> Webviews give us the flexibility and freedom to choose what screens to level up as native views, instead of being forced to make everything native.
For the umpteenth time, the Basecamp team has leveraged their resources and skills to ship an entire product at a remarkable pace. Had they embraced the myth that "WebViews suck" and anything but native is acceptable, they would have taken twice the time to ship.
Those were problems in 2013 and 2014. It's not the current state of things. Our users can't tell the difference from Native apps and we have conducted quite a bit of research... Nowadays those problems simply signal that "you're a mediocre dev" (probably in all platforms).
> If you want to trade user experience away to reduce development work, that's fine.
This is the reason why some people help to perpetuate "the myth". UX, if you know how to build an app properly, is not affected anymore. Don't believe it? Check apps like this one...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlykw4Z73sA
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bitpay.che...
Arguably the best UX for bitcoin payments. Not a single complain about flashiness, clunkiness, etc... And the impact in the battery is orders of magnitude smaller than native apps like facebook. It uses cordova like many great bitcoin apps...
PS: I'm not affiliated with Bitpay in any way, just very thankful and impressed with their cordova projects.
Also that Bitcoin app is a bad example because it's a very simple app.
To be clear, I have programmed in both native ios, ionic and native android. I'm primarily a iOS developer so had no idea how Android worked when I first tried building an android app, so when I first tried my "cross platform" app on an android phone I was shocked to find out there are so many details that make it feel NOT native. iOS and Android have very different UI and you need to build for those experiences if you want to really optimize for user experience. It's not just a matter of performance. That's why I learned java to build natively.
Lastly, in this and age, why not just learn react native instead of boasting about how still using web browser is good enough? You really have no excuse here if your reasoning is that you want to use web technology to build native apps.
Because for instance I can use native HTML APIs like WebRTC without 3rd party libraries and I can reuse many great JS libs, which I'm familiar with.
> Also that Bitcoin app is a bad example because it's a very simple app.
It's the perfect example because it reflects that it all depends on the use case, and that are use cases that will better fit your company stack. In bitpay's case, they're heavily invested in JS/Node. So it just makes sense (like in many other cases/companies).
A good lead (tech, manager, etc) will always pick the proper tool for the task, taking into account many aspects of the project: business decisions, UX, costs, current work force, current stack, available libs, etc...
What I'm trying to say is that Hybrid has it's place. It's not all hybrid or all native. It depends.
It's a fine app if you don't care deeply about UX, but certainly not indistinguishable.
Not going to discuss why picking a random app from a listing doesn't make all the apps built with a similar technology equally bad.
Next time, before shouting "nonsense" try something built with Angular2/Ionic2.
I did the same thing with Ionic; the top app on their showcase page is ChefSteps. It's definitely better, but sorry, not indistinguishable. Not even close.
I stand by my claim that saying that "2016 hybrid" apps look and feel 100% native is nonsense. It's fine to use those technologies, but be honest about your reasons.
That's not a good way to sell a platform if you have to be a really good developer to use it.
But this is the exact "myth" you claimed to "debunk". This is why people claim WebViews suck.
If you want to trade user experience away to reduce development work, that's fine. Lots of people make that compromise. But your claiming this is a "myth", and then admitting it's true.
Users may not always articulate this fully, but users do notice when apps are "janky" -- when animations aren't fluid, or when UI doesn't accurately respond directly to their input, or when screens "flash funny" because your switching between native activities and webviews.
You may not care about the experience that has been lost. And perhaps your particular customers don't mind that loss of care for the details. That's not inherently bad in any way. But it's not a "myth" either, you have lost a part of the experience you could have offered.