

Let's settle it, HTML5 Apps are what we are going to call it - voidfiles
http://alexkessinger.net/story/lets-go-html5-apps

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cscotta
The current "app" frenzy leaves me uneasy in that most "apps" (in the
iPhone/Android/WebOS sense) are roughly feature-par with what a superset of
we'd traditionally call "widgets".

That's not to say that a tremendous amount of UX + graphic design,
development, and testing are involved - they are, which I celebrate.

But I'd like to suggest that the end product of "HTML 5" app development
(assuming any HTML 5 is involved at all) more closely resembles mobile
development than desktop application development. I'm uncomfortable with the
notion that browser + Javascript-based applications should be considered on-
par, feature-for-feature, experience-for-experience replacements for desktop
applications written in native code for specific operating systems.

Please don't get me wrong - I'm not attempting to channel a neo-luddism, or
pining for the days of Swing and QT. There are tremendous advancements being
made in the browser. But browser-based applications are constrained to running
inside a browser. Development for browsers is painful and wildly inconsistent,
unless papered over by frameworks we all love like jQuery and Prototype. We're
heading closer to native implementations of animation and media-related
functions, but are still years from any sort of standardization. Even
companies heralding the era of HTML5 + JS + standards...well, fragrantly
undermine their points by releasing single-browser demos and calling it
"universal" (see Apple and the recent HTML5 demo flap).

I look forward to the day when web and browser-based development are a breeze.
But until then, I'd feel much more comfortable referring to such endeavors as
"web apps" and "web sites" than "applications" in the desktop sense.

~~~
voidfiles
That was an even handed assessment, and I get the sense that you have thought
about this, but I think you are wrong.

Exhibit A: Gmail. Yes, it's a website, and doesn't use "HTML5" yet, but it
does rival desktop applications. People prefer it over desktop applications.

When I say application I mean it in that sense. People aren't creating Skype
in the browser, yet, check out <http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-device/> for more
on that, but people are building useful pieces of software that have become
intertwined with their life.

If you grant me that people might use some websites more then they use desktop
applications, then I assume we are having merely a semantic argument which is
a different matter. Though, I imagine it would be difficult to put aside the
fact that people use websites like they use desktop applications.

Even as fun as this is, the argument about whether or not to call these things
applications has past. With things like Chrome App
Store(<https://chrome.google.com/webstore>), the debate has been lost. The
industry has decided, I merely want to voice my support for the term HTML5
Apps, as PPK has on Quirksmode.

