I don't work for Facebook. I work at a mobile company that does iOS and Android development. I work daily on our Android apps. Here is my experience:
1. The cost of maintaining iOS and Android is something like 1.5x the cost of maintaining just one or the other. Most of the investment is architecture and design. About 50% of the design is portable across iOS and Android.
2. Developing reliable HTML5 that behaves predictably is as expensive as developing for a native platform. You may already have the skills, but that doesn't make it less expensive.
3. Most touch frameworks (jQuery mobile, etc.) get you 85% of the way there and then you're stuck. To get an app that can compete with native in terms of realization of design, you end up with lots of non-framework code.
4. (Android specific) The same fragmentation that hurts native development hurts support for HTML5. The test matrix for HTML5/browser compatibility on Android is almost as daunting as the native support. Different device/os versions have different web cores that have different foibles. Its just as big a grab bag as ever.
5. Multimedia support for these environments is just atrocious. Unless you can proxy/convert all content, all but the most trivial content is inaccessible. You end up calling into other applications on the platforms which can present a much less compelling presentation to the user.
I'm not going to say its impossible. I'm leaving out all the arguments of performance because it just gets to be to specific to the use case. I have not seen a compelling example of a unified mobile & desktop browser code base that would eliminate all mobile maintenance. Besides just having people rip up my points, I'd be interested in hearing what HTML5 components people are finding make these issues manageable.
In the long run, its not black or white. We use HTML5/css/js for some things and native for most things. Its how we keep things moving but I'm sure we'll revisit this over and over to make sure we keep investing in the right platform.
Thanks you...
People think that HTML5 us the second coming. Thank you for putting it in context. Use the best tool for the job. I am tired of so much hype over HTML5 - like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
1. The cost of maintaining iOS and Android is something like 1.5x the cost of maintaining just one or the other. Most of the investment is architecture and design. About 50% of the design is portable across iOS and Android.
2. Developing reliable HTML5 that behaves predictably is as expensive as developing for a native platform. You may already have the skills, but that doesn't make it less expensive.
3. Most touch frameworks (jQuery mobile, etc.) get you 85% of the way there and then you're stuck. To get an app that can compete with native in terms of realization of design, you end up with lots of non-framework code.
4. (Android specific) The same fragmentation that hurts native development hurts support for HTML5. The test matrix for HTML5/browser compatibility on Android is almost as daunting as the native support. Different device/os versions have different web cores that have different foibles. Its just as big a grab bag as ever.
5. Multimedia support for these environments is just atrocious. Unless you can proxy/convert all content, all but the most trivial content is inaccessible. You end up calling into other applications on the platforms which can present a much less compelling presentation to the user.
I'm not going to say its impossible. I'm leaving out all the arguments of performance because it just gets to be to specific to the use case. I have not seen a compelling example of a unified mobile & desktop browser code base that would eliminate all mobile maintenance. Besides just having people rip up my points, I'd be interested in hearing what HTML5 components people are finding make these issues manageable.
In the long run, its not black or white. We use HTML5/css/js for some things and native for most things. Its how we keep things moving but I'm sure we'll revisit this over and over to make sure we keep investing in the right platform.