Native v HTML5 An Event Planner’s Primer If you’ve researched mobile apps for your conference, tradeshow or event,
you’ve probably come across the question “Native or HTML5?” Both provide
an app experience designed for iPhone, iPad, Android, and other devices, so
what’s the difference? Should you care?
This primer will set you straight!
History: Desktop to Browser to Mobile .................................. 2 What do “native” and “HTML5” mean? ................................. 3 Feature Comparisons ............................................................. 4 Installing ...................................................................................... 4 Launching ..................................................................................... 4 Signing In ..................................................................................... 5 Speed ........................................................................................... 6 Offline Access ............................................................................... 6 Cost and Deploy Time ................................................................... 7 Summary ............................................................................... 9 1
HTML5 v Native: An Event Planner’s Primer
Copyright © 2014 – Pathable, Inc.- pathable.com
History: Desktop to Browser to Mobile
Back in the 1980’s and 1990’s, Microsoft rose to dominance by providing
the operating system (OS) that most software ran on, Windows. If you
wanted to use a word processor, line of business application, or a game,
you had to buy a Windows computer to run it on.
The secret to their rule was the “virtuous cycle”: few people would buy a
non-Windows computer because all the interesting software was written for
Windows. Software developers would look around, see that all their
potential customers were Windows users, so all the new software coming
out would be Windows-only. As a result, all the interesting software was
written for Windows. And so on.
Then, along came the Internet. Simple web browsers could deliver great
software no matter what operating system you had: Windows, Mac, even
Linux. The OS didn’t matter, or, put another way, the Web was the OS.
This, in turn, led to the “browser wars”. Remember when Microsoft was
declared a monopoly for trying to use its OS dominance to force people to
use their web browser? That’s why they did it: they saw the web
undermining their virtuous cycle.
Then, it seemed that the Internet had democratized the software industry:
it didn’t matter what OS you used, as long as it had a web browser, you
could use Google, Wikipedia, Gmail, Facebook, and Expedia.
As a software developer, it was a dream. You didn’t have to choose what
operating system you wrote to, you just wrote HTML and javascript it
worked everywhere.
And then along came Apple’s iOS operating system and Google’s Android.
Suddenly, software developers had to choose again: which platform do you
write for?
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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HTML5 v Native: An Event Planner’s Primer
Copyright © 2014 – Pathable, Inc.- pathable.com
What do “native” and “HTML5” mean?
A native mobile app refers to software that was written specifically for a
particular type of device (e.g., iPhone, Android, BlackBerry). A native app
can only run on the specific device, or platform, it was written for. If you
want an app to run on both iPhone and Android phones, you will need two
different versions, one for each. They may look and behave the same, but
each must be created separately.
An HTML5 app (sometimes called “mobile web app”) refers to software that
runs in your phone’s web browser (called “Safari” on Apple’s iPhone and
“Chrome” on Google’s Android devices). Instead of downloading from the
app store, you simply navigate to the app’s web address (e.g.,
http://greencon2014.pathable.com/) it loads in the browser, just like a web
page. The exact same HTML5 mobile web app will run on iPhone, Android,
Windows Mobile and other modern devices (including the recent BlackBerry
devices).
HTML5 refers to the latest standards for creating web applications, and
includes a combination of HTML, JavaScript and other web technologies. An
HTML5 web app is a bit different from a standard web page, in that you can
load a complete, interactive web site as a single “page”. As you interact
with it, instead of each click causing a new page to download from the
server, the software manipulates and changes the page that’s already on
your phone. This has several advantages, most important being speed.
So which is better? It depends on your circumstances, and what’s important
to you.
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HTML5 v Native: An Event Planner’s Primer
Copyright © 2014 – Pathable, Inc.- pathable.com
Feature Comparisons
Installing
Native
From iTunes App Store,
Google Play, Windows
Phone Store, etc.
No install required, just
click link or open URL
A native app must be installed from an “app store”. The end-user must
open the app store on their phone, search for the app in the store, and
manually choose to install it. In some cases, a direct link to the app store
can be provided through your web site, but this typically involves launching
the app store application.
An HTML5 mobile web app, on the other hand, can be used without being
formally “installed”. Open the web address on your device browser (by
clicking a link, for example), and it is ready for use..
