Beyond App Stores: Weaving Apps into the Web

Take a look at open web apps / chrome apps / phonegap / the Firefox OS project (I work on the latter). The line between apps and websites is getting thinner by the day, and getting very close to being non existent.<p>Also the 'apps are an island' comment is quite specific to iOS, Android has a very elegant system for allowing apps to interact with each other, one which the web is adopting (web intents/activities).<p>The basic premise is the wrong way round, web apps will adopt native functionality (web api's) and native performance (which already good enough for most use cases), they will (and can often already do) work offline.<p>'Native' apps are almost by definition going to have to be rewritten for every platform and will never have the same introspection and interconnectedness as the web.<p>Which platform do you think is going to fix its disadvantages first? seems obvious to me.

I don't like apps anymore. Why would I want Hotel Tonight (for example) on my iphone from a trip to Dallas two months ago. The constant updating, notifications, etc. Apps are a mess. I don't have a solution but I do know I'm tired of apps.

"let mobile browsers download small apps and execute them within the browser window"<p>If you want to know how this turns out you only have to look at the evolution of browser plugins (applets-&#62;flash,silverlight,unity,etc) that has taken place for the last 20 years. We could also decide to skip all that and just concentrate on moving forward the HTML spec and tools to make better mobile web applications.

Automatically downloading and executing binary code from the web. What could possibly go wrong?<p>Isn't NaCL supposed to in part solve this?

The proper solution to this problem is for content providers to build a properly responsive site. Allowing apps to access browser cookies isn't going to fix anything - the reason that a native app doesn't open to the place you left off on the web is not because it's technically impossible, it's because app developers don't give a damn. Giving them more tools isn't going to change this.

we can call them "applets"!

This would be pretty neat, but file it under "things that will never happen on iOS in a million billion years."

In iOS 6 there is a way to open your native app with the same content as the current webpage.<p><a href="https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/PromotingAppswithAppBanners/PromotingAppswithAppBanners.html" rel="nofollow">https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#documentation/Ap...</a>

I don't know how else to put this but local, compiled apps run faster than web apps. And the problems laid out in the article are indicative of development choices, for example not being able to pick up where one left off in a local app as opposed to in a browser app in the NYT example.

I think it would be far more useful for Android Browser/Chrome and iOS Safari to support special tags for rendering apps in their native style. Ideally have it be the same set of tags and Android and iOS figure out how they want to render them.

&#62;My proposal would be to let mobile browsers download small apps and execute them within the browser window<p>Is this a sick joke? Besides the fact that the browser can trivially redirect to the exact app in the app store, I'm already annoyed that ABC wants me to download their god damn app everytime I accidentally click on one of their articles on Google News.<p>Not only that, but if the user has the app installed they're already prompted to open the same content with the app instead of the browser if they want.<p>This problem is already solved. This is very, very common in Android apps and I understand it is a new feature in iOS6 as well.<p>I guess if this is absolutely necessary, the browser could output a new header for domains that are declared in the .ipa/.apk that would notify the server that they have the app installed... and then they could force the app to open with a regular redirect. But that still majorly SUCKS to users who already have that choice anyway. If anything this gives the publisher more control of forcing me to use their app which I absolutely do not want.