
Why HTML5 is superior to native for mobile apps - jonpress
http://fincrunch.wordpress.com/2014/05/17/native-vs-html5-html5-wins/
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programminggeek
I write HTML5 mobile apps and I've written native mobile apps and native lets
me craft the best possible experience. HTML5 is pretty great in a lot of
contexts, but I wouldn't go so far as to call is superior. It might be a
better fit for your project, but it doesn't make it superior in a general
sense.

Just remember that the web runs on top of a runtime called a bowser and you
will always be at the mercy of said browser for a lot of functionality.
Without native code, you don't have access to the services that make mobile
phones more special and interesting than just a really tiny browser screen
with a always on internet connection wherever you go.

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Sarkie
Having done both, this is laughable, native is always the correct way, you may
get away with HTML5 for a few months but it will not scale, ask Facebook.

I can't be bothered to go into a full reply but...

Continuous deployment: No, your users don't want their apps changing on their
phones without any interaction. "Why did app XYZ just look totally different,
I didn't update it" ? They are used to an update strategy and they might not
want your _amazing_ feature you just wrote.

One code base: I get this, but this is not the way you do it, you should
create a library and your applications are thin views of this, using cross
platform tools like Mono-esq.

Design advantage: Meh, you have design patterns you must follow on each
platform, the amount of HTML5 + Phonegap applications that look like iOS on
Android on Windows phones is laughable. You can do exciting things on the
platforms without thinking that CSS3 is the only way to do it.

Speed and user experience: Never in a million years, I'm not a purist, I tried
using Phonegap for projects, but it always came down to speed on all devices
being less than native, so why would they use ours?

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hpcorona
Well, each time a new article claiming that HTML5 has better user experience
(as stated by this article "Speed and user experience"), i can't find an app
that feels just right made with HTML5.

Just can't find any HTML5 app that feels better than a native app. It doesn't
even feel the same, at least to me.

I've seen great apps, with great user experience, but all of them could be a
lot better if they were native.

Just my opinion, no disrespect to anyone, and i'm not saying i won't develop
an app with HTML5, i just think that we just can't compare them, so we should
stop comparing them.

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general_failure
This is basically spam.

While many things in the article are just bogus, what tickled me the most is
the one about how html5 helps design innovation. Hardly! In fact HTML is a
terrible language for designing good ui's. The only reason we do it is because
of its pervasiveness.

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AdrianRossouw
So at least the famo.us open beta will open beta will open up properly
tomorrow.

This is an html5 app built in famous:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXeFl093_FI&t=50s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXeFl093_FI&t=50s)

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qhoc
Is this on the app store? I don't see it. Video is cool though but I like to
test it for real. Or is there an url of the web version?

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rebelidealist
Another good option is to use
[http://ionicframework.com/](http://ionicframework.com/) \+ phonegap to get
the native functionalities such as camera and accelerometer. Ionic uses
angular for SPA.

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jejones3141
As a smart phone user, I applaud the move to HTML-based apps. The storage on
my phone is limited, and Android has moved towards making additional storage
useless. A significant amount of that limited space is also taken up by the
phone maker's notion of a UI and with preinstalled apps that I will never use
and can't remove without significant hackery. If I can't fit your amazing user
experience on my device, it doesn't matter.

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matt42
Building a single page is just the step 0 of building a native apps. Rendering
the DOM efficiently is another issue much harder to solve.

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dave1010uk
This article is mostly rubbish (sorry) but the point about conintious
deployment raises some questions. Does anyone have any ideas or experiences
about continuous deployment with native apps? What's possible (on iOS and
Android) with self-updating apps?

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Turing_Machine
You can't push updates on iOS without going through the app store approval
process.

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megablast
Native if you an afford it, HTML5 if you can't.

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almata
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Meanwhile, let me keep
thinking native gives better results...

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dzhiurgis
Well JavaScript works fine in Mobile Safari, not so much on WebViews.

Apple is playing security card here by no enabling JIT compiler. The reality
is probably a bit different. They could have solved the issue long time ago,
but I guess for now it's just better (for them) to continue building
Objective-C developer community. In some sense they are sustaining higher app
quality by... making it worse.

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morkfromork
If HTML5 is so great then why isn't it used for most desktop applications?

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AdrianRossouw
You mean like Atom, Adobe Edge, TileMill, PopCorn Time, Light Table or any of
the other things on here :

[https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/wiki/List-of-
apps-a...](https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/wiki/List-of-apps-and-
companies-using-node-webkit)

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morkfromork
Do those run on a phone?

