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"Whether it runs in a browser or is an application isn't relevant to how easy something is to use." Sure, in principle and often in practice can make a mess out of a Web app and can have something nicely simple in a native app. But your "isn't relevant" is too strong for practice: Again, HTML is a big constraint on what the programmer can do, and this constraint, in practice, forces a lot of simplicity, i.e., ease of use or, if you wish, relatively 'uniform' techniques of use across millions of Web sites with the advantage of learn once, use thousands of times. Also, your example of Notepad is relevant: Actually, as simple as Notepad is, the average Web app is still significantly easier to use if only because Notepad is nearly unique and there are over 100 million Web apps that, via the constraints of HTML, all work very much the same. So, one billion people can use over 100 million Web apps from learning how to use just a few of them, but nearly all those one billion users would have still more to learn just to use Notepad for the first time. Native apps are so unconstrained they are free to be highly idiosyncratic: Sure, maybe for an app as simple as Notepad the learning time is short, but Notepad is not like an HTML Web app and,thus, needs ADDITIONAL learning time, even if only 5 seconds. In the world of the Web, the 5 seconds learning time unique to one Web site is TOO MUCH. Again, this uniformity and ease of use pushed hard by the simplicity of HTML is a BIGGIE for the current size and future growth of the Web, and more complexity in client side programming tools is a threat to such growth. Jeff Jaffe, listen up! |