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Ask HN: Native mobile dev with HTML5/JS/CSS frameworks?

6 points by alanmhughes ↗ HN
I totally buy into the idea that if you have the resource available you should do native development. But if I decide that I don't have the resource but absolutely must have my app in native form on ios and android ASAP, does anyone have any insight to share on tools like phonegap, sencha touch etc?

2 comments

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morbido
if you don't have the resources, delivering subpar products using the tools you wrote here (and unfortunately at this day - they're vastly inferior to native) won't help you secure the resources, if anything, it'll only prolong the time it'll take you to deliver your industry-standard product, I'm speaking this from experience after taking on html5 cross-platform projects and porting those, as the customers kept stating that the html5 on mobile isn't decent enough to show as a product, it might be a few years until that changes, and for the meanwhile - don't bet on it.
stevenameyer
With solid developers it can be pulled off with a fair bit of success. However there is a LOT of work that needs to put in order to make a quality web-app have a good experience on all devices, it's not as simple as throwing the url to your web-app into a native container and hoping for the best.

But like I've said it is possible. I've seen web solutions put into a native situation with performance that is nearly indistinguishable from a native experience. But having a chance to sit down with the developers there was a lot of work that they needed to be put in to get the web component to that level on mobile devices.

There are reasons that people may want to choose using a web solution for their native product (ie over the air updates, extremely good web developer but lacking quality native developers, distribution of embedded apps without needed to go through the associated app store ect.) but if the reason is it's easier and takes less time, I'm sorry to say that that is not the case if your looking at providing a quality product.