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Comment by djb_hackernews | Hacker News Reader

The "native" facebook app is just an html5 webapp believe it or not.

I have no trouble believing it, which is a big part of why it has such terrible ratings and reviews now, as compared to when it was native.

And from what I understand, Facebook has done a lot of significant engineering to try and improve the performance while keeping it mostly HTML5.

Mobile web apps aren't ready.

The FB app was heavily using webviews long before the most recent redesign. I could be wrong, but if I remember correctly it was even mostly web-based back when Joe Hewitt was still working on it, and he left Facebook in 2009.

Be that as it may, the experience of using an app is different from using a website. For one, and remember this is for the normal user, there is less searching involved which means less keyboard time, which means faster.

That, and an app seems to have more authority than a website. "This is Facebook, and I know it." sort of thing.

I believe it has both native as well as HTML5 elements, just like the LinkedIn app.

I believe at least the News Feed is HTML5.

I discovered it when I was at Starbucks. My session expired and the NewsFeed displayed the Starbucks login page instead.

No, some minor parts are done with webview, but most of it isn't, at least not for the iPhone. There is a huge library called Three20 that was created while the app was developed (as far as I know).

Is this true? Do you have a source?

It is not true. Facebook uses this: http://three20.info/

I didn't think so. Thanks for clearing that up.

I don't think so. You don't get that smoothness with HTML5.

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