

Will Apps Kill Websites? - thisisblurry
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/will-apps-kill-websites.html

======
jerf
Websites will kill apps. It's only a matter of time. The only reason to write
apps is for performance and to get access to features your browser won't let
you, but those will both progressively be fixed over time. The only app
survivors will be those apps that truly use all the power or truly use very
specific hardware that is somehow not safe or not widespread enough to justify
browser support.

If your career is currently bet on apps, I'd be sure to diversify in your
spare time into something not-app. (Said not-app thing may also be useful in
apps, I'd just avoid specializing extensively and solely on things that are
only uesful in the app context.)

~~~
aculver
I'm not saying apps will kill websites, but we're 5 years into this thing now:
Websites will not kill apps. It's not just about performance and hardware
access, it's about UI toolkits. Web-based and cross-platform apps just feel
different. Even PhoneGap, Titanium, etc. haven't been able to solve this
problem. Mobile sites and web-based apps will continue to exist, because it's
the right solution some of the time.. but native apps are here to stay.

~~~
untog
_It's not just about performance and hardware access, it's about UI toolkits.
Web-based and cross-platform apps just feel different. Even PhoneGap,
Titanium, etc. haven't been able to solve this problem._

Right... because the browsers aren't there yet. They absolutely could be,
though. Maybe Apple will stop Safari from being able, but they're actually yet
to show any indication that they would do that.

~~~
mitjak
Add to that the difficult of using and discovering a web app. Apple, for
instance, while embracing HTML5 as far justifying death of Flash goes, has
made little visible effort to promote visibility of web apps. Some features of
mobileSafari have been requested and missing for years (looking at you,
contentEditable). That, and lack of an easy to browse web app store is what I
would blame. Of course Aplle can't profit from webapps nearly as easily, so it
does make sense.

------
mseebach
Atwood seems to completely miss one important point: doing an app is a
greenfield project. It's the elusive complete rewrite, without the re-. A
website like eBay has hundreds of small features, each of which needs to be
considered and included in a redesign. An app can just focus on making the 10%
of the features that the 90% use really good.

~~~
bhauer
From the article:

"To be fair, eBay is struggling under the massive accumulated design debt of a
website originally conceived in the late 90s, whereas their mobile and tablet
app experiences are recent inventions."

------
daleharvey
None of the cons of website actually need to be cons, they dont need to be
slow, they dont need to have unsuitable UI's for mobile, and they dont need to
break when they go offline.

We have done a bad job up until now of realising users expectations that the
web should have a great / simple ui and work offline, we just need to improve,
much in the same way as the slow transition from desktop apps to web apps has
been going, I think its inevitable that we will build most of our technology
for the web

~~~
rimantas

      > I think its inevitable that we will build most of our
      > technology for the web
    

If by that you mean connected, then yes. If by that you mean "using HTML, CSS
and JavaScript"—not necessarily. As someone else mentioned in comments the
most likely scenario would be backend with API and native apps and web apps as
clients for that API.

~~~
daleharvey
I mean absolutely the opposite of apps that require a server connection in
order to function

As much as our connectivity is getting better, it is never going to be 100%,
without failures, and latency is not going to disappear

------
stretchwithme
I don't want to have a separate app for every web site I currently use.
Drilling down through a hierarchy of apps or flipping through page and page of
apps versus starting to type the url? Doesn't seem like an upgrade.

Maybe UIs will start acting more like a browser and let me find apps easily.
Maybe browsers will just present apps with all the same power apps have. Maybe
it doesn't matter.

~~~
Hovertruck
To be fair, on the iPhone you can swipe to the left and open an app via
Spotlight.

~~~
stretchwithme
That's true and it also include contacts. I suppose my slow typing speed on
the iPhone has somehow inhibited me from using it.

The best thing is having multiple ways to do things. Which the iPhone
provides, of course.

One especially nice one is how double-pressing the home button presents icons
for your running apps at the bottom of the screen. You touch to re-enter it or
hold it down to get a way to kill it.

------
ajhit406
Another important aspect of websites that is overlooked in this article is
SEO.

Google/Yahoo/Bing are still the jump-off point for most desktop web sessions.
Because applications are sandboxed and don't play nice with crawlers, there's
still a huge advantage for websites with efficiently structured and persistent
information to capture user demand.

