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Microsoft, Google, Twitter Debate HTML5
jbrodkin writes "The annual USENIX conference featured an all-star lineup of engineers from Microsoft, Google, Twitter and Flipboard debating whether HTML5 is the 'holy grail' for building next-generation Web applications, and whether mobile developers should build websites or apps. The promise of HTML5 is 'write once, run everywhere,' but the panelists did not agree on whether the technology is good enough to make browser applications feel 'native.' There was general agreement that HTML5 is lacking on mobile devices, and that for better or worse the move toward apps instead of websites is being driven less by technology than the imperative to make money."
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iPhones run ARM compiled apps and Apple laughs all the way to the bank...
It'll be nice for the Apple users that some flash (the forbidden fruit in their case) can be translated or rewritten into HTML5. Your move, Jobs.
Isn't that what they said about Java? For which it humorously was said to be, "write once, wait everywhere"...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The underlying technology matters, sure, but you're not going to be replacing Flash anytime soon without an authoring tool that people can actually use. The reason Flash took off wasn't because the plugin was easy to get, it was because the authoring tool made it simple to build a basic web app without a lot of hassle.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
will keep them talking until the sun rises so that they all turn to stone.
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
Because they run in a browser that frames your experience differently over different platforms. most apps take up the whole screen and the users is forced into an experience that is 100% under the designers control.
> the move toward apps instead of websites is being driven less by technology than the imperative to make money
Wasn't the move towards websites and computers meant to replace single-purpose apps and devices? These damn apps make me feel like we're going backwards. The general populace (in my experience) seems to know less about computers today than they did 15 years ago, when knowledge of software and hardware was valued. Now, if an app can't do it, it shouldn't be done. I am disheartened how easily people give up on computers.
Over all, how much new technology (from a software standpoint) is really that amazing? Couldn't KDM/Compiz effects have been written 10 years ago? Couldn't DropBox have been created 20 years ago? Other than network speeds, storage space, and more powerful hardware, what is really *new?* (ok, perhaps touchscreens). Sure, HTML5 gives us more ___, but it only exists in code that took us time to get here. What is the next code-only leap?
"Write once, run anywhere" is a nice dream, but I'm starting to think it can't be done. Java came close, but it was still more "write once, debug everywhere" in practice. How are we going to get it with HTML5 when Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Mozilla can't agree on which features their browsers are going to support? IE won't do WebGL, Firefox won't do h.264 video, CSS commands to do the same bloody thing have to include the browser prefix... the web page code is STILL full of browser checking and doing different things on different platforms, so why should we expect anything different?
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
I prefer apps over websites in a browser for my android phone for a lot of things. Having a browser between myself and what I'm doing is annoying. Also, my plan has a very low cap for data transfer, so webpages take up more bandwidth even if a lot of it is cached. With an app I can download the app at home over wifi and use it out in the world over 3G. Things like graphics don't get transferred over the connection, just a bit of text. Example: GasBuddy This app is very slick and well written, I think even the best web designers would not be able to make a webpage version of this that is as clean and fast as the app. Also, the only thing that gets transmitted between the app and the gasbuddy servers is text requests for prices and your uploaded prices sent to the server. It uses almost NONE of my cap.
Are we positive we want to delegate all to the browser?
- web apps are easy to deploy.
- web apps can't match efficiency of native apps (it doesn't matter when you have a multicore desktop, it matters when your smartphone has way less autonomy than it could.
- web apps everywhere means they will have to be secured (compared with web 1.0 with standard ports for every protocol and a multitude of client/server software vs. port 80 and a handful of browsers)
- web apps can be seamlessly upgraded (even when user doesn't want to, though)
- native apps are hard to deploy (a free OS with package management, look at debian or experiments like nixos, solves this problem)
- FOSS native apps can be owned by the user.
Anyway, this is just a trend. Games will still be native, and people will hold onto their office suites, and some html5 features reduce the dependency from the network (local storage) which is good.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
the move toward apps instead of websites is being driven less by technology than the imperative to make money.
Genious conclusion! /sarcasm Really, though. True "technology" advances lead to interoperability, not mini walled gardens.
If Sun would have taken Flash more seriously as a competitor, they would have included some video decoder in the JRE (and image rotation, etc.). Now Flash is used exclusively used for video and music streaming, and for most online games. Although Java is still healthy on the serverside, and in thick client business apps, applets are rarely seen outside of a few university CS/math sites.
Apple made a good choice going with native applications for the iPhone
.Net. Apple had a lot of devs follow them initially because they were the 'next cool thing', but I don't know how it will work out for them in the long run. I'd rather have a larger have a larger developer base over a native language support any day.
I don't know about that. There are more developers that work in Java and
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Java ME has been on cell phones for ages (even my dumphone can do it). Actually, originally Java was created especially for embedded devices.
"The annual USENIX conference featured an all-star lineup of engineers from Microsoft, Google, Twitter and Flipboard debating whether HTML5 is the 'holy grail' for CONTROLLING next-generation Web USERS, and whether mobile developers should build websites or apps......
this isn't about you or me , its about how they are gonna control the next generation.....
