Hyperview – Native mobile apps, as easy as creating a website

Hyperview is a very interesting mobile-oriented hypermedia system created by Adam Stepinski.<p>He talks about is in the third part of our book, hypermedia systems:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hypermedia.systems&#x2F;part&#x2F;hyperview&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hypermedia.systems&#x2F;part&#x2F;hyperview&#x2F;</a><p>I have said before that I regard his work as much more innovative than htmx in that he developed an entire hypermedia client and format for his system.

I overlooked it at first even though it’s right there on the landing page but this is ultimately still React Native with all the baggage that entails.

As a reverse-engineer tinkering with iOS this reminded me of some system apps.<p>E.g. in the app store you click a button, send a request, receive the response which contains a xml-like structure describing the UI mutation to your action.<p>&lt;Alert&gt;<p><pre><code> &lt;Header&gt;iTunes Login&lt;&#x2F;Header&gt; &lt;Body&gt;We could not find a user with those credentials.&lt;&#x2F;Body&gt; </code></pre> &lt;&#x2F;Alert&gt;<p>type stuff.

Any &quot;app&quot; framework that isn&#x27;t offline-first seems broken by default to me. It seems ridiculous to me that client-server architecture is considered the easy thing now. Where did it all go wrong?

Ah finally the Western tech ecosystem has caught up with WeChat&#x2F;Alipay mini programs.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.weixin.qq.com&#x2F;miniprogram&#x2F;en&#x2F;dev&#x2F;framework&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.weixin.qq.com&#x2F;miniprogram&#x2F;en&#x2F;dev&#x2F;framewor...</a><p>China had this DSL for building mobile apps for years. Those these apps are initially embedded inside WeChat&#x2F;Alipay, there are now frameworks that allow it to run outside, like uniapp.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.uniapp.dcloud.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.uniapp.dcloud.io&#x2F;</a>

Popular in 2022 (252 points, 74 comments) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34137381">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34137381</a>

&gt;as easy as creating a website<p>This strikes me as odd - I have a much easier time making a well-functioning native app (iOS or Android) than the equivalent website. That&#x27;s not typically a checkmark in the web column for web vs app pros and cons.<p>Unless we&#x27;re including distribution when we say &quot;creating&quot;.

Ah I&#x27;ve seen this before but then with JSON <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Jasonette">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Jasonette</a>

I am very unclear reading the documentation and clicking around, how do you actually implement the logic? Some sort of JavaScript runtime?

How does this improve on w3c standard of xforms + CSS?

I&#x27;m more of a Floral Green person.

I&#x27;m wondering if they could get that to work with React Native for desktop apps

Not even a day after the post about HTMX not living up to its promise! There are only two certainties in life, death and frontend churn.

Surely this will be redundant with React Server Components on RN&#x2F;Expo?

For the love of God, stop putting &quot;Native&quot; in web frameworks. No, React will never be native.

Using web technology to build &quot;native&quot; mobile apps has been around almost as long as mobile apps themselves. I used Appcelerator Titanium and Phonegap to do this beginning in 2012 (maybe even 2011) before eventually trying Native development later after finding these options underwhelming.<p>I have a reasonable amount of experience doing both, and my opinion is that development tools aren&#x27;t really the problem. The biggest pain point is the platform specific deployment and maintenance requirements (including legal and technical documentation) that will be needed regardless of what technology you use to actually build the product. Because of this I always advise clients that they don&#x27;t really need a mobile app. Just build it on the web.<p>If you absolutely must have a mobile app, you need to fully commit and hire an internal development team and be prepared to keep paying them as long as the app is going to be in use.

&quot;Serve your app as XML&quot;<p>As someone who started his professional career in 2005: All the old is new again.