<story><title>Browsers, not apps, are the future of mobile</title><url>https://blog.intercom.com/browsers-not-apps-are-the-future-of-mobile/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TuringTest</author><text>Wait until mobile OSes start building a native presentation layer built on WebAssembly.&lt;p&gt;Apple already tried that approach with the iPhone one. It failed because the technology wasn&amp;#x27;t mature, but there have been nothing but advances since then.&lt;p&gt;The web is a more flexible and portable platform, so the economic incentives will always be there. And while native toolkits are still based on 1970&amp;#x27;s lab research, the web as a platform benefits from mainstream usage by the whole world. At some point, the new tech will overcome and replace the old approach. The gap is getting smaller every day even if the old approach has decades of advantage, and all major tech providers are pushing for it.</text></item><item><author>Arainach</author><text>This comes up from time to time and I still don&amp;#x27;t see it.  The idea of packaged web apps and web sites is as old as the smartphone (and older on some platforms).  Even today, I can tell what experience on my devices are packaged web apps and I don&amp;#x27;t enjoy them.  UI elements don&amp;#x27;t look right, navigation elements don&amp;#x27;t behave properly, keyboard shortcuts are wrong.  Web apps can be sufficient for some scenarios, but they don&amp;#x27;t lack the magical feeling of native apps.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wangchow</author><text>With the security sandbox of the browser functionality is inherently limited (by design) compared to native apps which have less-limiting restrictions.&lt;p&gt;Security and usability are inversely proportional and the browser needs that security more than anything else.&lt;p&gt;That being said, it&amp;#x27;s great to see the innovation in the web space. But it will always be limited to specific application domains and the standards move slowly</text></comment>
<story><title>Browsers, not apps, are the future of mobile</title><url>https://blog.intercom.com/browsers-not-apps-are-the-future-of-mobile/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TuringTest</author><text>Wait until mobile OSes start building a native presentation layer built on WebAssembly.&lt;p&gt;Apple already tried that approach with the iPhone one. It failed because the technology wasn&amp;#x27;t mature, but there have been nothing but advances since then.&lt;p&gt;The web is a more flexible and portable platform, so the economic incentives will always be there. And while native toolkits are still based on 1970&amp;#x27;s lab research, the web as a platform benefits from mainstream usage by the whole world. At some point, the new tech will overcome and replace the old approach. The gap is getting smaller every day even if the old approach has decades of advantage, and all major tech providers are pushing for it.</text></item><item><author>Arainach</author><text>This comes up from time to time and I still don&amp;#x27;t see it.  The idea of packaged web apps and web sites is as old as the smartphone (and older on some platforms).  Even today, I can tell what experience on my devices are packaged web apps and I don&amp;#x27;t enjoy them.  UI elements don&amp;#x27;t look right, navigation elements don&amp;#x27;t behave properly, keyboard shortcuts are wrong.  Web apps can be sufficient for some scenarios, but they don&amp;#x27;t lack the magical feeling of native apps.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>marcosdumay</author><text>XUL again?&lt;p&gt;If it&amp;#x27;s more convenient to Google and Apple, they&amp;#x27;ll push for it, and we can only adapt.&lt;p&gt;But don&amp;#x27;t expect developers to ask for it. As it happens with those things, each platform will have their own, incompatible toolkits, and programming for them will not be much different than native programming.</text></comment>