[Andrex]

The iOS and Android browsers have laughable HTML5 support. On paper they may seem OK, but implementations are highly buggy at best. (Speaking from the perspective as an HTML5 game dev.)

WP7 might be the first to have a good default browser for HTML5, and that kind of dumbfounds me. Get on the ball, Apple and Google. I know it's in your best interests to keep the more powerful stuff out of your mobile browsers, but the sooner the better.

[wdewind]

Totally possible that when you get down and dirty with games they are not great, but from the perspective of a general web dev they are awesome and let you do any of the standard things you'd want to on the desktop side with ease (again, talking about regular web apps here, not games).

[Andrex]

True. But the buggy stuff for games is still stuff the mobile web apps can use to enhance themselves, and bring them closer to native apps in features and even performance.

[nextparadigms]

Are you talking about the un-released version of WP7, Mango? Because as far as I know HTML5 support is missing from WP7 currently, with its IE7 mobile browser.

If you're going to compare the IE9 mobile browser, compare it with iOS 5.0 browser and Android 4.0 browser (also coming out this fall).

[Andrex]

Yeah, I was talking about Mango. I don't think Android 4.0 has been announced, but I will look into iOS 5. But if Mango hits before iOS 5, even if the iOS 5 browser fixes all the bugs and adds some HTML5 features, it will be hard to stack up to the desktop-class IE9.

This is an odd disparity between desktop and mobile because IE9 is definitely the worst HTML5-supporting desktop browser. But on mobile it's going to be top dog.

[starwed]

What relevance does iOS's HTML 5 support have when comparing to flash? (Or did I miss flash arriving on the iPhone?)

On android, you can use alternate browsers. If google doesn't improve the built-in browser, something like Firefox can displace it.

[Andrex]

This is true and welcome. But the stock browsers will be how the majority access web apps (until there's an absolutely huge gap in features and performance like IE when FF hit the scene, but that will be years in the making.) The point is that Google shouldn't rest on their laurels because alternatives exist. If that were the case, we wouldn't have any Google products.

[dreamdu5t]

Yeah, for all the HTML5 webapp ferver, if you've actually designed/developed one for mobile devices you know how bad it is. Mobile devices are simply too underpowered at the moment to run huge amounts of interpreted code without struggling.

[starwed]

> Mobile devices are simply too underpowered at the moment to run huge amounts of interpreted code without struggling.

I don't really think that's established yet -- Android's default browser doesn't have the same engine that chrome does. It's obviously going to be slower than desktop, but it might still be improved to the point of being fast enough.

Also, see this post about code generation on ARM: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2805825

[dreamdu5t]

It's every established. Go build even a basic list with a slide transition, wrap it in Phonegap, and deploy it to an HTC device from the last year running Android 2.3. It won't work well on 90% of the smartphones out there. Simply put, even the latest devices struggle with basic CSS animations/transitions.

Hell, scrolling isn't even smooth on most devices for even a fairly simple DOM.

[starwed]

You misunderstood my point -- I was not talking about the current situation, but what today's devices will be capable of with software from a year in the future.

Even now, I believe Mobile Firefox is much faster than the stock webkit browser for javascript processing.