While applications do offer significantly improved performance and better
payment workflows, an app's infrastructure / OS is unfortunately only as good
as the restricted set of people (in the case of private companies, employees)
who govern it.

Apple is an amazing company with extremely talented, passionate people and
they have built an incredible ecosystem. But they will eventually fade into
history, just like everything naturally does.

Luckily, the residue of their design will persist and drive future enterprises
to continue to innovate on this front, which in turn will spawn the next
generation of zuckerbergs and jobs'.

Essentially, we're witnessing the exact evolution of development ecosystems
that we'd expect within our economic constructs. The only danger is that our
legal constructs impede the ability for those outside of the walls to extend
the technologies to accelerate innovation for the entire industry.

------
jacquesm
Apps/websites is going to be a cyclic thing. New platforms created as walled
gardens are a breeding ground for apps but over time anything that is not the
full internet will feel constrictive. And once full access is available there
will be alternatives for apps using an open standard.

In the longer term these cycles will become less extreme because we are
migrating to a model where every device will always be 'online'. At that point
apps will lose a lot of their power.

Another thing that will drive migration to web based applications is that
selling a subscription is far more lucrative than selling a piece of software
for a fixed amount.

Apps are transitional, and I think they always will be.

They can give a short-lived advantage over the functionality that can be
created on new devices, especially if not all the hardware on those devices is
supported or accessible by web browsers.

For instance, on the current generation of mobile devices there are all kinds
of input devices (gps, compas, inertial guidance devices) that are not
supported by HTML but I fully expect future versions of HTML to allow access
to those devices.

------
podperson
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines>

Falls under the category of articles whose headline poses a question the
answer to which is "no".

~~~
joshu
There's a NAME for this!? I love you.

------
j4pe
It's also fair to ask if websites will kill apps. Widespread mobile data
access and HTML5/CSS3 are beginning to let developers duplicate the advantages
of apps and keep the advantages of web. The winner will be determined by
cashflow - apps are often purchased; many sites still rely on ads. Which model
is more profitable?

~~~
Dramatize
Maybe it's not app vs web. It makes more sense to look at it as app experience
vs traditional website experience.

------
rudle
I hope apps don't kill websites for the same reason I'm glad people don't
build flash microsites anymore.

The number one reason I prefer the web is that it's extensible! If there's a
web app I don't like, I can write a userscript to modify it to my needs. The
web has a standard API (HTML/JS/CSS) _and_ a means for extension so I'm free
to make the web suit me. This freedom is something that I miss when I'm using
a mobile device and I hope it never goes away.

------
ilaksh
I think you are beginning to see a convergence where websites will look and
act more like apps and apps will be coded more often in HTML5. I also think
that you will see more convenient on-screen navigation between apps and
linking from app to app.

Ultimately because of their origins in the early static web,
HTML5/CSS/JavaScript etc. are not the ideal platform for applications and so I
think that directly coding that layer will fall out of fashion and instead it
will become a base layer that other frameworks output.

I believe that the .NET-, Objective-C- and Java-based languages/platforms have
dated core characteristics that make them disadvantageous as well as the
problem of requiring extra coding. So even if people aren't developing mobile
apps on HTML5 or HTML5-based platforms they are likely to move towards using
some other layer above the native based on the economics alone.

Its difficult to predict what will happen for sure though. Personally, if I
had my way, a lot of the current stack would be dropped immediately. CSS would
be first to go. The concept of coding markup directly would be dropped.
Instead, interactive tools would be used for creating and maintaining UIs and
other application structures. Those tools would exchange data in the simplest
possible common formats that could be agreed upon. The common formats across
tools would extend to include semantic descriptions of components above the
implementation level. ASCII source code would fall out of favor and be
replaced with more interactive structural and semantic application editors.
HTTP, the web, and the traditional client-server would be dropped and replaced
with content-oriented networking integrated with the common application and
data exchange formats. Browser-type applications/sites and desktop
applications would converge so that web applications can integrate with the
desktop environment.

