the inescapable fact is that when deploying on the web, from the user’s perspective, you’re probably starting with a disadvantage.]]>
The relevant industry is criticizing Google’s such rules as a violation of their right of choice. Smart TV operators have opted for HTML5 to escape from the clout of Android-based Google TV, so Google’s new requirements put brakes on HTML5-based smart TV operators.
An industry insider said, “Telling us where the YouTube app should be placed is an act of coercive sales tactics.” Can take up to three months to get approval, apparently.]]>
Sure, you can design performant mobile web apps if you have good engineers. But do you know what else you can do with good engineers? Things that are actually of value to your customers.]]>
[Kirin] Prasad [LinkedIn sr director for mobile engineering]: There are a few things that are critically missing. One is tooling support — having a debugger that actually works, performance tools that tell you where the memory is running out.
If you look at Android and iOS, there are two very large corporations that are focused on building tools to give a lot of detailed information when things go wrong in production. On the mobile web side, getting those desktop tools to work for mobile devices is really difficult.
The second big chunk we are struggling with is operability, runtime diagnostics information. Even now, when we build HTML5, we build it as a client-side app. It’s more of a client-server architecture. … The operability of that, giving us information when we’re distributed to a large volume of users, there aren’t as many great tools to support that, as well. Hard to see how HTML5 will get those tools before native apps, and how native apps won't get improved versions of those tools before HTML5.]]>
But does it follow that the government should also be investing heavily in mobile apps?
No.
Our position is that native apps are rarely justified.]]>
? The text you type is automatically saved every second. You can refresh the page, even quit and relaunch the browser, and the text remains. Useful.]]>
According to developer Feross Aboukhadijeh, who uncovered the bug this week, data dumps can be performed on most major Web browsers, including Apple's Safari, Google's Chrome, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Opera, the BBC reported. The only browser to stop data dump tests was Mozilla's Firefox, which capped storage at 5MB. (Thanks @clarkeviper for the link.)]]>
The answer is hardware access. HTML5 applications are treated by mobile hardware developed for iOS and Android as second class citizens and don't get access to the parts that allow for peak performance. A web view in iOS is hindered by the operating system to perform as fast as a native App although it uses the same principles. On Android both Chrome and Firefox show how fast browsers can perform whereas the stock browser crawls along in comparison.
The stock browser on Android reminds us of the Internet Explorer of the 90s which threatened to be set in stone for a long time and hinder the world wide web from evolving – the very reason Mozilla and Firefox came into existence.
In essence HTML5 is a Formula 1 car that has to drive on a dirt road whilst dragging a lot of extra payload given to it by the operating system without a chance to work around that – for now. Of course, the reason why the browser doesn't get the same trusted access to the OS tends to be because its content isn't, well, trusted. (Thanks @sputnikkers for the link.)]]>
That information comes from benchmarking website HTML5test.com. Here’s how the Wii U, Internet Explorer, and other popular browsers fare (scores out of 500 + 15 bonus points)… Makes interesting reading: the PlayBook, for example, is the top-ranked tablet in HTML5 compatibility.]]>
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when we only had mainframes and minicomputers, there was a distinction between smart terminals (thick clients) and dumb terminals (thin clients).
In the 1980s, we got workstations (really expensive thick clients, purchased by people who perceived them as cheap compared to the mainframes and minis) and microcomputers (far less expensive thick clients, purchased by people who previously didn't have a computer at all).]]>
"I think it's close to 80 percent," Arno Gourdol, Adobe's senior director of Web platform and authoring, said in an interview during the Google I/O show.
Gourdol, who leads Adobe work to embrace Web standards, has a lot on the line as the company tries to make a difficult transition away from the widely used but fading Flash. He's eager to convince skeptics that the company is serious about it: "We're not just looking at parity with Flash. We're trying to go beyond what you can do with Flash."]]>
Can we instead on production sites standardize on something like “this site requires (experimental) features not yet present in your browser” (Thanks @getify for the idea) and a link to instructions on how they can update their browser, or if it is a browser specific feature, information about the feature and why it isn’t yet supported in their browser of choice.]]>
By most measures, it has been the year of the App once again, driven mostly by the rise of Android and iOS users who have more than doubled in a year and account for 88% of those who have downloaded an app in the past 30 days. In just a year, the average number of apps per smartphone has jumped 28%, from 32 apps to 41. Not only is the 2012 smartphone owner downloading more apps, they are increasingly spending more time using them vs. using the mobile web — about 10% more than last year.]]>
The coding platform, the fifth iteration of the HTML standard, was supposed to be a one stop shop for developers looking to create and distribute their game to a multitude of platforms and browsers, but things haven’t been plain sailing. Key criticism is over audio implementation; there's a certain amount of wishful sighing for the good old days when you just wrote for Flash. Unfortunately, Windows 8 and tablets mean those aren't coming back.]]>