5.

"Never" is much too strong a word to use, but I think that it is very very very unlikely that any major mobile vendor (Apple, Google, Microsoft) will invest much time and money to make the web a first-class citizen for apps on their platform. Each company wants to offer the best experience on THEIR platform and offer features that are only available on THEIR platform so that more developers develop apps for only their platform which in turns means more sales of their products. They are interested in exclusivity.

Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5

#92

Post by joeblau »

The problem with HTML5 is and always will be performance, not because of HTML5 but because of the platform it sits on. The DOM simply can not perform with the efficiency of native applications. I'm more hopeful for companies like famo.us that have basically subverted the DOM renderer for their own Unity-style game engine. You can see demos of their projects at http://demo.famo.us/. Running those on your phone will give you an idea of what a truly native web experience should feel like.

All of these attempts to make a web page run fast on the phone are all bound by one single performance constraint; Document Object Model.

Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5

#94

Post by archagon »

marknutter wrote: post #68
tluyben2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy it. Enterprises definitely buy into that idea and they do have their employees work with these crippled apps because they have no other choice. But the experience for this 'CRUD' app is definitely not good enough. It's by forcing it that it gets used. It depends on how intensively it will be used in reality, but I definitely know quite a few companies who went from BYOD and an HTML5 Cordova app which was…

You don't have to buy it, it's an undeniable reality. Yes, if you're an enterprise and you can afford to write native apps for all platforms, then that's the better choice. If you're a small startup or a single developer, writing the app 3 times is just not cost effective.

Pick a platform, port later if needed. It's what most indie app developers do.

Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5

#95

Post by ktusznio »

jfahrenkrug wrote: post #91
madoublet wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this was true a year ago, but mobile browsers are getting better and projects like this and Ionic (ionicframework.com) are quickly closing the gap between native and HTML5.

"Never" is much too strong a word to use, but I think that it is very very very unlikely that any major mobile vendor (Apple, Google, Microsoft) will invest much time and money to make the web a first-class citizen for apps on their platform. Each company wants to offer the best experience on THEIR platform and offer features that are only available on THEIR platform so that more developers develop apps for only thei…

Google is investing a lot of money with efforts like Chrome apps and Cordova.

Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5

#96

Post by Kiro »

dmix wrote: post #75
jfahrenkrug wrote: post #74

Cross-platform UI is a bad idea on the desktop. Cross-platform UI also is a bad idea on mobile. We need to learn from the past. Cross-platform UI is a conceptual mistake. An app that has an icon on the home screen is perceived by the user as "an app", no matter if it actually launches the browser without the toolbar, if it is a web app wrapped in a PhoneGap shell of if it is a native app. To the user, it's an app. It…

As someone who spent years building "HTML5" JS mobile apps and then recently spending the time to learn native languages, I 100% agree. There is no way to match the performance and consistency of native with a cross-platform clone. It will always be a half-baked solution. That being said this only applies to apps . A ton of apps shouldn't be apps, they should be well-optimized websites. For ex. content sites. Side No…

> Learning Objective-c and Android java dev isn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be

Where did you start? As a web developer Java and Objective-C seem really complicated and require so much code for the simplest things.

Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5

#97

Post by lukifer »

jfahrenkrug wrote: post #74

Cross-platform UI is a bad idea on the desktop. Cross-platform UI also is a bad idea on mobile. We need to learn from the past. Cross-platform UI is a conceptual mistake. An app that has an icon on the home screen is perceived by the user as "an app", no matter if it actually launches the browser without the toolbar, if it is a web app wrapped in a PhoneGap shell of if it is a native app. To the user, it's an app. It…

You typed your comment on a highly effective cross-platform UI, and I'm reading it on the very same. While there is a place for experiences tailored for specific devices, cross-platform UI also offers value, especially for fast prototyping and iteration.

Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5

#98

Post by EC1 »

tluyben2 wrote: post #56
EC1 wrote: post #40

This is honestly so pointless and bad for the community, further dividing up mobile technology. Why not just improve on something that already exists like jQM? "Building native iOS apps in HTML5". You're building them in HTML5, to look like iOS7, not exactly native now is it? This is the same thing as making a theme for jQuery Mobile. I clicked on this hoping to download something that converts my HTML5 app to native…

Did you ever try jQM? My god. I applaud any efforts to move away from it.

JQM is so unbelievably terrible. Been working with it for the past year.

Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5

#99

Post by lukifer »

kosso wrote: post #29

Nice work. Suggestion: Add the new iOS7.1 "minimal-ui" key to the viewport tag. It makes the top bar a lot smaller and makes it fullscreen in landscape mode. Much nicer for an 'app-like' experience.

minimal-ui is a god-send. Without it, bottom-screen tab bars in web apps are effectively unusable.

Re: Framework 7 – Building native iOS apps in HTML5

#100

Post by jamiesonbecker »

stevekinney wrote: post #87
jamiesonbecker wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes little to no sense. This reeks of the same logic that caused them to disable HTML file upload buttons (there's "no" filesystem -- which is apparently why you can't even browse for photos and uploads until recent IOS). This is what drove "there's an app for that" for so many years: Apple's systematic limiting of web apps into a severely curtailed walled garden so that the app store would -- in fact, could -…

What's extra fun is that when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, he explained that developers could write web apps if they wanted to create software for the iPhone.

I remember that, excellent point.
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