

Filepicker.io's "Don't write off HTML5" contest - liyanchang
http://blog.filepicker.io/post/32893885058/filepicker-ios-dont-write-off-html5-contest

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gavinlynch
>>> "Some of us aren’t ready to give up on HTML5 yet."

Who was "giving up" on HTML5 just because some founder of some company said so
to begin with? I appreciate that Mark's HTMl5 app was less efficient than his
native app. Sucks for him and his team, I guess. My question is: So what?
These are just tools. Pick one that is appropriate for your company, given the
entire context of the product you are attempting to deliver, and make a
practical and well thought out decision. For so very many, HTML5 is the right
choice. For many others, it's not.

Soo... Sorry, I get bored with hyperbolic, "The Rise of..." and, "The Death of
..." articles.

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vu0tran
The Zuck is sort of right though. There is no doubt that the iOS / Android FB
app is pretty slow and buggy due to their dependence on HTML5. They've gotten
grilled by their users in the past -- although props to them for really
improving it recently.

I'm not saying that HTML5 is a bad technology or anything, it just isn't quite
there yet.

Good article nonetheless.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
There is virtually no browser competition on mobile. On the desktop browser
vendors directly compete which led to the innovation we saw the last few
years. But on mobile the browser is a feature of the OS, reducing its
importance. So we have stagnation. Releasing one browser update per year is
seen as acceptable.

~~~
recursive
I have four different browsers on my phone. What would constitute competition?

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Market share

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cek
_Even if Mark’s view is correct (debatable), the only way HTML5 will ever ‘get
there’ is if the developer community continues to build apps on HTML5 that
push the boundaries of performance._

The presumption that the developer community can impact this is also
debatable. What proof-points in history are there for technologies that became
popular or standard because DEVELOPERS decided to adopt them? In most cases
you come up with, I bet you'll find their success was short-lived or medocre.
Compared to say Objective-C and iOS or Win32.

Platforms (and related technologies) become popular/de-facto-standards because
CUSTOMERS buy the value proposition of the product. Developers then
adapt/adopt.

I'm not saying developers have no impact, I just don't think the impact is
enough to really move the ball.

~~~
icebraining
In what way have customers chosen e.g. Java over other languages and
technologies?

Customers set constraints that restrict choice, but they don't choose them,
developers do. And while for iOS apps those constraints heavily limit the
choice of language, the same is not true for the choice of backend language in
web apps, for example. Or for desktop applications, for that matter.

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vhf
>Choose any technology or any API you want and build a _mobile or mobile-web_
application that showcases HTML5’s capabilities

>\- Both _web or mobile web_ apps are fine.

Is it me or this is quite confusing ? Could someone from Filepicker.io make
this clear, please ? :)

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ananddass
vhf- sorry about not clarifying web=laptop/desktop browser based app mobile
web=mobile browser based app You are technically right.web=browser based. But
we decided to distinguish just a bit to encourage mobile focused web
applications as well.

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vhf
Thanks !

Yeah well, I wasn't nitpicking on the technical sense of web. I was just
confused because it said first "mobile or mobile-web" and later "web or mobile
web".

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drifkin
Ben Sandofsky of Twitter wrote a well-reasoned take on the whole HTML5 vs.
native apps debate: <http://sandofsky.com/blog/shell-apps.html>

I've had very similar experiences working on both HTML5 and native apps.

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uams
Hmm. So the argument that web will eventually over take native mobile apps has
been made over and over. Sure an O(n lgn) algorithm is better, but if the
constants are bad enough, I'm going with the O(n^2). Even the author admits
that native apps were around for nearly 20 years. Accounting for the fact that
things move faster now so it might be less, we're still only a couple years
into a decade long era of installed mobile applications. Then, we still have
to account for the bad network connections on the phone that make web apps
harder to work with.

While I'm skeptical of the mobile argument, I'm super excited about html5 dev
conf because I do think HTML5 is going to be big on desktop/laptops.

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mahmud
Filepicker.io spams geek sites. Not a day passes without their hype on some
front page.

~~~
jarin
The thing is, it's really good. They do one thing but they do it really well.
Saved me a ton of time and measurably increased the number of fully completed
profiles on SetForMarriage.com.

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jarjoura
I don't dispute HTML5 can perform well if optimized the right way. What I
would dispute though is that it's actually far harder to develop a web app
that feels native than it would be to just make native apps. Plus people want
access to device sensors, push notifications, background tasks, etc. that are
also hard to get at through javascript.

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davedx
In my recent experience, using Phonegap you can get to the hardware stuff, it
was not being able to get to webservices easily that killed it for me. Servers
need to be specifically configured to allow cross-origin requests [1] in
JavaScript, or you're basically dead in the water, from my understanding.

This is a pretty huge showstopper for HTML5 mobile. I'd love to hear how
you're supposed to get around it.

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3595515/xmlhttprequest-
er...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3595515/xmlhttprequest-error-origin-
null-is-not-allowed-by-access-control-allow-origin)

~~~
lukifer
You can always proxy it through your own server, although obviously that's
less than ideal.

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MatthewPhillips
I get a delivery failure sending to that email address.

