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Comment by pohl | Hacker News Reader

The only native experience of the Web and HTML5 today is on Windows 7 with IE9.

I'm leery of the word "native" in this context. It strikes me as a marketing phrase with little or no actual meaning. They're trying to sell me on the idea that my HTML5 experience will somehow be better because it uses code provided by Windows itself rather than by some intermediary library. But what is that windows code, if not a library of code?

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I think it is a brilliant marketing term. yes they hijack the term "native" but if in fact they can deliver, it will be a clear differentiator in users' mind, like this:

IE10 = native = fast

Chrome = not native = slow

Simple message, and it works IMHO.

I'm watching MIX'11 live and so far the demos are great (like the fishbowl benchmark, completely blowing Chrome's fish out of the water ;D) but they are still just demos.

The beauty of this is that if IE10 is actually faster than Chrome, then Chrome has fulfilled its mission perfectly.

"Faster" is not the holy grail metric. Standard compliance and well-thought-out interoperability are high on my list.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to use a dog of a browser, either, but in modern times with dual-core this and 8GB that, one would probably have to actually work at it in order to have a genuinely slow browser.

It's easier than you'd think.

I think the Google folks will disagree with you :D

I think they will agree, the availability of good browsers means their web apps work great everywhere.

yeah, that was the actual intent of Chrome as far as I understand it and it has worked.

Look at Firefox 4, you can't say it wasn't influenced by Chrome. And the fact that Microsoft is now trying to move faster with IE10 already being announced is probably also largely influenced by Chrome's fast paced development.

We now have a better faster web. We just need it to be standardized a little more (Come on Microsoft, please add WebGL support)

Except for when they deliberately cripple them for Opera users :\

True, but MS will always try to steer people toward their own services, so it's not a complete win. But definitely better than having people on IE6 trying to use Gmail, or even search for that matter.

How is that any different from what Google does? or Apple for that matter?

From Google's perspective?

It's a "brilliant marketing term" in the same way that any falsehood is. Other IEs have also been "native" in that way, yet they are dog slow, so "native = fast" is clearly wrong. "IE10 = fast" would skip the lie and seems like just as good a differentiator.

True, but "fast" is a crowded concept in people's minds. If you look around the web you'll read that Firefox 4 is fast, Chrome is fast, Opera is fast. IE is "native" which is then connected with performance claims. It's a new name for an old feature that has a kernel of truth to back it up. I'm reminded of an early scene in Mad Men where a salesman convinces a cigarette company to advertise their tobacco as "toasted". Sure, so is everyone else's, but that doesn't mean that one company can't own that idea in the minds of the public.

A similar thing thing with the IE blog's new favorite phrase "same markup" which seems to be "standards compliant" in a new blue dress. Search the web for 'standards compliant browser' and you'll generally find folks heaping scorn on IE and praise on all the others. Search for 'same markup browser' and the opposite is true.

Sometimes "native" is a bad thing in browsers. Like ActiveX.

Or NativeClient. Ironically it contains several runtimes although "Native" in this case means non-web programming languages for the client-side. Remember the HTML component is a runtime.

It may be a brilliant marketing term but for us technical guys it sucks - from now on we have educate everybody we meet about what the term "native" really mean.

Not to talk about all the wrong decisions that will be made based on this.

Marketeers, if we could only get rid of them.

Well, don't we already have to do that for "open", "closed", "evil", "chrome" (multi-definition), "app" (web, native), "social", and so on?

and BTW, Microsoft didn't start this. Remember Native Client?

I remember native client, but was actually native in the tech sense since it ran x86 code.

Here is another funny one, from http://www.intel.com/products/processor/index.htm : "Desktops powered by the 2nd generation Intel® Core™ processor family let you see and do more with visibly smart performance." From http://www.intel.com/products/processors/previousgeneration/...: "Previous generation Intel® processors in the Intel® Core™ processor family delivers desktop performance, reliability, and energy efficiency."

Its so native to win vista/7 that it does not support windows xp which Opera/Firefox/Chrome ALL support WITH their performance improvements AND they've done so while staying ahead of IE9.

I guess if that's native, yes IE9 wins. I think in user's minds: if its built for MY operating system specifically its better than the other. However thats not true as even the tech unsavvy are flocking away from IE.

HOWEVER. I am glad to hear this news. It only means one thing. PROGRESS.

I suspect their messaging is driven by internal politics as much as it is by external marketing imperatives. "We are a vital, integral part of Windows and should therefore be heavily funded".

Yeah, it sounds like they're trying to hijack the term to give the impression that other browsers are somehow not "native."

Did IE9 not have "native" HTML5, or is it just that marketing only came up with the idea now?

Please read the post. Direct quote:

> IE9 delivers native support for HTML5 on Windows.

Another direct quote:

> Native HTML5 support in Windows with IE9 makes a huge difference in what sites can do.

And another:

> The only native experience of the Web and HTML5 today is on Windows 7 with IE9.

The first two quotes give me more of a sense of "IE9 brings HTML5 support to your native apps, by installing a new version of the MSHTML web control."

In the sense of using the platforms' libraries and APIs, then Chrome is not native (especially some of the UI as Javascript is not native in any sense) because it comes bundled with its own runtime as well as the WebKit runtime. But in terms of systems languages they are using yes that is native.

They used the same messaging with IE9.

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

And, if that's their criteria for a web browser being "good", how would Safari on Mac OS X also not qualify?

Webkit?

WebKit ships with the OS, just like IE's MSHTML/Trident engine. Does being open source make it less "native" somehow?

The argument that webkit is not native because it is open source is a plausible reason to exclude Safari - hence "webkit?" rather than "webkit!"

In my opinion, claims about nativeness are on a par with those about magicalness - but marketing flacks don't get paid based upon sound ontology.

I think "native" means they can leave supporting new features everyone else has had for years until a new version of the OS comes out, rather than being bound by this silly "upgradeable" thing.

Yea, I know MS is the most non PR2.0 compliant browser vendor for a while now.

HTML5 has become a marketing term, it's not so surprising that Microsoft needs to differentiate themselves with their late jump on that bandwagon.

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