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Comment by fjabre | Hacker News Reader

The web is the closest we've ever come to a standards compliant universal platform that is write once - works everywhere, period.

Last time I checked you have to be a paid member and go through an oft-criticized approval process to develop for Apple's proprietary app store platform on all iDevices.

Besides, Chrome OS and webkit are supposed to usher in a new era of enhanced HTML5/Canvas support including better access to the GPU. Google is betting on Web apps and I'm pretty sure Apple is not ignoring them with a standards compliant Safari browser on all of its devices.

So the web doesn't suck.. It rocks - and it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

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"works everywhere, period"

Hehe. This made me chuckle a lot.

We are now entering an era where the hardware is suddenly significantly different, but your app may have to target all 3. As in an iPhone sized screen, an iPad sized screen and a monitor. Often you won't be able to use the same app for each one. The UX has to be different.

So the dream of write once - works everywhere is now at an end because of the devices themselves.

Well you make a good point but I'd argue that most web apps are easily adjusted to work well using Safari even on something the size of an iPhone. Take Hacker News for example - half the time I'm reading/commenting on my iPhone even though this site is not iPhone optimized.

Easier doesn't mean "write once". Sure, write less, and a more pleasant experience than years ago. Definitely not "everywhere, period".

Hacker news is on the low end of the webapp scale.

I think what the OP means is that the webapps have changed application model from client side to a more server side approach. UX needs to change across platforms (devices) yes, but the number of versions of application "out there" is just one (or a few, unless you're doing split testing).

"The web is the closest we've ever come to a standards compliant universal platform that is write once - works everywhere, period."

I think Java applications succeeded better in this regard. I remember hearing about fewer incompatibilities between JRE versions than I currently hear between browsers; there was never a "stop supporting JRE 1" campaign like there has been for successive versions of IE.

there was never a "stop supporting JRE 1" campaign like there has been for successive versions of IE.

there isn't a "stop JRE 1" campaign but there's a good amount of "stop breaking stuff with your updates, sun".

working in helpdesk a couple years ago, we needed to keep specific versions of JRE for specific applications. if you ever needed to use two apps that required two different versions of JRE, well....good luck.

From my understanding this is always because the developers did something they know they shouldn't have, like access private unsupported features of a specific version of a Sun JVM. I've seen quite a bit of java code written and all of it could run on multiple versions of Java with no problem.

Anyone who created Java applets heard lots of gripes about the Microsoft JRE vs Sun JRE. I wouldn't be surprised if web games implemented as applets are still using the 10 year old API of the old Microsoft JRE.

I still shudder when I think about fixing Java plugin installation issues.

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