------
choxi
Here's one overlooked reason why apps are better than websites: no passwords!
I absolutely hate that every time I had to use the mobile GMail app I had to
enter in a password again, even though everything else has a native app feel.

~~~
Trezoid
I disagree that passwords are a browser con, especially given the number of
people who leave their phones lying around or let friends use them. If the app
deals with anything sensitive (and email can certainly be one of those) it
_should_ require a password every time.

Imagine if someone found your phone with email logged in. They would
immediately be able to scan through your email for registration confirmation
emails, go to that site and reset the password giving them complete access. If
one of those accounts was for a site which saved cc details and had something
the thief wanted (or could sell), they can drain your card with out setting
off any fraud warnings, because you wanted to convenience of not having to
type your password every time.

~~~
bunderbunder
I want to agree, but website passwords are a usability nightmare for mobile
users. Take all the hassles that come with sites having eleven million
mutually incompatible sets of requirements for passwords, and throw on top of
that that typing them on a phone's keyboard is slow and error-prone. Only
password-compulsive geeks are going to go for that option. Your average user
won't. For them, it's a huge con.

I agree that it's troublesome that people have their phones set up so that
anyone with physical access to an unlocked phone has access to everything. But
I'm inclined to think of that as a symptom of the problem rather than the
problem itself. The root of the problem being that too many folks who draw up
security schemes don't seem to grasp the most basic lesson about how people
deal with security: When given a choice between excessively inconvenient
security and no security, your average user will always opt for no security.
If that's not an option by default, they will figure out a way to make it an
option, and then opt for it. ( _Sticky notes_ , y'all.) If there's no way to
make it an option, they will go find someone who lets it be an option, then
opt for it.

~~~
reddit_clone
Biometric authentication can be a way out of this difficulty. A fingerprint
scanner at the back of a smartphone will be a painless way of logging into
anything you want.

~~~
bunderbunder
As long as it can't be defeated with scotch tape and gelatine.

One great thing about non-biometric authentication systems is that it's easy
to replace a compromised keycard or password. Replacing your own fingers, not
so much.

~~~
reddit_clone
Well, if you don't mind using a complex password on a keyboard-less device,
the whole discussion is moot.

Aren't we talking about alternatives to conventional password entry because it
is a great nuisance?

Voice recognition, Face recognition and Finger Printing all seem reasonable
alternatives. I do believe it is a matter of time before they become viable in
smartphones.

How about an RFID chip in your wrist watch which makes your smartphone log in.
Outside of a meter or two, it will ask for a complex password. Why not? I will
buy it :-)

------
petegrif
Unless I missed it there is one key point the the article didn't mention. The
strength of the web is links and hence the ability to access anything that we
can uniquely identify as a resource. Apps don't have links.

------
cletus
This is a somewhat inflammatory title with a fairly unsubstantial article
behind it. Whatever.

First came applications. In the mid-90s Microsoft was terrified that the
Internet and Netscape would kill the Windows/Office golden goose and they
(fairly successfully) subverted the Internet through browser fragmentation.

The advantage of the Web was that it wasn't OS-specific. Microsoft wanted
(wants!) you to be locked into their platform.

The 2000s see the rise of the RIA (Rich Internet Applicatdion). One-page sites
like GMail, etc (although they aren't always strictly one page). The core idea
here is that even though performance was (is?) bad, increasing computer power
will solve that problem sooner rather than later.

Let's face it, HTML/CSS/JS is a pretty terrible solution. Browser/OS
differences are endemic. It's slow. Modularization (of a Web app) is awkward
at best. Offline is incredibly awkward.

What caught people by surprise was mobile. Unlike a desktop, power usage and
size became far more important than raw CPU power. Uh oh, Moore's Law no
longer to the rescue.

You can be pedantic about J2ME apps (or whatever) predating iOS apps but let's
face it: Apple popularized and commercialized the idea of apps even if they
didn't outright invent them.

While the rise of the mobile app may appear quick, the pedigree of iOS in
particular goes back 15 years. It's really an amazing set of APIs. At the same
time, Apple has largely avoided fragmentation issues.

So what makes the app market successful on mobile is:

1\. Easy to purchase, install and update. You cannot discount the lack of
friction in purchasing apps. It is (IMHO) incredibly important;

2\. Much better performance both online and especially offline; and

3\. Ease of discovery.

Apple may not have been the first to recognize it but they've also embraced
this same strategy on OSX. Google (disclaimer: I work for Google) has the
Chrome Web Store. Microsoft is essentially copying the OSX App Store for
Windows 8.

I don't see any doomsday scenarios about the Web going away. That's just
linkbait. If anything, what I see will happen is consolidation. Now instead of
producing just a Website, you need an app (or, preferably, several apps for
the different relevant mobile OSs).

Take Newegg. The website is still as good as ever but honestly it's a joy to
use their app on the iPad, so much so that I will have trouble buying my parts
from anywhere else.

Apple has recognized the need in the modern computing environment to
essentially sandbox everything. The Microsoft of old used to take as gospel
the need for backwards compatibility so always avoided breaking changes.
Google too has realized this to a degree (websites are sandboxed).

Personally I believe the dark horse in that race is Chrome's NaCl (Native
Client) as it combines the delivery of the Web (to Chrome at least) with the
speed of native applications. Time will tell.

But please do me one favour and quit it with the linkbait-y "apps will kill
the Web", "Apple's/Facebook's walled garden will ruin everything", etc. Fears
of the worst are nearly always overblown.

