Category: Opinion

With all of this talk of new Apple products, App Store drama and cross-platform app development, I selfishly am looking far into the future and wondering, “when can we cut all this crap and just build everything on the web?”

The Problems With Native

1. When you build a native app, you have to write it 2-3 times over for each platform, or suffer from janky UX/UI by using a tool like PhoneGap.
2. Users suffer from App Clutter on their devices
3. If it’s one-time-use information, the barrier to entry is higher and the user is less likely to see your content.

You CAN make a web app on iOS

One would argue that you can already make web apps. The Financial Times did this, giving Apple the big “Ef You” when they wanted 30% of the subscriptions. Financial Times made a web app, promoted it heavily, and showed how easy it was to make an iOS Web App that acts pretty much like a native app, with some help from the end user.

There are some great tools out there to make web app building a little easier:

• Mobile html5 Boilerplate
• Add to Homescreen Script

So why don’t we see a large amount of web apps out there?

I have a few theories why web apps aren’t wide-spread.

All the cool kids are doing it

Companies out there don’t understand when a native app is a good idea, and when it’s not. If end users aren’t going to your “app” on a somewhat consistant basis, you really should be using a web app.

A great example of this was a restaurant I was in a while back. They have an app, but there was not a single thing in it that couldn’t be accomplished by a web site. If the mindset is that they want it easily readable, then make a site that is mobile-ready. There are many apps out there that could simply be a responsive website (or even an “m dot” user-agent-detected approach). But people want to be in the app store, because that’s where the cool kids are.

Apps need certain API’s to the hardware

Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, a native app might be the right decision for you. There have been some pretty big strides over the past few years with html5 and accessing hardware APIs like geolocation and gyroscope/accelerometer. But there are many hardware API’s that developers still need like camera, OpenGL, etc.

The moral of the story

Only make native apps when it’s appropriate. Web apps and/or responsive web design are cheaper, and easier to maintain across multiple platforms.

I do think the access to device hardware within the browser will grow but at the rate devices are evolving, it will never be 100%. There will always be a place for native apps, but I think that gap will be closing little by little.

I’ve had this discussion with web developers in the past and specifically on Twitter/Facebook with some fellow developers, and realized that 140 characters just isn’t enough for my thoughts.

It wasn’t but a few years ago that I was taught the ways of js/jquery animations. Ever since then, the question has been going through my head, “Will the web community make JavaScript-based animations the way of the future?” What about all of the other technologies?

The Past

Before js-based animations were easy to use (via js frameworks), the prominent option out there was Flash. And boy, did everyone use it. I can personally say I never liked flash after learning it in college. As ignorant it was at the time, my reasons were “Flash is for people that don’t know how to code a site.” This was partially true, but Flash did and still does have a place in the web. Then there was the Steve Job’s initiative, and we all know, nothing gets in the way of what Steve wants. Granted, Steve has different motives for eliminating Flash than I did.

• Too bloated to work on his simple iOS devices
• A company that he is not CEO of controls the technology
• Everyone wraps their video in Flash, so video doesn’t work on his device

Then there are my motives:

• I don’t want to learn another technology
• It’s slow and bogs down my machine
• Flash is a huge security risk

Unfortunately, it took the adoption of Steve Jobs’ iPad for web sites to start thinking of alternatives for animations.

The Present

We all know that js-based animations have been around for quite awhile, but it wasn’t until frameworks like jQuery and MooTools came along, that they are much easier to implement. Now that there are easy-to-use frameworks, the learning curve for developers to learn is not quite as steep.

This takes care of a few of the points above, but not all of them. The biggest is security. After listening to the Security Now Podcast on the TWiT network, I’ve quickly learned through the teachings of Steve Gibson, that JavaScript is just as big as a security risk as Flash. Most exploits that happen on the web, are executed by js. So as a user, it is good practice to use your browser with js turned off. It doesn’t necessarily bug me that the small percentage of people disabling js in the browsers aren’t seeing my sweet animations, but more so that I’m encouraging bad security practices. This was what got me thinking, “What is the right solution for animations?”

The Future

With the increase adoption of Modern Browsers by users, it’s making more and more sense to use css3 transitions for animations.

• They still work with JS disabled
• They are arguably easier to code than js-based
• Semantically, animations should be in CSS
• The animations don’t have to run through the JavaScript engine in the browser

Flash is NOT Dead. JS-Based Animations Aren’t Dead.

In order to ruffle other peoples’ feathers, people will say things like “Flash is Dead. Use JS-Based animations,” or “JS-Based animations are dead, use css3.” The fact of the matter is none of these technologies will be “dead” anytime soon. Sure, Flash adoption went down when the iPad came out, but it didn’t go away, and it won’t. JS-Based animations won’t be any different.

Flash can still do much more than js and css3, and js can do more than css3. So pick the right tool for the job. I would love to see css3 do just as much as Flash does someday, but that simply isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Maybe not at all. I’m sure the folks over at Adobe will continue to innovate to staying ahead of these other technologies.

Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments. I’m curious to see what others are thinking about this.