WebKitBits

Nurture the Web

In Screw the Web, Faruk Ateş describes how the web is not properly suited to application development. A large portion of his argument is simply that the web has an inferior user experience to native apps:

The Web is a tricky place for major industries to make money from, and its limiting user experience potential has undoubtedly played a part in this.

First of all, I would not say the web has been a tricky place for major industries to make money. Things like e-commerce, digital subscriptions, web applications… tend to make a lot of money. I could go on Wikipedia and find some sort of numbers and graphs for this, but I digress — this isn’t the real part I take issue with.

With the iPad, Apple has once again pushed the boundaries of what’s possible on the web and mobile. In internal testing, I have seen effects, animations, styling, and performance that is completely on par with a native experience. Now, I realize this is a bit hypocritical for me to defend the web without listing example after example, but hear this: Mobile Safari has the power to deliver rich experiences, and once we see a proper mobile application framework, the line between web and native app will dissolve.

If anything, now’s the time to nurture the web, not screw it.