Can Web Standards Make Mobile Apps Obsolete? (arstechnica.com)

nerdyalien writes: There's a litany of problems with apps. There is the platform lock-in and the space the apps take up on the device. Updating apps is a pain that users often ignore, leaving broken or vulnerable versions in use long after they've been allegedly patched. Apps are also a lot of work for developers—it's not easy to write native apps to run on both Android and iOS, never mind considering Windows Phone and BlackBerry. What's the alternative? Well, perhaps the best answer is to go back to the future and do what we do on desktop computers: use the Web and the Web browser.

Comments

no

[Anonymous Coward]

no

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong.

The correct response is, "LOL! No!"

You need to get the "LOL!" in there. The question that was asked is so dumb that it deserves laughter as part of the answer.

Re:no

[BarbaraHudson]

Close - but the correct answer is to add "So, now you want me to download the UI and all the code necessary to run the app every time I open it, open slower, and use more bandwidth on our crappy data caps instead of just the data? How is this a benefit? We already use ad blockers to keep from wasting bandwidth."

Again and again

[Dan East]

How many times is this going to be rehashed? Wasn't Java going to accomplish this 15 years ago? The web browser has turned into a VM - a very convoluted, inconsistent, difficult to develop for, hodgepodge mess of a VM. We've got WebGL and Web Audio API and all the HTML5 stuff (local storage, canvas rendering, etc, etc), and still it's a pathetic step-child of a "platform" to develop for compared to pretty much any proper platform. If "write once, run everywhere" is what you want, then sure, go for the lowest common denominator (HTML5 "apps") and you will end up with the end result of the lowest common denominator of performance and platform integration.

Only when new versions stop breaking their UX

[Sowelu]

I hate upgrading my apps. I'm entirely willing to suffer security vulnerabilities and lack of new features in order to keep the user interface I'm used to and that works for me. In the case of Google Maps and Chat and almost everything else Google for example, new versions offer totally different functionality that often doesn't work for my use case anymore. I strongly suspect that there's a LOT of users like me...yeah, security vulns suck, but the time investment to keep everything up to date and relearn infrequently used applications is massive. I'd never get anything done.

Better Web Standards Needed

[nateman1352]

I don't know about everyone else, but IMHO the web browser is THE WORST platform to code for in existence. It amazes and depresses me how little has changed about client side web programming since IE4. Instead we have created these huge frameworks to try to hide the suck under an enormous pile of middleware. But still we are doing this fundamentally broken thing of shoehorning a language intended to describe formatted text documents (HTML) to instead describe a GUI for an application. This reminds me of IE4 and its web page dialogs.

If we truly are serious about having the web be an application platform then a new markup intended to describe cross platform application GUIs and a standard bytecode for the web is needed. Asm.js and enscripten or PNaCl both could be our new standard bytecode, both have pros and cons that I won't rehash. Honestly I'm not a huge fan of either one. But no one is trying to address the fact that HTML's layout system is designed for documents... Not for GUIs. We really need something like XUL or XAML made in to a web standard. I don't care about the politics of what language/tool we choose as long as its a good one thats open for all. I'm sick of the holy wars over tools and languages. That said JavaScript is garbage just like HTML and CSS for actual development and needs to be replaced with a sane language.

Re: so.... Firefox OS?

[stoborrobots]

But similarly, you haven't heard the average person talking about wanting native apps either.

Developers and tech bloggers haven't realised that they need to balance conflicting desires (universal availability and version uniformity vs offline access and access to local hardware/services/data) which would induce preferences either way. What you are seeing is the tech community noticing the features they are missing, building them, and throwing away the features they already have in the process, then repeating again in the other direction.

The average person has no idea about any of this, and doesn't care as long as they can still send selfies and cat emojis to their friends. If a native app allows them to do it, they will use that; if a web app does, then that's where they will go. As long as they can click an icon and send the picture, it's good enough for them.