Of Shell Apps and Silver Bullets

09 May 2012

Benjamin Sandofsky discusses the highs and lows of building ‘shell apps’ versus native apps for mobile devices:  > When people want a native app, they are asking for an app user experience, which is more complex than the web experience. […]  > Web technology is great for many things. Replicating a native app experience is not one of them. I feel this way about the experience of using most web applications, even in desktop browsers. In my experience a dedicated native application, backed by web services, delivers a far better experience than a web application trying to emulate device functionality like gestures or view transitions.

With the rise of capable mobile devices and well crafted applications I feel far less compelled to use web applications. In fact, I often choose not to use an application if its main features can only be used via the web.