

500MB download? Why didn't Wired Magazine use HTML5 for their iPad app? - mcantelon
http://interfacelab.com/is-this-really-the-future-of-magazines-or-why-didnt-they-just-use-html-5

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ajg1977
A better article would be "Why Wired Didn't use HTML5 for their iPad App".
Since that probably wouldn't have the same link-bait worthy title, I'll write
one here.

Why didn't Wired use HTML5?

1) a) it was built by Adobe who build it on Flash to begin with, b) the tools
just aren't there yet. c) because of #2.

2) Why is the app 500MB? Because all the rich content (images, movies, audio)
are bundled into the app so you do not need an internet connection to view it.
I think we can all agree that downloading a "magazine" before you leave the
house, then finding you can't view most of it, would be an uber fail.

If the app had been based on HTML5 it would have been a 'mare to cache all of
the content locally for offline viewing. HTML5 does offer local storage, but
not in a way that would allow sites to cache 500MB of content. And even if
they could, do you really want to wait 20 minutes for that Pixar feature to
download over 3G?

I suppose you could have created a native app with everything bundled locally
and a UIWebView for rendering the HTML5 content, but really what do you gain
from that?

~~~
wmf
_Why is the app 500MB? Because all the rich content are bundled into the app_

The article says that rich content isn't the source of the bloat:

 _Each full page is a giant image – there are actually two images for each
page: one for landscape and one for portrait mode._

If the app stored text as, you know, _text_ then presumably it would require
significantly less space. Eliminating the portrait/landscape duplication would
also save space.

~~~
DrSprout
Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, but if their intent was to show what a load
of nonsense Apple's insistence that native apps are better is, it sounds like
they couldn't have done a better job.

~~~
andybak
Did you RTFA? You could have made this a native app using the webkit control
and bundled all the content in a 10th of the size.

~~~
DrSprout
Yeah, I'm saying that from what I'm reading they must have intentionally been
looking to create a completely native app that is worse than the Flash-
compiled one.

That or the descriptions of the app are somewhat overcritical.

~~~
kevinelliott
To entertain your reasoning: Adobe certainly could have intentionally created
a "sucky native app" to contrast their "awesome Adobe iPhone OS compiler" but
they mostly left out features and released a bloated (size) app. If they truly
made a native app with HTML-based text and image optimization, or use their
compiler, they could have equally reduced the size of this app and increased
the functionality beyond what they have done here. Thus, the current
implementation does NOT do a good job of proving that their compiler could
have been better than a native Objective-C app.

Even so, if Adobe did want to throw a laughing cog at Apple via their clients,
they're doing Wired a disservice, and frankly, that's terribly insane. They
just couldn't throw a high profile partner/client under the bridge just to
amuse some tantric executive war between Adobe and Apple.

Lastly, although hard to believe a company fairly technology agnostic as Wired
would use their financial line (their money making product) as a way to
experiment with dissing a technology giant, let's pretend Wired and Adobe both
wanted to stick it to Apple for the 3.1.3 clause. They would be simply
shooting themselves in the foot, as their customer is who really loses out
here, not Apple.

It just make any sense at all, although I will give you that it's a romantic
idea. More likely, they rushed a replacement implementation, since they
couldn't use Adobe's compiler. Conde Naste clearly upholds Wired to the same
deadlines as their other high end properties, and want to see a ROI for all
the R&D they've had, perhaps. Becausethis certainly looks like a rushed
implementation, or at a minimum, one done by amateurs.

------
andreyf
Because whatever software they use to layout the magazine can't export to
HTML5. Since they're optimizing for time-to-market, they don't have time to
retrain their designers to use different software, rewrite/extend it, or wait
for the creators of that software to add export-to-HTML5 functionality, and so
this was the most reasonable move. Give it some time, and they'll either move
everything to HTML5 or a similar format with the features they need (their
style of pagination, control over scrolling/swiping details in the UI, etc).

~~~
carterschonwald
hrm, presumably whatever layout tool they use can export to pdf, and
presumably it would be possible to then use Scribd's html5 tech (or license
the right to use it) to then make it html 5?

~~~
xenophanes
Good idea, but maybe they started this project before that was announced, or
they aren't bleeding edge enough to come up with that kind of solution.

------
GR8K
He should have mentioned Sports Illustrated at I/O 2010 for their magazine
demo built in HTML5 to make his point:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3j7mM_JBNw>

------
kevinelliott
I specifically did not purchase the Wired app because:

1) It's freakin' 500MB! Even though I have a 32GB iPad, I want that space for
music and videos, not a magazine that I'll probably read once or twice for
each issue.

2) It was super unclear how much future issues would cost, how they would be
delivered, and how much space subsequent issues would use.

I've been very unimpressed with what the media has been able to create with
the iPad. I think Apple needs to host a traveling "Developer Days" focused
purely on the media, helping them to create really killer shit.

After all, these failures only lend ammo to the anti-iPad Kindle worshippers,
when the problem is really the ability for media to innovate.

------
petercooper
Clause 3.3.1 states:

    
    
        Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++,
        or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine
    

This means that any "interactive" elements must either be written directly in
Objective C, or you're confined entirely to WebKit.

If you don't fancy building new Objective C apps every time you roll out an
issue of your magazine, you have two options.. do it entirely in WebKit or
pre-render everything and spew it out with a simpler native reader. Looks like
Wired took the latter option. I'd always wondered how magazines would get
around this issue - guess we've found out.

