My point was that HTML5 apps have proven not to be a suitable replacement for native apps. Not just for games and multimedia (can you imagine Infinity Blade or iMovie in HTML5?), but even simple tableview web apps are not as smooth as native apps.
“these screenshots look pretty slick to me”
You're entitled to your opinion, but it looks incoherent and garish to me. Like something you can buy from 99designs. Not even in the same league as WebOS.
The reason HTML5 apps have proven not to be a full replacement for native apps is that no-one has actually tried it (on the OS side). Apple (weirdly) have come the closest, but there's still a hell of a long way to go. From my personal experience making webapps, the following is needed:
- Some sort of app store like central place of discovery
- Access to far more native APIs / intents. Control over elements like the keyboard.
- Fixed positioning (finally arrived in iOS5, not sure about Android)
- The ability to actually play an audio file correctly
- More control over video playing
That's just a short list but it goes on and on. There's absolutely no reason why an HTML5-based app can't be as good as a native one. I think that Mozilla are ideally placed to be the ones to try. I'm still amazed/disappointed that Google haven't.
2. Getting there in Firefox OS, already impressive.
3. Not sure what you mean here... "fixed positioning" without context makes me cringe. (edit: Oh... position: fixed has been available in Android browser and Chrome for Android for... a long time. I'm sure it's in Gecko [that, and the demo shows Twitter who uses position: fixed])
4. Not sure what that means, but I'd like to think it's a priority.
5. Popcorn.js, while I'm not a fan, is something Mozilla is pouring effort into. MediaSource API coming out of Google looks to add an appendBytes (ala Flash) style API to Javascript enabling adaptive streaming.
Bringing up Infinity Blade is a bit unfair. Native apps have had a long time to reach a healthy state. HTML5 is a bit of a new world. Sure, the iPhone used to run HTML webapps, which didn't work. But the web wasn't ready yet (back when Javascript was very slow). The web is getting to a ready point. It's not quite there yet, but Mozilla is making an early move to influence the apps market where everything is web standardized and developers aren't forced to choose between Apple and Google.
"My point was that HTML5 apps have proven not to be a full replacement for native apps."
Taking an all html5 approach is an interesting one, and has the straight up advantage of harnessing existing html5 developer skills. But performance and polish are important requirements, which so far I've seen only native apps deliver best. Let's see if Mozilla can make good on its bet that html5 can equal native apps. I'd be happy to see them succeed.
> My point was that HTML5 apps have proven not to be a suitable replacement for native apps.
Not sure that's been proven. After all, companies like Apple and Google seem to disagree, as they put out HTML5 apps. We are seeing the same transition that occurred on the desktop now happen on mobile.
“these screenshots look pretty slick to me”
You're entitled to your opinion, but it looks incoherent and garish to me. Like something you can buy from 99designs. Not even in the same league as WebOS.