HTML5 is no mobile holy grail

Why does the journalist not do some real journalism of who is sponsoring these projects i.e incubators, mentorships, investors. There are many well known "code once for all devices frameworks" out there so someone new introducing the idea of this is not new at all.
 
I would agree with the journalist but the article is too vague. In the last few weeks I've been investigating mobile app development as its a career path I want to pursue. At our company we have been looking into various approaches and it comes down to HTML5 for low featured apps or feature reach dedicated apps.

HTML5 support is lacking on many desktop browsers and I've seen it even more lacking on mobile devices.

Then again this is a field where 3mths is the same as 1yr in the rest of the IT world. What we say today to win a debate will be of no relevance in 6mths time.
 
Saajid said:
Huh? To the article, and the previous comments. The article says a lot without really saying anything.
Click to expand...

Nonsense, the enterprise article said an enterprise lot about the enterprise space for enterprises who can't afford not spending a lot on leveraging platform-by-platform enterprise mobilisation strategies without excluding feature phone users and should perhaps therefore hire VMT. The important take-away from this article, is that Virtual Mobile Technologies are a major big-boy enterprise mobile application developer that really understands all this technical gobbledygook (the article is aimed at management types who don't), and if you own an enterprise you better hire them or you might stuff up your 'mobilisation strategy' and lose customers. See? It's a formula salespitch - a bit of fear mixed with ample jargon. Same formula as when the electrician tells you to hire him rather than do your own DIY electrical installations as you might burn your house down (and just like that, it probably has at least some truth in it).

Smartphone browsing may be less fragmented than expected partly because most browsers today use some variant of the WebKit engine. But HTML5 may have a couple of other problems - it is not far enough along to be a major platform, and worse, the standards body behind it has basically declared that they're going to take another million years or so (in computer time) to make even the current iteration a formal standard --- meaning it is inevitable many of the functionality gaps will be filled in by proprietary and ad hoc, non-standard solutions. Yay, it's going to be like the late 90's all over again.

That said though, the alternatives to HTML5 are fragmented even worse. There aren't really any "good" solutions. There are some cross-platform systems for comparatively simple apps, but end of the day if you want a complex app running on a lot of phones, it's going to cost you a lot. If you're on a budget or your app is more simple though, then HTML5 could be very useful. The fact is "feature phone users" are going to get left in the dust, I don't think it's anything more to worry about, than musicians today need to worry about not releasing on vinyl just because a few people still listen to records.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X