
Don't go native UI on your mobile web app - toni
http://cubiq.org/dont-go-native-ui-on-your-mobile-web-app/13
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ja2ke
Why would someone want to copy the native OS UI for a web app? That will just
make people think your app is poorly made, when the controls look identical to
those from their mobile device's native OS, but function in a hobbled-via-
Webkit-limitations manner.

Making something aesthetically ... harmonic ... with the native UI is fine,
probably encouraged, but don't set you and your users up for disappointment
and frustration by replicating the aesthetics of controls you can't replicate
functionally.

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enomar
Somewhat unrelated to this post, but I'm finding the debate over web vs.
native mobile apps to be very interesting.

I'm a huge proponent of web apps for desktop apps. Most software is simple
enough to work well in a browser and you can't beat being able to use the same
app on any computer without ever installing or upgrading. This advantage seems
to disappear on mobile phones though. I carry my phone everywhere I go, so
portability isn't really an issue. Most phone platforms provide an easy way to
install and keep your apps up-to-date, so that concern fades away too. Most
importantly though, I see native mobile apps having a much better user
experience than web apps (regardless of whether or not the webapp was written
for a mobile platform). On the desktop, I can keep a web app loaded and
running all day. That seems a lot harder to do on a phone.

Palm is unveiling their webapp based phone soon. Google says it wants to make
more apps using HTML 5. It will be interesting to see how these strategies pan
out.

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zimbabwe
My bible says that you keep as desktop apps those things which you are somehow
personally invested in. So for me, that's my to-do list, Mail.app, iTunes,
iChat, and Textedit. In other words, the things which I almost constantly use.

Everything else can be put online, though HTML 5 isn't as good at making
things look pretty as, say, Cocoa.

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michaelneale
As a similar mac user, I would agree. However, when I flip flop to other
platforms, the native experience isn't so great - so outside of the mac, I can
see the general desire to just make the web the UI for any and all
productivity apps at least (and who knows, perhaps even richer apps and 3d
stuff in the future).

Its funny, on a mac, if you time things with a watch its not "fast" - loading
times, and so on, but the experience is smooth enough that I find the native
apps quite nice to quickly open, jot down a note and move on (eg evernote).

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zimbabwe
That's actually something I noticed on the Mac. It's good at staying sleek
enough that on the desktop you notice a difference.

On Windows I used Google Apps for nearly everything. The desktop equivalents
weren't good enough to be worth switching to. I'd still take Google Docs over
OpenOffice instantly. So my desktop argument only stands when the desktop
things are _so_ good that a web equivalent wouldn't work. I doubt I could ever
find an online to-do list as good as The Hit List, for instance.

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seldo
There used to be a web framework in Java (I can't remember the name) which
made your web app look like Windows: every box was movable, resizable, they
even had pointless minimize and maximize buttons. You couldn't invent a more
pointless and annoying UI for the web.

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chime
Weather Underground does the annoying 'on/off' copy for their site (Options
menu). Very annoying.

