Ben Thompson says it:
Utimately, though, Samsung’s fundamental problem is that they have no software-based differentiation, which means in the long run all they can do is compete on price. Perhaps they should ask HP or Dell how that goes.In fact, it turns out that smartphones really are just like PCs: it’s the hardware maker with its own operating system that is dominating profits, while everyone else eats themselves alive to the benefit of their software master.
David writing on Signal v. Noise about building mobile version of Basecamp:
We implemented the main progress screen in the iPhone app in first a fully native version, then again in an HTML-backed version.
After a fiddling a bit, the conclusion was clear: There was no discernible difference! Well, except for the fact that it was far quicker to develop the HTML version than the native version.
Count me in for this approach.
Mobile is dead.… Web & apps are both wrong.
— Matias Duarte, Head of Design at Android
I like Matias’ point of view.
Ben Thompson writing for stratēchery:
Think about commerce in the same time periods and contexts I recounted above: in the time of addresses and telephones, most commerce involved driving to the store. It was a purposeful and burdensome activity, rather like a scheduled phone call. In the era of the web, ecommerce became a word, but it still entailed going to a computer, a journey that seems simple, but in reality is often far removed from the motivation to buy, which may arise from an ad seen on TV, or a dress in a windows, or the recommendation of a friend. With mobile though, and particularly with messaging, the omnipresence of both a communications channel as well as a purchasing channel means the separation between the thought of buying and actually making a purchase is very small indeed.
A jQuery plugin for creating slick, app look-alike sliding menus for you mobile website with only one line of javascript.
Native views and web views are good at different things.
Native is good for high fidelity interaction, animations, responding to gestures. However the native APIs are bad for designing “documents” — that is, layouts where elements flow within a container and push each other around. That means that things that are extremely easy on the web can be painstaking in native UI without much upside.
Web views have limited interactivity, but they have other advantages:
* Faster iterations. You don’t need to push a build when a webview changes.
* Document-style layout, as mentioned above.
* Higher density. We found it easier to show more information on the screen with HTML/CSS than the native controls. Looking at other apps out there makes me think it’s an attribute of the medium, not just us.
* No need to sync data or duplicate logic. Sending HTML down the pipe is simple.
Finally yes, we get the multi-platform advantages because the web views are also served to people who hit the regular mobile web version of the app without any wrapper.
Via @keff85
The Economist: “In The World in 2013, which is published today, we predict that the internet will become a mostly mobile medium. Who will be the winners and losers?”.
As we are all going to do mobile first soon, these printable free templates will come in handy.
Article worth reading by Rob Banagale.
Positioning your HTML5 mobile web developer as the primary domestique (flanked by UX design and UI design) is the best way to cut through the “wind resistance” of developing for multiple mobile platforms.
Online mobile interface prototyping tool. Even if you are not in it, just try it to see what an HTML5 web app could do.
Mr. Matteo Spinelli created nice add-to-home-screen script that may be useful to you if you have a mobile web app and want to let your users know, they could add it to their home screens.
That then allows your app to look like native app from their point of view.
The application cache manifest (ACM) offers developers a way to make their apps work offline, reduce bandwidth consumption, and load pages much faster. Local storage and WebSQL databases are also great ways to cache data on the client side, and this post will talk about the pros and cons of using each.
Great overview of the topic by JT Mudge for Six Revisions.
Obviously, it’s hard to be objective in this sort of comparison, because some strengths could quickly turn into weaknesses for your given app and vice versa.
Nonetheless, this comparison, at the very least, puts your thinking in the right frame.
I did some research around the window.devicePixelRatio property that all WebKit browsers, as well as Opera, support, and for once the news is good. This property’s definition makes sense, and it is implemented almost universally.
Via @daringfireball
If this is for real, someone will quickly buy them.
Via @ondrejvalka
Clever man Horace Dediu and his presentation on Mobilism 2012. You are listening to his podcast Critical Path, aren’t you?
See the video and if you like what you see go to Gridpak web.
What’s in the new ‘320 and Up’?Five CSS3 Media Query increments: 480, 600, 768, 992 and 1382px
Design ‘atmosphere’ (colour, texture and typography) separated from layout
Bootstrap styles for buttons, forms and tables
Font-based icons from Font Awesome
Modernizr, Selectivizr, responsive type tester and design tester
LESS mixins and variables