~~~
alex_c
I don't really understand your point, can you elaborate? That's all that's
being discussed here - native app vs. HTML5 (or some hybrid, which is
perfectly valid under 3.3.1).

~~~
petercooper
In an ideal world, your magazine app wouldn't be solely using Webkit, because
you might want to create elaborate and performant interactive elements.

However, creating these "by hand" in Objective C for each issue would be time
intensive. Instead, you'd usually use a scripting language or a framework like
Flash to create interactive elements that are beyond JavaScript's reach. 3.3.1
invalidates this approach requiring you either go Webkit, totally native, or,
well, nowhere. There is no middle ground for scripting within apps beyond
JavaScript on Webkit.

------
GR8K
Wired iPad App Sells 24,000 Copies in First 24 Hours

[http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/wired-ipad-app-
sells-...](http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/wired-ipad-app-
sells-24000-copies-in-first-24-hours/)

------
fab13n
"Why Wired Didn't use HTML5 for their iPad App?"

Because consumers are not trained to pay for web sites, whereas they're
trained to pay AppStore-delivered apps, that's why.

80% of iPhone/iPad applications, both accepted and rejected ones, would work
great in HTML5; the figure is of course much higher for applications that
might have been written in flash.

But discussions about Apple's languages, SDK or even hardware platforms are
moot; the game changer for companies is the AppStore, and access to this
AppStore is the only thing they truly care about. They can, but don't want to,
distribute most of their stuff over plain old HTTP. What they can't is getting
paid for doing so.

~~~
wmf
As explained elsewhere in this very thread, you can create App Store apps in
HTML; there are already a ton of them in the store. Therefore the HTML vs.
ObjC issue is orthogonal to the paid app vs. free Web site issue.

------
neovive
Watching all of the iPad demos, it appears very likely that publishers see
this "new" format as an opportunity to monetize content that the web (HTML)
has been marginalizing. At the moment, most users just want to read good
articles and content, which is freely available on the web. Publishers, Wired
in this example and many more likely to follow, are looking for a way to
differentiate their content by building an engaging experience around it. No
one really knows for sure how this work out in the long run, but I do agree
with the author in that it is very reminiscent of the CD-ROM era.

------
adulau
If we purchase that, can we export it and read it in reader using an open and
free format? I suppose again, we can't use it and are forced to go in p2p to
fetch a converted and open version.

I'm always willing to buy e-books in open format and they always end-up in
broken or/and proprietary formats that you can't read on your platform.

This always reminds me of the DRM sucks visualization for the audio book :
<http://s3.amazonaws.com/the_brads/the_brads_drm.png>

------
jasonlbaptiste
We can watch 1080p video via YouTube, there is zero reason you can justify
keeping it a non html5 app wih large downloads. Making an HTML5
magazine/blog/ipadzine is like a candy store to me.

------
jimmyjazz14
I get Wired magazine delivered to me by mail. The user experience is great,
the pages turns just like real paper. The thing is indestructible too; I can
drop it down a flight of steps without even a scratch showing up on it. My dog
chewed up my first copy and it only cost me a few bucks to replace it. I can
roll it up stick it in my pocket and read it at the beach, I don't even worry
about getting sand in it. Can HTML5 deliver that experience?

------
GR8K
The company that did the Time Magazine app for iPad:
<http://www.woodwing.com/en>

inDesign extension/tool that will do iPad/AIR/HTML5 packaging:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1IZ-16FVs4>

I think they also did the Sports Illustrated HTML5 magazine with
thewondefactory.com

------
ars
Did I miss something? Did adobe buy wired? He keeps talking about adobe here,
but I don't see the connection.

~~~
radley
Adobe built the app for Wired. First it was Flash/AIR based, but then they
have to make it iPOS compliant...

~~~
radley
Of course I'm playing with the double meaning. It's a semantic irony to insist
iPad and iPod apps are built in "iPhone OS" and never "iPOS".

------
elblanco
Thanks Steve, this is definitely a better user experience than using flash.

------
zandorg
Wired jumped the shark when Louis Rossetto sold out to Conde Nast and left the
business.

------
szensius
Got a 403 Forbidden error when going to the article.

~~~
jawngee
Yeah I'm in the process of moving the thing off livingdot and onto slicehost.

I had no idea it would hit like this. 100K hits since 3pm EST.

------
frou_dh
Bloatware charts new frontiers in 2010!

------
betageek
The fundamental argument is flawed - I find it extremely hard to believe that
anyone could create the same seamless experience as the iPad Wired app in
HTML5. I certainly haven't seen any demo's that would imply it's possible,
saying "you could do that in HTML 5" if very easy to say, a lot harder to do.

Maybe if the authors of these kinds of posts provided us with a demos I'd
start taking these missives seriously.

~~~
jawngee
I'm the author of the article.

Have you used it?

It really is pretty much a slideshow. Even if you write it using webkit, you
can ape whatever wonderful interactions you seem to be having (that I must
have completely missed) using multiple UIWebView's and some good ol
CoreAnimation.

You can also extend UIWebView with straight up Objective-C, further adding in
the ability to do pretty much whatever you want.

There are a shit ton of HTML 5 demo's on the web. Try google.

~~~
betageek
I've seen a "shit ton" of demos and nothing I've seen is applicable to this
problem. Wired is one of the most visually rich magazines around, it's layouts
are complex, the visuals are rich, it's won many design awards - hundreds of
people are involved in creating a beautiful design artefact. Writing an
article that goes "wired sux, they didn't do it in HTML5" implies that the
level of finish of the Wired app is possible, but I haven't seen any demos
that are anywhere near the size and complexity of a magazine like Wired - if
they exist I'd love to see them

~~~
cpr
See the comment above: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1385172> (Sports
Illustrated showing an all-HTML5 demo that looks a lot more compelling that
this Wired app).

~~~
betageek
Again, this is a video - I'll judge the final version when it's in my hands, I
hope they manage to pull it off in a release version.