HTML5 - which is prominent in the Google Chrome and Internet Explorer browsers -
Does it make any sense to suggest there is more HTML5 in Chrome and IE than in Firefox, Opera or Safari? The mention of IE is especially funny here. Microsoft has a long history of sabotaging standards; they've been trying to ignore, then derail HTML5 until recently (IE8); they only jumped on the bandwagon when they realized they would be left behind. Now they pretend to own it.
The reason we don't have compatibility is that the sellers have more power than the buyers. When sellers are many and weak, as in desktop PCs, compatibility is good.
In aerospace, compatibility is made to work. There's a specification, and both sides of an interface must conform to the specification. That's why you can unbolt a Pratt and Whitney engine from a 747, bolt on a Rolls Royce engine, and go fly. In telephony, you can buy many basic components from a number of suppliers. Phone compatibility with cellular networks is technically a tougher problem than JavaScript compatibility, yet carriers make the phone manufacturers and cell site manufacturers interoperate properly.
It's about power, not technology.
It's just too damned expensive to have to migrate to a whole new incompatible technology with no upgrade path because some 20-something at Microsoft had a brainwave. (Yes, your old app will still run. Good luck selling that fully developed VB6 application). Extend and improve. Do NOT replace unless there's no other option.. and guess what? THERE'S ALWAYS ANOTHER OPTION!
So, an open standard like HTML5 and Javascript? By all means. Bring it on. Improve both incrementally. Stop wasting everyone's time on pointless flavor of the month technologies like Ruby, PHP, WPF, (as much as I like all of them). Yes, they all have their good points. That's not enough. What's needed to get your work done is universality and compatibility, not the latest thing.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
But Raffi Krikorian, infrastructure engineer at Twitter, also called out the limitations of HTML5, saying it's "really nice to look at," but can't do things such as send notifications to users.
I don't know if it's part of HTML itself, but GMail manages to send me desktop notifications via Chrome. I'm not seeing a problem here.
Also, is anyone surprised that the Microsoft guy is the loudest skeptic? I mean, I've heard a lot of good arguments from a lot of skeptics, but this really seems like a case of "follow the money". Twitter is skeptical because they can actually build a better experience, in some circumstances, with a custom client -- but they're still doing HTML. Microsoft has to be looking at this as yet another assault on their Win32 monopoly.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
As this story shows, the idea of unifying architectures and OSs is so strong that it's already happening in browser land. But for desktop land (where apps/programs will ultimately be as obviously it's faster and more versatile) there's just too much innovation in Linux, Windows and Mac land for everything to be unified at this point in time. .NET is a good step in that direction, but even then, the framework requires a rewrite for each OS, so bugs can appear. Perhaps wait a couple more decades, and we'll have a universal GUI (well for 99.9% of users at least), preferably open source and free of course! That will go with a unified CPU/GPU/APU architecture with unified memory, data and power ports. Yum.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Right, so they put a language designer (a theorist), a developers relations manager (a PR guy) and an infrastructure engineer (someone who talks wires and servers) to talk about front-end development. How about calling actual front-end engineers to talk about their craft? How about asking the guys behind the Aves game engine what can be done realistically with HTML5?
There are a lot of things lumped under the "HTML5" moniker that go well beyond HTML the language: WebGL, Web Sockets, SVG, Geolocation, File API, Real-Time Events, Threading, not to mention the very large assortment of styling modules lumped under "CSS3". HTML5 represents more of an ecosystem now, like .NET.
No, it's not the end of the line for other ecosystems, this is just another new one. A very, very important one, to be sure, but it obviously won't fill every need for a client UI out there. That said, if my new shiny app could even remotely be done as a web app, I'd be a fool to spend a whole lot of time and money porting it.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Complaints about HTML/Web apps not feeling "native" is a canard. Hundreds of millions of people use web pages every single day, from the most technical neckbeards to the least technical AOL grandmas. Now non-technical users probably aren't spending much time on sites with bullshit user experiences but there's a mind boggling number of websites people use daily. Native apps are also rarely bastions of usability and paragons of user experience virtue. Web apps don't need to "feel native" because the appeal of "native" apps doesn't really exist in the minds of actual users. These hundreds of millions of users aren't being held back from anything because they're using web pages instead of native apps.
Users want services and content and they're happy to access them through a web browser. In fact a web browser makes it easier for them in most cases because they don't need any special software before they access said content and services. Whatever device they're using likely has a web browser accessible. If they see a URL they can pop open their laptop or pull out their phone and access it immediately.
When they're on their phone they don't want it to take forever to load when they're stuck in a slow 3G area with no WiFi. They want it to work on the iPhone they just bought as well as their Windows PC back home. If they buy a Mac for their kids they want it to work on that as well.
The major features HTML5 added were ones that help web pages not feel more like native apps but have better interaction with clients. Clients aren't as limited as they were in the past (I remember a time before the <img> tag) and a richer DOM is important for the increased amount of work (Javascript, CSS, etc) being done on the client side.
