Web Apps: the Future of the Internet, Or Forever a Second-Class Citizen?

An anonymous reader writes "This article takes a look at whether web apps will ever match desktop and mobile apps in terms of performance and usability. Jo Rabin, who's leading the push by web standards body W3C to get web app performance up to scratch, is optimistic web apps will eventually be the default choice for building the majority of commercial and business apps, while the article weighs up just how much web technologies need to be improved before this could happen. Quoting: 'Native apps are generally first to gain access to new platform-specific hardware features — be it navigating using a phone's GPS and accelerometer or taking pictures with a phone's camera. But if a particular hardware feature becomes popular, standards to implement that feature in the browser will always follow, Rabin said. Work is taking place within W3C to standardise APIs for web technologies to access many of the features found on modern smartphones. Ongoing work this year includes setting out a system-level API to allow a web app to manage a device's contacts book, a messaging API for sending and receiving SMS and MMS, new mechanisms for capturing photos and recordings, new event triggers that could handle mouse, pen and touch inputs, a new push API to allow web apps to receive messages in the background, new media queries for responsive web design, an API for exchanging information using NFC and precise control over resource loading times in a web document.'"

Comments

Web app? What's that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean a website?

Do you mean a website that has been optimized for mobile devices with a small screen and minimal javascript capabilities?

The reason the internet became popular is because of standards. Any web browser can connect to any web site, issue client http requests, and get an http response.

The web browser/web server is the better way to go. I don't need to download & install a program on to my laptop to bank online. I don't need to download & install a program on to my laptop to read the news.

I just just my web browser. It's the better model.

Re:Web app? What's that?

[Crimey McBiggles]

You know what would really suck? If we decided to drop backwards compatibility simply because what was originally intended as a document sourcing and navigation solution has ended up in the hands of profiteers who want this document-oriented system to be used for 3D rendering. Yeah, HTML/CSS/Javascript can do that, but why use a screwdriver when a jackhammer is more appropriate?

Instead of saying "oh the web sucks because it's old, let's make it new", why not look at what the desktop environment has yet to deliver due to market fragmentation and misguided creative direction? There is much more to the Internet than what traverses ports 80 and 443, and it boggles my mind to think that instead of inventing new protocols and applications (not "apps") to get the job done in a better way - Steam is a great example of this - the popular idea is to say "well everyone has a web browser, let's find new ways to exploit it". It's lazy, uncreative thinking, like standing on the shoulders of giants and then deciding the giants need to be put to sleep because their clothes are no longer fashionable.

Can we please stop reimplementing the wheel?

[putaro]

From the article: "...today web browsers are capable of supporting sites that are getting close to the look and feel of apps we run directly on our phones and computers."

Great. So with a lot of work we're almost BACK TO WHERE WE WERE! How about some innovation and making better, more usable UI's rather than just trying to catch up with what we already have?

This is the same problem I have with Linux - constantly reimplementing things we already had. At least Linux is replacing closed software with open software. What's your excuse with webapps? Is MS Word in a browser inherently better or just different?

Generations...

[bradley13]

Apropos of the question in the title of this post. I had a meeting today with a guy in his early 20s. I mentioned that one of my current projects is a Java Client/Server application. He found this totally bizarre, because "Web apps are the future".

Now, I'm a geezer by IT standards. I cut my teeth on an IBM 360 (yes, that old). One of my standard charts that I use in general IT presentations is a spiral. I'll do it here in text, a bit oversimplified:

• - 1970: centralized computation (mainframes)
• - 1980: distributed computation (first PCs)
• - 1990: centralized computation (Servers and thin clients)
• - 2000: distributed computation (next generation of PCs)
• - 2010: centralized computation (Web apps and cloud computing)
• - 2020: distributed computation (mobile computing)

The pendulum swings back and forth, but you only start to recognize the pattern after you've lived through a couple of cycles. In fact, it seems that by the time one trend has established itself as inevitable, the next (opposite) trend is already well underway. Right now, Web-apps and Cloud computing are the buzzwords, but mobile computing is already well underway for dominance by 2020.