~~~
jpeterson
_This is a somewhat inflammatory title with a fairly unsubstantial article
behind it._

You must be new to Coding Horror.

~~~
Dove
That may be the norm there, but not here. At least, it won't be until people
complaining about it.

I appreciate upholding high standards.

------
anuraj
These days I do not code a website to begin with. I create web
services(REST/JSON) first and then code a native app to access it if my use
case fits mobile better. If I need a website, then I implement it by calling
the same web services. I believe the web as we know (of front end data
handling) will surely die. It will be replaced by headless (UI less) services
web. As users migrate to mobile/tablet devices, and new mobile capabilities
(touch, location, context etc.) are accessible, many traditional web use cases
need to be redefined to optimize for new form factor and to exploit the new
capabilities. This will make many new start ups follow a mobile first approach
(a la instagram). Web sites will be required for few use cases that requires
heavy data entry and extremely complex UIs. And probably the 80:20 rule will
apply. Websites has been built on duct tape technologies for long, and today's
mobile development platforms are way too sophisticated and easy to design,
code and debug. Yes you don't get the cross platform compatibility - but is it
really that important as it is made out to be?

If I am a start up, I will try to iterate on a single platform ( a la
instagram) and get my product right. Then I can move to new platforms - It
takes more effort to get the product right than implementing it on several
platforms. If my product is successful, supporting that on a new platform will
take 1% of the money I could raise and effort. Who cares a hoot if you have a
half baked product released at once on 100 platforms?

------
moocow01
It may be poor reasoning but my vote is on the web (html/css/js/etc). Why?
because it seems to be the only thing that has stuck around in the past. Over
the past 20 years we've seen the "web" gobble up all sorts of client side
platforms - applets, flash, and a lot of other native desktop applications.

Do I think it is the best suited technology to all the things we are trying to
do with it? - Absolutely not, but I wouldn't dare invest myself in anything
that competes with it.

~~~
rimantas
Not sure how web gobbled applets and flash: those were the things intended for
the web. As for native apps, they are doing just fine. Heck, I moved to gmail
in 2005 and used web version for a long time, but now I use it via Sparrow,
both on desktop and on mobile. I've been doing web development for 14 years, I
love it and I am pretty good at it, but when developing for iOS I prefer
native. Frameworks are great, I like the language, life is good. Doing all in
HTML/CSS/JS? Sure possible. But then we go back to the world of pain because
of the gazillion of rendering engines (even if most of them are WebKit). What
many miss is that limited screen real estate complicates things—you must to
get it look good in most of the configurations, "good enough" is not good
enough. The same goes to interaction: people are used to wait when using web
apps, but just a slightest lag on touch devices will drive them crazy—when you
touch something with your finger directly it better react instantly. So
basically, the idea of web apps killing or even significantly affecting native
apps is too naive, in my opinion. That said, nothing needs to kill anything.
We still have radio, we still have cinemas, we still have theater.

------
pjmlp
I vote in the app side. It is about time to leave the browsers for what they
were originally conceived, Documents!

I want to have applications that integrate with the operating system, and take
advantage of its features.

