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Microsoft, Google, Twitter Debate HTML5

Posted by Soulskill on from the of-all-the-options-it's-definitely-one-of-them dept.

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."

3 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. Are we positive... by marcello_dl · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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  2. Re:Missing the point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm pretty sure Flash took off because one thing: video.

    Flash was all about: Animation and Interaction.

    Flash was used a lot and popular well before it was used to play web videos and that was the purpose Macromedia had for the software. The fact that Flash was popular lead to the discovery that it was a good wrapper for playing video as well. Flash required some "tricks" to get it to play video. It wasn't until, I think, Flash 5 that video support started to become integrated and easier to use natively?

    Certainly Flash and YouTube became a real symbiotic relationship, allowing Flash to really grow with YouTube.

    Anyway, my point is that Flash was popular well before the whole Flash for video thing. Stuff like Newgrounds was making games and showing Stick Figure kung-fu videos before that. Hehe, I made a flash website for my Counter-Strike clan waaaay back when. But that was when CS was still beta.

  3. Re:The promise... by robmv · · Score: 3, Insightful

    and I still think that write once, debug everywhere is better that write n times, and debug everywhere