Re:The State of Desktop Applications in Node.js
by blub on Thursday December 11, 2014 @04:56AM
(#8733994)
As a developer there might be some benefits, but as a user I am firmly agains web apps for most classes of webapps (let's say except mail or cloudy stuff).
First of all, webapps almost always screw something up in the UI. If they're wrapped in a native container maybe they scroll differently, they don't respond to some gestures, are missing some menu entires or make other small mistakes. Depending on the user this can be mildly annoying or just strange for them.
Secondly, web apps make customers dependent on something they have no control of. That cool startup might close shop tomorrow and if you're lucky they'll give you one week to export your data. The company might decide to pivot or charge more or a myriad other possibilities and the customer has no choice but to either cancel the service or deal with it. I can give you an example of many iOS users that are still on 7 because some apps were broken by the update - they can do that with apps and we're talking about iOS here, desktop is even more flexible.
Thirdly, speed. Ironically, Facebook themselves admitted that they made a huge mistake by using webviews because this made their app incredibly slow. Your case is almost impossible to believe, and indicates that something is completely broken in your software configuration.
In most cases a native app will outperform a web app, from the UI speed (scrolling, panning, drag & drop, viewing documents) to performing various tasks. It's quite logical, as a native app has direct access to all APIs, while a webapp has to go through N intermediate layers.
First of all, webapps almost always screw something up in the UI. If they're wrapped in a native container maybe they scroll differently, they don't respond to some gestures, are missing some menu entires or make other small mistakes. Depending on the user this can be mildly annoying or just strange for them.
Secondly, web apps make customers dependent on something they have no control of. That cool startup might close shop tomorrow and if you're lucky they'll give you one week to export your data. The company might decide to pivot or charge more or a myriad other possibilities and the customer has no choice but to either cancel the service or deal with it. I can give you an example of many iOS users that are still on 7 because some apps were broken by the update - they can do that with apps and we're talking about iOS here, desktop is even more flexible.
Thirdly, speed. Ironically, Facebook themselves admitted that they made a huge mistake by using webviews because this made their app incredibly slow. Your case is almost impossible to believe, and indicates that something is completely broken in your software configuration. In most cases a native app will outperform a web app, from the UI speed (scrolling, panning, drag & drop, viewing documents) to performing various tasks. It's quite logical, as a native app has direct access to all APIs, while a webapp has to go through N intermediate layers.