Pros and cons of developing and maintaining a mobile web application in html5 instead of native applications

Question

Programming

Good afternoon.
I would like to hear about the pros and cons of developing a mobile application in HTML5 and then pasting it into some WebView instead of developing a directly native application for a particular platform.

Answer 1

I once asked a question: habrahabr.ru/qa/27311/ .
Of the minuses:
There are people who strongly swear at all kinds of frameworks like sencha touch and jquery mobile, saying that they are slow, on the other hand, they solve many problems in themselves that can be found in the wide world of mobile browsers (I'm probably talking about android now, maybe I use phonegap, and unfortunately it works with a native browser).
On the other hand, you can write everything yourself, solving many interesting tasks, but you still need to test the application at least on basic devices and assume that the new version of the OS can break your application. Here you can also make associations with IE6, for example, if you take an android and go through canisue.com.
And yes, the work of the browser code will be slower.
Of the benefits:
Mobile browsers also do not stand still and develop, now multi-touch is supported in modern browsers, there are native lists (owerflow: auto or scroll), and so on. And you most likely do not need to support phones / OS versions that few people use.
You can write for all platforms at once and, as an option, throw out the web version. It writes pretty fast.
Most likely, if you have enough browser speed to display text and pictures, small lists, and so on. In general, for simple and resource-intensive applications.
IMHO this is interesting and promising against the background of chrome os, firefox os, tizen.

Answer 2

An HTML5 application is, unfortunately, the brakes in the most unexpected places. It is the lack of control over resource consumption. The result is a limited circle of users and low marks in the markets. I am glad that Firefox OS, Tizen, BlackBerry with WebWorks are betting on HTML5, but the time for HTML5 for serious and larger applications has not come, it takes a couple more years *. Considering that all HTML5 examples of games with Tizen are built using classic DIV + CSS, and not Canvas (which slows down well on all non-iOS devices), then the time has definitely not come.
*Especially, on a side note, on current generation Smart TVs where HTML5 is usually the only way to develop. They are now, well, very slow and the standard WebKit used everywhere does not fly on TVs at all.

Answer 3

Plus: speed, simplicity and low cost of development, easy to find performers
. Minus: low performance, brakes, twitching, high memory consumption (the first iPhone may not pull it) and you can not use all the features of the platform, for example, a graphics accelerator.

Answer 4

From my own experience, I can say that, for example, working with the camera in android (the simplest change in the input frame and output to view) slows down even in “native” Java. Therefore, some things have to be moved to the NDK. I have no idea how to implement this in HTML5. But as it was rightly noted here, everything depends on the type of application

Answer 5

Rlyus: cross-platform - almost without adaptation it will go everywhere, the speed of development.
Cons: the speed of work is, consider, the same browser is open, often the design does not look quite native.
No wonder facebook rewrote the client to native.