If I think back to 2006/2007 I was very happy with how things were shaking out. The web was on the upswing and we were moving away from native applications. All of the great things about the web–its ubiquity, its freedom, its openness–were being harnessed to create native-like experiences that, I hoped at the time, would see us all do away with native apps. At the time, there wasn’t much (I thought) that web apps couldn’t do that we needed native apps for. How wrong I was. With the introduction of the iPhone, and subsequent smartphone releases, we’ve seen a huge shift back to native applications. Part of that is performance, right now native apps just feel better than mobile web apps, but it also came about because of just how many things native mobile apps could do. Geolocation, accelerometers, contact info–the smartphone showed how many things “apps” needed access to and for the most part those features have been exclusive to native applications. So just as the web was starting to really take off, we’ve slid back into native application territory.
It bummed me out, and still does. I thought AIR was an okay solution to the problem, but by the time AIR came around it was pretty clear that “the web” had come to mean HTML/JS, and I’m fine with that. So as PhoneGap started getting traction, and then Adobe took a major interest in the project, I was excited about the prospect of working on it as an Adobe evangelist, and more importantly, working with the teams behind it to see what else they had up their sleeves as the web moves forward.
But another side benefit is that it’s put me on what I’d consider the “right” side of the web argument. Two things got me thinking more about this. One was a very good post by a VC named Mark Suster, who while not telling his companies to focus exclusively on the web, has told them to make it a big part of what they do. So many startups nowadays are thinking completely mobile-first while ignoring the web, I’d say at their peril. When I think of my own usage, I’m still using a lot of native apps (for reasons I can’t quite figure out) but the ones I enjoy most have a web component that is well done and part of the overall experience. Yelp comes to mind. Another is Untappd. I can do almost anything I need to on the website version of Untappd so it’s not as though I’m getting a watered down experience. It more easily lets me move between contexts and devices while still using the service. I contrast that to something like Foursquare or Path. Both are mobile-centric, and with Foursquare I can’t check in because it wants to be sure that I am where I say I am (using GPS) but it still makes the web side of it less useful for me. Path is unusable when you’re not on a mobile device as far as I can tell. When I log in all I get is “download the app”. Which I hate. Mobile is clearly important but the web can’t be ignored.
If this is what I see when I log into your site, you're too mobile-first.
The second thing that got me thinking more about this was something Brian Leroux pointed to on the Cordova mailing list, a post by Tim Berners-Lee about Installable Web Apps. This is a model I would love to see take hold. As Tim notes, there are a few things that users need to have when they’re installing web apps, and some trust/permissions issues that need to be figured out. Right now, I think PhoneGap is closest to this model, but a huge, huge, part of me wishes PhoneGap didn’t need to exist. If we could somehow skip the native shim and just take for granted that every platform supported, and at its core used, installable web apps. Maybe something like the WebOS model. But we’re not there yet. So for now, I’m glad I get to work with PhoneGap and build apps with web technologies. Eventually though I think PhoneGap can be used as inspiration for installable web apps. This is kind of how the standards world moves, as more and more people adopt something, people find ways to bring that something back into the standards. I think some of PhoneGap’s APIs and methodologies would make a great start at the idea of installable web apps. And I think the guys behind PhoneGap will be at the forefront of making those things happen, which means Adobe is going to be a really cool place to be over the next few years. It feels like there is a lot of potential to change the world and while I miss spending time with Flash, I feel like the HTML/JS/CSS work I’ve been doing and that Adobe is investing in, will make a similar impact on the web down the road.
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