Dear fellow HNs -<p>I am looking for real world examples of developers choosing HTML5 over native app (or vice-verse). I would appreciate you sharing with me some of your experience with this choice.<p>It would be helpful to know:<p>1. What kind of an app? (Ie. game, service, standalone or extension to Web site, or existent product - anything about what is it and why do you built it.)<p>2. What did you choose and who have made that decision? (Any insight into decision making process would be great to know.)<p>3. Are you happy that you have made this decision or not?<p>4. What you wish you would knew before you've started?<p>5. Do you do anything of the following:
a) monetization
b) analytics
c) collect leads
d) performance-sensitive ops
e) rich and interactive interfaces<p>This also might be a good place to showoff your app, if you have it built already. :)<p>Thanks!
We're a 2 man shop providing 2ndary education to a very targeted demographic. I'm the only programmer / sysadmin / anything technical.<p>I originally developed the website with a separate mobile version using some code to detect the type of device and decide to redirect and when. This, is a pain in the butt as i'd always forget to make changes to the mobile version when i changed the main site (A LOT on my plate)<p>I'm in the middle of developing version 2 of the site and developing the main site side by side with mobile devices so 1 site can do both desktop and mobile.<p>When this new version is done, I'll finish developing the iOS native app (i've started it, but put it on hold for the new ver 2 site)<p>1: I want both a mobile version and a native version - I feel a native iOS app will provide a better experience - BUT - i also think i'll run into the same problem as before; updating the main site and not updating the ios app - maybe by that time i can hire another programmer... As i'm a Apple user, I have multiple iPhones / iPads / iPods to test on. I don't even want to think of how many devices I'll need to build a proper native Android app.<p>2: I'm never happy; I'm constantly re-writing my code, persuing new / better ways to do stuff; i'm never done. Technology choices are always my choice but I make sure my partner knows why i'm doing something and hes open to question anything he wants, especially if it requires money / time / blood.<p>3: Version 1 was full steam a head, lets get it done and out there. It has a lot of short-comings - most of only i as a developer know of but some visible. Version 2 is much more planned; I took the time to build prototypes, play with different ideas, think about why i was doing something and not just programming away. I'm happy i'm moving to a scalable main website and i'm pretty happy we'll have our first of 3 planned iOS apps (native app, game and magazine). I try not to do things I'll regret, but making a mistake in the process of learning is ok.<p>4: How long building such a site would take as the only developer with a day job. I'm committed and hopefully the payout comes someday, but being the only programmer on a fairly large project kinda sucks.<p>5: I collect as much analytic information as I can. My data to date shows me the vast majority of my users are iOS users (reason for native iOS app), are between 20-30 years old, etc.. Someday it'll be monetized and version 2 will have interactive interfaces.<p>I'm not done yet so you can't see it!