No more web projects were the customers try, without success, to replicate a
desktop UI inside the browser full with CSS dark magic and browser
idiosyncrasies., please.

If you want a desktop look alike web page, then create a native application
for it.

------
erandavidov
Apps won't kill websites, but the way Apple and Google are currently
positioning apps, they're the easiest way to improve and mod your phone. Add
extensions, games, utilities, have them easily accessible. You can do that
with websites with links, but current devices aren't really tailored for ease-
of-use and websites aren't packaged in a "similar" fashion, so users have to
twiddle with things to get them going.

------
pan69
I think in eBay's case there is nothing stopping them from making their
website more user friendly. The reason their apps are is because they had to
build it mostly from crash (from a ui perspective anyway) so why not tkae that
opportunity. It seems that loads are people are using their website
effectively, so why change it? Changing it might only piss off long time users
anyway.

------
gurraman
I was thinking something similar when I was browsing the other day. We've made
such advancements in technology, but I bet that the average time it takes to
load a web page hasn't much improved.

I guess it's natural that we want to push boundaries, but maybe Gopher wasn't
such a bad idea? :)

------
ams6110
One thing jumped out that I hadn't really considered before: _They [apps]
aren't indexed by Google_

If apps really do "kill" websites, or make a significant dent in them, this
could be bad news for Google's business model, as well as anyone else who
relies on adsense income.

~~~
lucian1900
And for just searching for things.

------
dyeje
To me it seems that the native app is the one on the chopping block. It seems
that websites are getting closer and closer to the native experience. Once
they're close enough, why would you ever want to make an app? With the
website, you give yourself the ability to go multiplatform without doubling or
tripling your development efforts, allow yourself to iterate quicker by
sidestepping lengthy approval processes, and establish your web presence all
in one go.

------
stewie2
I don't like writing websites.

html was invented for "web documents". We are now using "document" to create
"web app". It's simply difficult.

------
Dramatize
Yes and no.

This is something I've been thinking about when redesigning the 99bikes.com.au
ecommerce website. How to bring the app experience to the web.

I don't think apps will kill websites, but should influence the way websites
work.

A great example of a app style ecommerce site is fab.com

------
nevster
One other thing to consider - an app is often an easier thing for a third
party to write. Only the original owner can modify the original website. (It's
why I scratched my own itch and wrote AuctionSieve - I wanted an easy way to
create a kill list to filter out rubbish search results.)

------
bizodo
Not exactly fair considering eBay just has an awful website and UX. look at
airbnb which is designed well and you will find web and app experience to b
similar. Apps might not kill the website but they sure as hell will influence
design.

------
ricardonunez
No. Apps help complement the websites experience. Like couple of years ago I
read that Facebook pages are going to kill business websites. Which will never
happen. All these different tools help to complement the user experience.

------
franzwong
User has lower expectation on the experience and functionality if the content
is presented on the hand held devices. It does not need to be an Apps; you can
still design a website which is for hand held devices.

------
evmar
What's up with all the Coding Horror posts on HN lately? Has the userbase of
the site really slid to that point? I'd even prefer Daring Fireball to this...

~~~
AndrewDucker
This is not new, Coding Horror posts have been dramatically upvoted since I
first joined HN (about three years ago)

------
jaysonelliot
Ultimately, it's my hope that linked data and intelligent agents will kill
websites.

That's probably quite a bit farther down the road, though.

------
agentgt
Focus is why apps (or mobile sites) are better.

You have less real-estate so you have to focus on delivering what matters.
Less is more!

------
islon
"Will Apps Kill Websites?" Answer: No.

------
lukifer
Nothing has to kill anything. Sheesh.

------
startupsdesigns
it might at some point may be like few hundred years. But I don't see it
happening in my lifetime. But something to think about, who knows.

------
animorphs
damn. Is this a bad time to be learning lots of javascript? I was having a lot
of fun making html5 games and working with d3 :*(

~~~
petercooper
Nope, not at all! Keep it up. The JavaScript world is blowing up at an
increasing rate lately. You'll do well to stick with it for a bit.

------
mcantelon
People are still asking this question?

------
brainsqueezer
I want that report but cannot affort it? Anyone can help?

------
patrickaljord
No.

------
zekenie
no.

