Comment by pilif | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pilif | Hacker News Reader

so now the days of being able to use HTML5 targeting mostly Webkit to build amazing Mobile Web Apps are over.

Back are the days of ugly IE hacks, frustrating testing and rewriting stuff so it works in IE6.

A heartfelt "thank you" to Micrsoft for screwing over countless web developers who finally felt that they were able to really express themselves at least in the mobile world.

Also, dear customers, please understand that from now on any mobile work you are giving us will be much more expensive because Microsoft decided to release a phone OS in 2010 with a browser engine basically from 2001 (I hear it's not quite IE7).

And, dear end users, please understand that because of Microsoft, we won't be able to supply you with all the amazing new features in your mobile apps as quickly any more because, now, we developers will have to do additional work to make sure that whatever we are creating works in that new OS Microsoft released that runs a browser from 2001.

Myself? I'm off to hide in a dark corner and cry.

Honestly, why go to the effort? With 2 massive competing phone platforms that are implemented sanely, this time it is entirely up to Microsoft to fix any...inconsistencies. They are the underdog, and they don't deserve to have the whole industry bend over and twist their apps just so that a fledgling phone platform is more useful.

I want to agree with you so badly (and to some extent, I suppose I do), but any time I consider the margin of users you could "safely" exclude, I consider the competitor who does not.

On the other hand, any time you consider spending dev cycles to accommodate a minor player in the mobile market, you can consider the competitor who instead makes their product better on the main platforms.

Ever heard of customers? It doesn't work that way.

That's like saying that you need to make your website work with Opera, when most people don't bother. In this case, Microsoft is in Opera's place. I'd say it's pretty safe to ignore them.

Kinda a bad analogy as Opera is pretty much on par with Webkit/Gekko. Sure it basically shares the same JS-based quirks as IE, but it has a much more robust and usable error console so I welcome it.

Actually, that means the answer is even clearer for Windows Phone - since the differences are greater, it should have a proportionally larger share of the market to make supporting it worthwhile.

My point is that the cost to support Opera isnt as high, or in A LOT of case, adds nothing, to the effort needed to get to a final product.

That's how many iPhone 4s Apple sold in its first 3 days. Google is activating that many Androids every 5 days. It's not a huge deal.

That said, the browser is apparently better than an "IE6.5"

According to Andy Lees the browser is "halfway between IE7 and IE8" which is a considerable improvement. Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10452710-56.html

Elsewhere there have been mentions that the next big software update, codenamed "Mango", which will apply to all WP7 devices, will bring the browser closer to IE9 with support for many HTML5 and CSS3 features.

It's a big deal because it means WP7 is in the game, which is not what some were predicting.

It really isn't. There are two separate issues which are being mixed here.

1. Browser is not as bad as the OP suggested and will improve with the next update to a decent level of HTML5/CSS3 (Microsoft has turned a leaf with IE9, not perfect but infinitely better than "IE6.5")

2. The 1.5 million WP7 phones sold over the launch period (the last 6 weeks) won't even replace the current number of Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone sales as they get phased out from corporate sales. Now there is a smartphone with a dog of a browser.

To be in the game, Microsoft needs much more than 1.5 million sales. They need more than this to make it worthwhile for their manufacturing partners (divide the sales amongst HTC, Dell, LG and Samsung).

This is not a disaster like the Kin but it isn't really good news for them.

Just don't bother supporting it. This will either force them to get their act together, or frustrate consumers who'll proceed to move to a better platform.

Which, from the view of customers, is websites which support their phone, not a phone which websites support. If enough of your customers use WP7 for it to be cost-effective to support, don't piss them off by not supporting it just to be vindictive, because they'll blame you and it will, indeed, be your fault for not supporting it.

It's actually somewhere between IE7 and IE8. Obviously still not good, but we're not talking about IE6 here.

I heard different statements about this.

Officially it's IE7, but some people said it has some old IE6 bugs in it.

Basically, it's probably just another mess that needs to be specifically targeted.

Closer to the IE7 side of things. And while IE7 was an improvement on IE6 it still lacks a large portion of the fun stuff that’s for the past couple of years made smartphone-focused web development a breath of fresh air.

No way.

You can't argue about market share, since it's minuscule. If you want your websites to run on _all_ mobile devices, you'll also need to support Opera Mini, Symbian's built-in browser and whatever else is out there. Those latter two have way more installs than there are win phones, by the way.

You can't argue about corporate users being forced to use IEMobile. It's a person's _choice_ to use a windows phone, and Microsoft's responsibility to make it a pleasant experience, not yours.

> I hear it's not quite IE7

In the time it took you to write your rant, you could have checked, found out you were wrong, and then saved yourself all that typing.

I wholeheartedly agree and share the frustration. This only detracts from web apps in favor of native apps.

At this point a solution (or a way to mitigate the problem) would be something like phonegap. You still have to endure the pain of deploying the app (app stores, customers that don't upgrade, etc.) but at least you have to only support the browser that phonegap integrates (webkit, if I recall).

It's a branch of IE7. IE9 mobile is being released in the next few months from what I hear. The Win Phone 7 team had to make a temporary trade off as to what they could have ready by launch.

Couldn't you bundle webkit with your app?

Yeah. I could.

But do I want to create an app? Right now, many possible web applications could be done as just that.

Web applications. No need for an installation, no need to deal with approval issues, no dealing with people not upgrading either OS or app. Just a plain website.

Being forced into a local installation again is a huge hit against the open web.

Isn't it a .Net only platform? No native code?

At this point, for most developers the choice is Silverlight (.net/c#) and XNA (for games). I think only a limited amount of publishers are able to publish native c/c++ applications.

TorchMobile had a good port of webkit on WindowsCE with a good browser. RIM bought them and killed the application. Lots of users were sad but the port is not dead from the webkit repository perspective.

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