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Comment by IpxqwidxG | Hacker News Reader

In my opinion mobile web is yet to arrive, we have just gotten HTML5 standards finalized only about an year ago.

While native has had roughly seven years lead when it comes to providing quality online experience, web apps can beat native easily. And no it's not that web apps or web development or talent for mobile web development is limited or is the bottleneck.

The bottleneck is usually the vendors and support of standards in the existing breed of mobile browsers that destroy the web experience.

For example, Apple introduced this shitty non-standard swipe gesture feature on iPhone Safari/iOS7 that breaks so many things:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18889666/ios-7-is-there-a...

But I think this will change with more competition among tablets and mobiles. IMHO, it is normal for the web to catch up a little later; but when it does native will find it hard to breath.

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The "HTML5 will catch up" argument is a common fallacy. It assumes native apps are standing still, when in fact they are moving rapidly forward. If anything, the gap continues to grow. The web isn't even in their cross-hairs, there's just so much effort for each native platform to keep surging ahead of the others.

If you think Android and iOS are "done", consider where they are headed and you can see they are barely getting started. Consider input such as speed, physical gestures, breathing, brain activity. All manner of form factors. Integration with the "real world" such as Nest and Square. Wearables, cars, home appliances ...

Whatever early-stage web APIs exist for these things are vastly, tragically, fragmented across the various HTML5 runtimes.

The "other web", that of HTTP and REST and JSON and cloud services, is a freaking wonder of engineering and a giant productivity boost to developers of any client. But the UI side of the web is continuing to trail for now. Competition among tablets and mobiles will help native apps as much as it will help the web.

Yes, but the growth aspect will move away from new native apps to new web apps as soon as 'UI side of the web' stops trailing too far.

I agree with you that the competition will push either sides forward, but by how much at each end? - that is the question.

  > as soon as 'UI side of the web' stops trailing too far

Except not likely it ever will.

Why do you think so?

There has been serious improvement in many areas of mobile web/browser support in the last 12 odd months; for what I've seen. Thanks to Android, Chrome, Firefox and Dolphin.

I see no reason why it wouldn't catch up. What makes a good UI on a native app? Fast responses and clean animations? Fancy transparency and 3D effects, perhaps. There's no reason a web browser couldn't do these things. Web UIs may always be slower than native but with fast enough processors it will eventually reach a point where you just wont notice the difference.

> It assumes native apps are standing still, when in fact they are moving rapidly forward. If anything, the gap continues to grow.

I'm sorry, but there are only so many ways you can display a CRUD application. I don't see the next versions of Twitter and Instagram pushing the hardware much more than they are today..

People said the same about terminal-based applications when windows came along. It just takes some imagination Do you really think Instagram and Twitter will be running on the same form factors and look+feel the same in 10 years?

Twitter and Instagram as photo-heavy apps could eventually support 3D models of the world, drone photography, wearables etc (Twitter already has a Glass app).

Same for their notifications - all sorts are possible on watches, speech, car dashboards.

And that's just assuming they stand still functionally.

As for CRUD apps, there's loads of innovation happening. Look at Amazon's new Dash device as one of many examples that change the interaction style from clicking on a web page to speech + real-world scanning. I'm guessing it's not powered by HTML5.

I think what will happen is what happened on the desktop. There was a time when every application you wanted on the desktop had to be installed natively. This was because of the following reasons: web didn't exist yet, web existed but the tools sucked, web existed but networks were slow. Over time the networks got fast enough and the tools got good enough that the vast majority of applications could be built as a website. There are still cases where building a desktop application makes sense such as when performance is critical, but those cases are in the minority now. Building a website also has the distinct advantage that you only need to build it once and it works everywhere (mostly).

When it comes to mobile, I think we are in the "web exists and the tools are almost good enough but the networks suck" phase. When the mobile networks get fast enough, I suspect most applications will just be websites. Of course there will always be some applications that are built for native because of performance or they have some fancy touch-based interaction.

  > While native has had roughly seven years lead

Nope, it has not. Remember, web apps were first on iPhone, before native third party apps. And that's not to mention "common" web.

Also, the roots of HTML5 go back to 2004 when whatwg was formed.

> when it comes to providing quality online experience, > web apps can beat native easily.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Anyone speaking this: please, find a time and get familiar with native SDKs. You absolutely have no clue how far far far behind web tech for apps is. Just do not forget that being capable to do something does not imply that this capability if pleasant to work with, performant enough, or at all useable. I lost my hope that web-tech-for-mobile will ever go past "which mvc framework to use" stage.

Trust me you can provide consumers all of this...

1. Pleasant to work with, 2. Performant enough, 3. Butter smooth usability

... with HTML5 and decent browser support (and significant effort of front-end developers no doubt) without having to download an app on your mobile. Native SDKs are important, I agree with you, but future isn't in them.

It really depends on what you want to do. If all you're interested in is presenting a static(-ish) web page with some "extra" interaction, then sure.

If you want to do anything that harnesses the hardware or computing capability of the device, or anything more complicated the most basic HTML-based UI, then native apps are the way to go. This is independent of whether we're talking about mobile or desktop.

I really hope WebGL is adopted for the computation intensive apps, but yes you're right for most consumer needs basic static(-ish) HTML5 format would be sufficient.

Access to various hardware devices like the camera, speakers, sensors and the like are "basic" on mobile devices but for which there isn't any real way to access from HTML5 in a way that is useful or complete. It could be done, but then one runs into the performance/efficiency (in both development and end-user experience) issue again.

Uh...didn't he web have a 20-30 year head start?

Nope. Native apps are an evolution of desktop installed applications. They came way before the web was in Tim Berners-Lee's headlights.

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