So, if I may answer the question posed in the title: Web Apps: the Future of the Internet?

No.

couldn't figure out how to vote

[crtreece]

So I'll post a comment instead, Forever a Second-Class Citizen?

Seriously, to add some content to my snark. Until internet speeds reach parity with access to local resources, web apps will always be second class compared to a similar application running locally.

In what way did that make any sense?

[SuperKendall]

iOS/android app: installed base on day one: 0
web app: installed base on day one: a hundred million +

What are you getting at here?

Let's say you launch a new website/web app. How is your install base not ALSO zero?

It doesn't matter how many devices CAN run what you have built. What matters is, WILL they...

With either an Android or iOS app, your POTENTIAL install base is in the hundreds of millions. Furthermore, there's a huge increase in the chances of you getting paid for some of that work, which you can use to develop it further. With a web app chances are good you launch it, zero people notice, and you fade into obscurity.

Lastly, compare how many applications there are in the iOS/Android app stores, vs. how many web sites exist. Which has better odds of someone using what you have created?

Re:In what way did that make any sense?

[DuckDodgers]

There are other reasons to prefer a native application, but I'm not sure your argument is one of them.

Installation period: web app, page download time. native app, application download. Winner, web app.
Approval process before you are in front of potential customers: web app, instant. native app, depends on the whim of the store curator. Winner, web app.
Chances that your app gets removed by a change to the terms of service: web app, zero. native app, depends upon the whim of the store curator. Winner, web app.
Effort for end-user to update their copy of your application to the newest: web app, none. native app, some to none (depending upon preferences set in app store application). Winner, web app.
Competitors in the market: web app, millions. native app, hundreds of thousands, rapidly climbing towards millions. Winner, native app - but only for the moment.
Restrictions on in-app purchases, restrictions in terms of use, requirement that you have to share revenue with mobile OS developer: web app, none. native app, some. Winner, web app.
Effort to make your product available on iOS, Android, Blackberry, Tizen, Windows Phone, Windows Mobile, Firefox OS, Ubuntu Touch: web app, none. native app, none if you use a cross-platform development kit. Winner, none.
Chances the end user deletes your application to save storage space on their device: web app - only if you use offline storage. native app, some. Winner, web app.

Again, I'm not saying web app is clearly the way to go. I'm just saying it has advantages.

Re:Could Browsers Settled on an Alternate Language

[ggraham412]

It seems like some of the problem here is that Javascript is the Lingua Franca, and also that it has to use the web pages DOM. If the system were being designed from scratch, it seems unlikely this would be the choice.

I think there is a Peter Principle for technology: Every good, proven technology gets extended, extended, and extended until it breaks. Back in the day, the web was a fast, simple, stateless request/response document retrieval system. Then some markup was added to make the documents look pretty. Then CGI and server-side processing were added to make the content more dynamic. Then tricks were applied (eg- cookies) to break the statelessness, albeit in a limited way. Then the prettiness of documents were improved with CSS and liquid design. Things got slow. Then the scalability of the server side was improved with various frameworks like JSP, Struts, Rails, etc. Applets had been tried, but they didn't take off because security and version control turned out to be much bigger problems than anyone realized at the time. Then JavaScript was extended and made to do all sorts of unsecure things. AJAX came along and broke the request/response document retrieval model for good. Things got slow again, especially on newer mobile platforms. Now the w3c wants to figure out how to run fat applications on this platform, ostensibly because it's shared in common across OSes.

Rinse, Repeat. Everything old is new again.

Why does this get asked every N months?

[sootman]

The answer will forever be NO, until the bandwidth between me and the server == the bandwidth between my CPU and its main memory. AND latency, AND availability.

The fastest web apps TODAY are still slower than the native apps that shipped on the first iPhone in 2007.

Besides that, both kinds have their own unique advantages. The first two: web apps allow you to get at the data from any device with an Internet connection and browser, but native apps work when you don't have network connectivity at all. If neither of those is a make-it-or-break-it aspect of your app, then you look at all the other advantages each offers, which have been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere.