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Comment by WayneDB | Hacker News Reader

OK...but for actual applications that perform some specific functions? In other words, not news/article websites pretending to be apps...

Some examples: A voice recorder. A calculator. A camera application. A compass. A drawing program. A photo editor. A program that auto-tunes your voice. Games.

As a matter of fact, even for those non-app websites that offer an app - I find the app usually offers a better experience compared to the site, but like you - I'm not installing a separate app for each one of them.

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Yeah, your last paragraph makes the whole point.

The experience might be better, but there might be other valid reasons not to use them. That's a trade off vendors have to have in mind as well. Native apps are not always the optimal solution given certain constraints.

I will concede that in the current non-ideal environments in which we work and play - there are all sorts of reasons that I don't want to use a native application. For instance - I will never install a social network application even if I belong to the network. I'd rather go to the site in an incognito browser tab.

In my ideal world, I'd prefer a native app for all things. The web sucks in my opinion. Honestly, I wish there were a browser that dealt exclusively in native GUI elements and other computing resources. I'd also want some very finely-grained native resource permission controls.

I think the vision for HTML5 or the future web is actually pretty close to what you envision. You just mark up your information and the browser represents it in the "right" way (e.g. native implementations). The HTML5 form field types are a step in that direction. However, don't know if all developers/designers like that vision. Stifles creativity...

I'd like to agree with you, but I don't think HTML5 is going to change anything unless they get rid of the HTML part.

I don't every want to layout my UI by saying "div div div div div div div". I want to say "window menubar toolbar grid treeview datagrid statusbar" and then I want it to show me the native representation of those things.

Yeah, that's why the spec started to introduce semantic tags (http://www.pageresource.com/html5/semantic-tags/). I'm not arguing that we are anywhere close to what you want, I'm just saying that the web is evolving in that direction.

I guess we'll have to wait and see. It is going to be interesting to see where we are in 10 more years.

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