

Ask HN:When will html 5 become the standard for mobile apps? - crapiola

I think mobile apps are a very inefficient way of developing, specially if you want your product to work cross platform.
Arguably, it seems to be the speed issue that keeps most companies from choosing html5. When does the HN crowd think that web technologies will become the standard for developing across mobile phones?
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bikamonki
The easy obstacles: Performance. Two more layers of abstraction make browser
apps clunky. This will go away when phones get beefier.

Security. In Wonderland apps ask for permissions, app stores check for
vulnerabilities and abuse, users read permissions and allow. In Real-land,
click-buy-install-use. Browsers can also ask/warn users regarding permissions
and features.

Phone Features. Can the browser access the camera, local storage, gps, address
book, etc....yes, the browser is a 'native' app, it can have super powers; and
then let HMTL5 use them.

The almost-impossible obstacle: the market. If you are old enough you'll
remember that Windows grew like yeast b/c it had Office and that Mac kept its
niche b/c it had 'designer software'. Fast forward 20 years and FF OS cannot
grow as it wished b/c the phones do not run Whatsapp, the new SMS. Ergo: the
apps available weight more in the purchase decision than HW or brand. So, the
platform owners will do as much as possible to keep things native b/c if
anything runs on anything, and if harware is mostly the same on all phones,
what is the differentiator?

Did you know that only a year ago it was possible tu create a native app with
basically two features: push notifications and a webview. Inside the webview
you could run your web app. Now appstores reject these type of apps, they
require x% of the code base/features to be native (I believe x is changing,
maybe is 50 now?).

~~~
thekingshorses
That's not true at all. My app is mostly HTML5 and it is in the iOS app store
and Android play store.

[http://hn.premii.com/about/](http://hn.premii.com/about/)

> Did you know that only a year ago it was possible tu create a native app
> with basically two features: push notifications and a webview. Inside the
> webview you could run your web app. Now appstores reject these type of apps,
> they require x% of the code base/features to be native (I believe x is
> changing, maybe is 50 now?).

------
ironlady
I would bet never. yes HTML5 is great for making responsive and mobile
friendly sites and apps, and you can use it (with various tools) to compile a
native app for a app store however, HTML5 will never be able to match with
Objective C, or Java in terms of what can be done in a application.

tl;dr never 100%, their will always be room for real native language apps, but
we will see the ratio shift more towards html5 for your basic apps and simple
games year by year

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anthony_franco
Not for a long, long time. In the same way that web apps won't be replacing
all desktop apps for a long, long time.

~~~
bighi
I would bet that this "long, long time" is like 3 or 4 years.

~~~
Liongadev
You probably would have said the same thing 3 or 4 years ago. But hardly
anything change. Your IDE, Photoshop etc. are still all desktop apps.

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getshadowband
Depends on what functions your app is performing. We develop web based apps
and would only need a native version to access a users contact list (Maybe
there is a way to do this already?). Otherwise we're pretty content without
having to deal with the app stores.

------
joshdance
I don't think it will ever become the standard. I think that it will continue
to improve and more and more types of apps will be built with it. For example
Flappy Bird could have been built entirely in html5 as the clones have shown
us.

------
eukaryotia
Why should it? I think we'll just stick with native applications for most
serious things. The web as a platform-independent abstraction layer is not
that great an idea.

------
moron4hire
It's interesting that people forget the iPhone was originally HTML5-apps-only,
there was no app store, there were no 3rd party native apps. The roots are
there. They just need to be watered.

I've been tinkering with HTML5 apps for the last few years. If you're on the
desktop, I don't think there is reasonably anything you can't do. On mobile,
there are still a lot of problems with audio. That is very unfortunate for a
host of different types of apps, but for a lot of others it is no big deal.

There are things that I'm doing with my current project,
[https://www.justwritedammit.com](https://www.justwritedammit.com), that I
just don't think would be possible without HTML5. Building a cross-platform
experience has been significantly easier than Java ever allowed me to do, and
I'm getting to hit more platforms. I can deploy changes NOW and I can do it 20
times a day if I want. And I have 100% feature parity between desktop and
mobile.

~~~
rhythmvs
JWD looks nice! Hope to see this evolve into a great option for online
writing.

Just wondering: do you plan on supporting Markdown? If not: is that by design?
Plans on any formatting syntax whatsoever (considering ePub is the main target
export format)?

~~~
moron4hire
Thanks, that means a lot to me.

I've toyed with the idea of using Markdown. As long as the formatting doesn't
get in the way of the writing is the key. People have a real problem with
focusing on the work that matters. It's really easy to procrastinate by doing
busy-work like making sure you're using the right type of bullets for your
lists.

My original idea was to have formatting be a completely separate mode. But the
more I think about the problem in general, I realize that at some point, it's
impossible to 100% disassociate content from presentation. Markdown is
probably the best compromise. Some other people have had success with writing
full, going-to-print books through Markdown. It's certainly a better choice
than a full WYSIWYG or GUI editor.

Formatting is also one of those features that people think they need when they
don't. Currently, you write into individual chapters, and the chapters get
concatenated correctly to have page breaks and headers. There are many
different types of books that need no more formatting than that, novels in
particular. I'd rather spend time working on getting full ePub docs
implemented (I can write HTML files to ZIP files right now, but haven't done
much beyond that, more just need to read the spec and get it done at this
point), or getting some of the flow-encouraging mini-games made. Or finally
building a real server (this is all 100% client-side right now) so I can let
people publish their writing directly to their own blog.

I also need to spend some time in the marketing department. There is a lot to
do. It's been just under a month since I threw away the work I was doing in
Java (from a year and a half ago) and restarted in HTML5.

I could certainly use some help ;)

~~~
bowerbird
hi. bowerbird here, checking in with you two. i haven't forgotten you, just
been working on smoothing out the latest wrinkle in my thinking, which i do
believe has made a huge improvement. i'll get some stuff to both of you, quite
pronto.

-bowerbird

~~~
rhythmvs
Would love to see what you’ve been working on.

Meanwhile, I took the liberty of browsing through your .zml demo’s¹. I can say
your manifesto² got me intrigued. Do keep me posted!

¹ [http://www.z-m-l.com/](http://www.z-m-l.com/) ²
[http://zenmagiclove.com/marchforth/march-forth-
manifesto.zml](http://zenmagiclove.com/marchforth/march-forth-manifesto.zml)

