
Ubuntu HTML5 SDK - Sami_Lehtinen
http://developer.ubuntu.com/apps/html-5/
======
xfour
Performance and access to the internal SDK seem to be what ultimately kill
this approach. Seems like this happens at the beginning of every product
cycle.

So we've got this decent platform, we build up HTML apps that end up kludgy
compared to IOS or Android native, so you do a 180 and release the official
SDK and everyone migrates over; or your product never reaches mass adoption
and dies.

Also, ChromeOS and FirefoxOS are browser's so of course they have a vested
interest in making their apps in HTML / JS.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> _So we 've got this decent platform, we build up HTML apps that end up
> kludgy compared to IOS or Android native_

People say this all the time, and it makes me wonder if I'm living on a
different planet than them. I can see some places where native is better:

* A camera app, or a guitar tuner... something that requires access to special APIs. Making that in HTML would be a kludge.

* An app that's targeted at tech people, who want to feel like they're living in the future, and who need to have have fancy transitions and animations and subtle 3d effects.

But in my experience, the vast majority of apps do NOT require those things.
Most apps are just buttons and pages and pictures and videos, and for that
kind of stuff, I honestly don't see what the advantage of native is over HTML.

Maybe it's because I am an interaction designer. In my experience, the
interaction design in most apps, native or HTML, is seriously lacking. It
seems like almost no one actually tests their product with actual people. And
it seems like very few developers are actually willing to build the dozens of
prototypes that are required to iterate through a design in order to get
something that actually _works_ well.

And so we end up with all of these native apps that are supposedly "not
kludgy" because they have native widgets and 3d animations, but actually are
_extremely kludgy_ in that everything you do in them is a pain in the ass.

But again, I hear people ring the native app bell over and over again like
it's some major design issue. So maybe I'm just living in a different world.

~~~
Arnor
How do you feel about native vs HTML5 for applications that need to do a lot
of timing? From my perspective setInterval and setTimeout seem pretty kludgy.

Also, I'm really interested in what you mean by "the dozens of prototypes that
are required..." If you're talking about building several prototypes of the
same feature to compare and contrast, would you mind sharing the
tools/workflows you use for this?

~~~
erikpukinskis
No, I'm talking about a wide range of prototypes, from paper prototypes to
experience prototypes to barely-functional HTML prototypes that only test one
small aspect of your app, to small native apps that you throw away that let
you test various aspects of your design that need to be mocked up more fully.

Finally, towards the very end you might do a few variations within your fully
realized native app, but that kind of prototyping is extraordinarily expensive
and 90% of your design questions should be answered by that point.

The output of a good design process should include dozens of vastly different
looking prototypes, in totally different mediums, each of which helped answer
key design questions.

A good introduction to this's stuff is Rogers, Preece and Sharp's "Interaction
Design". My personal favorite for diving into the breadth of design techniques
is Brenda Laurel's "Design Research".

~~~
Arnor
Thank you. Links for reference:

[http://www.amazon.com/Interaction-Design-Beyond-Human-
Comput...](http://www.amazon.com/Interaction-Design-Beyond-Human-
Computer/dp/0470018666)

[http://www.aculei.net/~ams/textbooks/Interaction%20Design.pd...](http://www.aculei.net/~ams/textbooks/Interaction%20Design.pdf)

[http://www.amazon.com/Design-Research-Perspectives-Brenda-
La...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Research-Perspectives-Brenda-
Laurel/dp/0262122634)

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mjp94
I can't help but feel that this will turn out the same way as how HTML5 is
used on mobile phones for native apps right now, where your app ends up not
looking native to any of the devices, despite the benefit of one code base for
the app.

~~~
Danieru
Of course it will! This is Cordova, the same Cordova as used on BB10, Android,
and iOS. This is less webapps and more html stuffed into a native app.

This should not be mistaken for something akin to FirefoxOS. Full disclosure:
I've dabbled in systems programming on both Cordova (for BB10), and Gecko.
Cordova is but a crude approximation to a proper web environment. Long live
Gecko!

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sandstrom
Firefox OS, Chrome OS and now Ubuntu throwing their weight behind HTML. Nice!

Curiously, iOS have sort of taken the other path, beginning with only HTML
apps and then drifted away somewhat.

~~~
adamnemecek
Even though it's probably not very popular, HTML + JS is also the preferred
(only?) way of writing Metro apps for Windows.

~~~
kevingadd
Not only in any fashion (.NET and C++ are still supported) but yeah, they do
have a very strong dev pipeline for HTML.

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schmichael
Why would anyone use this? Are there any consumer Ubuntu phones in existence?
Is there any evidence there ever will be?

I use Ubuntu on desktops and servers, but I've seen no reason to expect Ubuntu
to gain any traction on phones.

~~~
themodelplumber
> Is there any evidence there ever will be?

Yeah, I think the story was posted here recently. They signed somebody but
can't say who it is yet, just that they're "big". There were some hints that
the appeal had to do with Android being a big deception built around the
"open" concept.

~~~
T-A
[http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57615107-94/ubuntu-touch-
os...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57615107-94/ubuntu-touch-os-wins-its-
first-smartphone-partner/)

It's not clear to me why they'd want to keep the manufacturer secret.

~~~
JohnBooty
I think the secrecy is likely at the manufacturer's behest. The manufacturer
almost certainly uses Android and is mindful of drawing Google's anger.

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voidr
This is just a Qt SDK and a tutorial on how to write a WebView app. It's like
opening up Android Studio/XCode and adding a WebView.

I would have expected to see something where I only write HTML/JS.

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T-A
"write apps that will run on the next million phones"? A rare case of modesty
or just a typo?

~~~
Tloewald
Million is probably immodest too. Whoops, i think apple and samsung sold a
million phones just then. Oh that's silly, it takes them a day or two to sell
a million phones.

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sp332
Do these APIs cover similar ground as Firefox OS's APIs?

~~~
daker
You need to use Cordova 3.3.x
[https://cordova.apache.org/announcements/2013/12/16/cordova-...](https://cordova.apache.org/announcements/2013/12/16/cordova-330.html)

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navs
Wondering how this stacks up against Sencha Touch?

