| >And web browsers absolutely suck at UI for applications. I prefer web apps to native apps. Day to day, at work, our CRM, bug/issue/project tracker, document management, help-desk software, phone system management, knowledge base, email, document/spreadsheet software are all web-based. Historically, those were all native 'programs' (as late as mid 2000s) and they were all crap. >All for something that could have been created as a native app much easier. I don't know about that. Some things are easier with html/css/js than with a native framework, but it's not just about developer comfort. Web applications provide huge benefits to users over native apps - that's why we're willing to deal with the development stack (which is getting better every year). >Imagine the man hours and effort that went into building Gmail. It's probably not that bad. Writing maintainable web code isn't that hard these days. >There's a lot of reasons that people have gravitated towards apps on phones Yes. It all really boils down to performance. If you could get 60fps with a web-app on mobile (which in principle you should achieve), I don't think users would care. You'd also see an even bigger uptake of webview-based 'native' apps (a la phone gap). |