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Comment by adamjernst | Hacker News Reader

I think PhoneGap is doing great work, they're obviously getting better, and I don't mean to diminish what others have poured so much effort into.

But, are there any successful apps made with PhoneGap? Writing apps in HTML5 is constantly hyped, but there isn't a single HTML app out of the dozens on my iPhone except Netflix. PhoneGap's app gallery doesn't have a single app I've heard of.

(The Netflix app isn't too pleasant, either, unfortunately.)

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> But, are there any successful apps made with PhoneGap?

Define successful. Because, let's be honest, if I need an application for my company that will be used internally, does it matter if you haven't heard about it? Don't get caught look at this from just one point of view.

The new LinkedIn and OkCupid apps are primarily HTML5 based. Not quite the same, but every new release of the Facebook app seems to have more of its existing views replaced by HTML5 counterparts.

I'm fairly certain that the Facebook iPhone app does not UIWebViews to render anything. Their fast-scrolling tableviews are painstakingly crafted from scratch, natively, and (I believe) still use Joe Hewitt's framework for complex view rendering. I know some guys on the Facebook iPhone app team and they're die-hard Cocoa developers, I can't see them ever saying "screw it" and using a UIWebView with HTML.

Go to your profile and swipe left on a wall post and observe the "Remove" button and its animation. Now go to the bottom of your wall, and tap on the "See more posts..." cell. Notice that the activity indicator is an animated GIF. Open the app frequently and you'll see certain elements in the UI automatically changing without downloading an update. Or check out m.facebook.com and play around with the news feed that is identical to the one in the iPhone app.

Granted, there are other approaches you can take to get this behavior, but I'm not sure why you would. My impression is that they're using HTML5 in these areas.

Hmm, they're not using the native UITableView animation for editing, but that doesn't mean it's HTML. It's just clunky animation, mostly because each cell is doing a lot of drawing translation due to it all being three20. Also, the "see more posts" cell at the bottom is a TTTableMoreButtonCell (https://github.com/facebook/three20/blob/master/src/Three20U...) I believe.

I know that Facebook is very pro-HTML5 but I don't think there are any views in the native iPhone app that are not native UIKit or based on three20. I'll ask around, would be nice to now if there's any shared code at all on their end.

I stand corrected! I got confirmation from both Joe Hewitt and JazzyChad that they are indeed webviews used in many places now instead of native tableviews. Disregard everything I said :)

I just watched this video (http://gigaom.com/2011/09/27/facebook-mobilize-2011/) where Facebook's head of mobile product talks (a tiny bit) about using HTML5 in their mobile products instead of all native development to keep pace with launches on the Facebook desktop site.

Check out the video at ~16 minute mark.

As if by magic, this story was just published: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_facebook_mobile_wil...

Are writers scouring our discussions looking for topics for their readers?

not magic, TechCrunch and other blogs have been talking about Project Spartan for months. The screen shots were leaked yesterday, which is news worthy...unlike our comments.

It took m a few seconds to realize what is wrong with "HTML5 fist of rage" logo in the article. The fist has 6 fingers. To be fair the original HTML5 logo isn't that much better...

6 fingered fist is the original logo. (More precisely, it's the best we had to use until the release of the w3c one you're referring to.)

Some, but not all, table views were replaced with web views a few months ago. News Feed is one example that is now HTML.

I'm not always proven totally wrong on HN...

...but when I am it's by Joe Hewitt. TGIF!

Hm. How do you handle progressive loading? Do you even bother, or do you just load up the entire news feed and let the WebKit struggle with keeping images in-ram/in-cache etc?

Netflix uses an interesting WebKit-based approach for progressive loading.

Basically, they reuse cells like UITableView does.

http://cdn-0.nflximg.com/us/presentations/htmltvui/oscon-201...

Thank you, good sir!

It is easy to get fast scrolling pseudo-UITableViews using UIWebViews, as long as 1) the tables aren't /that/ long, 2) you change the grid size to something larger than default (to avoid checker-boarding), and 3) you decrease the deceleration constant to match those of normal tables. (Note: I know this from experience with a very widely deployed application: Cydia.)

And I uninstalled the OKC app within a week of them making the switch. Changing it to every action being roundtrip-based made it unusably slow. A total misstep, if you ask me.

Apple's "App Store" app on iOS uses HTML...

Certainly seems like it, or at least every page it displays is doing a separate server call that is not cached very well.

Last I checked (2+ years ago), iTunes on Mac uses an XML format that describes the layout of the page - pretty close to HTML.

Haha - Indeed. It didn't load the style sheets for me once. Not a pretty sight.

Our app (Zite for iPad) is 90% HTML5+js and (I think) is reasonably successful.

Is it made in phonegap though? ie. The only native control on your app is a web browser window?

Nope, it isn't made in PhoneGap. The only native (visible) controls are in the web browser header.

There is a lot of non-visible Obj-C, e.g., for controlling caching and other niceties.

Feedly and Wunderlist are also HTML5 apps.

Also: Love Zite, congrats on the sale.

The FT app is based on html5. Initially, they had an app, but transitioned quickly to html5. Takes a wee bit longer to load, but barely notice that anymore. The experience otherwise is pretty much the same. And for what its worth, it's the best news app on my ipad.

This has always been my feeling. It hasn't made me any friends though.

Phonegap is a great feel good piece of technology, that browser enthusiasts can point to and say, "See this is what you can do with the web".

Just wait till Spine Mobile is released on the 4th of October at FOWA:

http://cl.ly/Aa4V http://cl.ly/Aa7P

Looks great maccman. Here's a little more context if you're not sure what he means by "Spine Mobile".

http://bit.ly/q7Wrkr

Mobile browsers are getting better and better, and apple's iOS happens to have the best. I think the app store distribution mechanism is the main reason you don't see many html apps. It's the big entry point, there's a huge network effect and its cool to say "we have an app for that". Maybe facebook's project Spartan will spark the inevitable switch to html. I mean, check out twitter or kindle on the ipad... what are they lacking in?

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