These people complaining about performance on mobiles is just jackassery. The mobile web experience had the same sort of constraints that native mobile applications have. Mobiles have tiny batteries, often have small screens, are controlled with fingertips rather than mice, and often have slow high latency internet connections. Again it goes back to graceful degradation that users are already expecting. Maybe the mobile version doesn't load the 2MB PNG background and the uncompressed 1MB Javascript from a totally different server (requiring a second set of DNS lookups) out of which you only used two functions. The mobile native app wouldn't have the 1024x1024 icons or the 50MB 1080p intro movie bundled with it either.
HTML5 doesn't need to bring a more desktop-like experience to mobiles. It also doesn't need to make apps that look native. It needs to be used to make web apps functional and do their business with the least cognitive load on users as possible. It should scale well no matter how large the screen is or how shitty the connection speed. Instead of all singing all dancing bullshit I'd much rather see a page load on my phone and then let my fucking CPU go to sleep so I don't waste my battery trying to read a tweet or a Facebook message.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Browser applications will never be native, due to the inherent ability to customize nearly everything inside the little box. Billions of Web pages, widgets, notifiers, stock tickers, and the like have proven this. But, as soon as we begin making browser apps more native, we'll need to add code forks for Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. and begin to lose the write-once run-anywhere nature of the Web.
As Rovio has shown us, you can easily make a Web-based version of Angry Birds with HTML5 and WebGL, but good luck integrating it with the host's features (e.g., multi-touch, accelerometer, screen size...).
We might find workarounds to bring the Web closer to the metal (hopefully keeping the sandboxes reasonably intact), and as a part-time Web developer, I do welcome innovation in this area. However, if I ever hear two college programmers flipping through their JavaScript e-books on their iPad 9's looking for the function that allows firmware updates, I might just go jump off a bridge.
We see that you big boys (3-4 corps, you know which) are going rather fast in your crusade to do some progress, and it is to some extent commendable, but, dont forget - in the end, you are just 4 corporations, regardless of how big and influential you are. (yes, even google). If you lose yourself and forget about the community that builds on the standards by deciding and implementing them without the community, the community will shove those up your ass.
no really. the hundreds of millions of web developers, webmasters, smalltime site operators have that much power - they were the power which tipped the internet in google's favor, with adsense - google had catered to these with adsense, whereas all the big boys ( then - like yahoo, altavista, microsoft) were shunning and excluding them in their business.
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HTML5 is the new codeword for "dump everything you have and start over!"
C/C++ is the future (and the past). Like it or not, C/C++ is truly the only write once, run everywhere (except Windows Phone) solution around.
http://10CentMail.com - the Amazon SES app.
"As this story shows, the idea of unifying architectures and OSs is so strong that it's already happening in browser land. "
Considering the number of hacks required to anything significant with JavaScript and CSS, I would hold off on that prediction.
"there's just too much innovation in Linux, Windows and Mac"
Linux - Innovation Zero.
Windows - Innovation Meh.
Mac - Innovation not bad.
".NET is a good step in that direction, "
ROFL.
If there's one thing Java should have taught us is that NO ONE want's a unified anything. Not Apple, Linux, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, RIM, Nokia, etc... etc.. etc..
They all want exclusivity for obvious reasons.
To think that HTML 5 (or more strangely .NET) is going to solve this is just pie-in-the-sky thinking.
Just give us a good OpenGL-like API and a bytecode environment, with a JIT compiler, and open-source will build its own browser environment.
HTML5 is too complex to be used as a cross-platform application deployment tool.
Software needs to be built in easy to understand layers. And HTML5 just gives us one enormous complex and opaque layer. This is not how software should be built!
Just give us a bytecode environment, and if we want to, we'll build HTML5 on top of it, or we might choose our own rendering layer. But the choice should be the developer's.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
, or at least the portable version PNaCl seems like a good alternative way forward. I know Mozilla and others are opposed to it, but I really think we need something a little better than Javascript if we are going to be writing sizeable applications. Most sizeable applications (word, excel, 3D software, Gimp etc) are written in languages that support static typing, classes etc. There is a reason Microsoft and others do not write their big applications in scripting languages, and it's not just about speed.
Alternatively, perhaps a new web language will come along which is more suitable for developing large apps. Something that is designed from scratch with large applications and JIT compilation in mind.
Yes, NeWS was controlled by Sun, and licensing fees were involved. But, the patents have expired by now, postscript and PDF have withstood the test of time for over 20 years. I'd like to learn just postscript, which is already very applicable for making PDF files.
Why yes, I do hate X11.
In my opinion HTML5 is best. I really like few thing about HTML like, you can embed video on web-pages without using any special software like Flash, Not only videos, HTML5 is said to be capable of playing video games on the browser itself. A major benefit is better Direct HTML Support for Drawing, Animation, Video and Audio. iPad Application Development
The problem is if I'm not connected I can't access my apps. Unless they allow me to download and host them myself, fuck that. This is fine for companies that have their own servers and operate thin clients, but I don't want to be reliant on an infrastructure I don't control and that can fuck me over at a critical moment.
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