In some ways, this gives the advantage to the HTML5 web app, since it
involves fewer steps, but for some users who have been trained to look in
the app store, they may become confused if they are unable to find it there.
Launching
Native
Tap desktop icon
Desktop icon requires
manual install.
As previously noted, an HTML5 app does not need to be “installed”. You
simply click a link (from email or another web page) and it loads.
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HTML5 v Native: An Event Planner’s Primer
Copyright © 2014 – Pathable, Inc.- pathable.com
However, if the user wants to return to the page later without re-typing the
link (or re-opening the email with the link), they will have to manually
create a bookmark or add a link to their phone’s desktop. This can be a
multi-step process that may flummox the less advanced users.
Native is the “winner” in this category.
Signing In
Native
Requires manually typing
username / password
Click link
If your conference attendees need to sign in to your app (to retrieve
sessions selected during registration or online, for example), mobile web
apps are the clear winner.
Native apps don’t, and can’t, support automatic sign-in. The first time an
attendee launches a native app, they must enter a username and password
by hand to get access to their personal data. On the tiny keyboards that
most phones come with, and even the larger on-screen keyboards that
tablets sport, this is arduous and error-prone. You will get a significant
number of users who just “give up”. We’ve seen it time and again.
There is no way around this for a native app. Architecturally, they do not
support passing in credentials. However, most native apps will at least store
this information so it only need be entered once.
HTML5 web apps, on the other hand, can be launched from a link that can
include an “authentication token”, an encrypted string of characters that
securely and uniquely identify the attendee, and automatically signs them in
to their account.
Attendees can use personalized links from email that automatically signs
them in to their account, no entering complex passwords on the tiny phone
keyboard required.
Advantage HTML5.
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HTML5 v Native: An Event Planner’s Primer
Copyright © 2014 – Pathable, Inc.- pathable.com
Speed
Native
Tend to run faster
Native apps tend perform more quickly than HTML5 apps, because the
programming language they’re written in is more highly optimized for the
specific hardware they’re running on. Programmers will say it’s “closer to
the metal” (i.e., the code has fewer steps to go through before it is
speaking the bit-flipping language of the silicon chips that are the brains of
the device).
That said, modern mobile web browsers are becoming more and more
efficient at running JavaScript (the most common language used), and a
well-written mobile web app can be as fast as a common native app (and
faster than a poorly written one). Apple’s iPhone, in particular, has
implemented a technology called “Nitro” that pre-compiles JavaScript so
that it behaves more like native code.
Overall, native apps will tend to be peppier. However, a well-written HTML5
mobile web app can minimize this difference down to insignificance.
Offline Access
Native
Usually, but not always,
supports offline
Usually does not support
offline, but can. Pathable
does support offline.
Providing Internet wifi access in to conference and tradeshow attendees can
be expensive. Even when it’s been paid for, it may become overwhelmed if
thousands of attendees are all checking their schedule at once (e.g., when
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HTML5 v Native: An Event Planner’s Primer
Copyright © 2014 – Pathable, Inc.- pathable.com
an educational session block lets out). For this reason, giving conference
attendees access to your app data even when the Internet connection
is flaky or absent, is critical.
It used to be that if you wanted to guarantee that your conference
attendees would have access to the program even when no Internet access
was available, you had to “go native”. The web requires an Internet
connection, right?
Wrong! With the advent of the latest round of
HTML5 standards and browsers updates, web
apps have access to an “offline cache” that
allows them store the entire site and its data in
a local database for use when the Internet
goes away.
Not all HTML5 web apps take advantage
of this. It’s new and technically tricky to
implement. Pathable (www.pathable.com) is
one of the only mobile web apps to support
offline access.
Pro Tip: If your app does
support offline, be sure to
evaluate how the local
database updates itself with
new information.
Some apps will reload the
entire database each time
you open them, which can
take several minutes. When
you’re trying to find your
way to a session or hosted
buyer meeting, that can be
the difference between
being on time and being
late!
Note too that even some native apps don’t
support offline access! Just because the code
that runs the app is installed doesn’t mean the
database that holds the schedule and exhibit information is stored on the
phone. Be sure to ask!
Cost and Deploy Time
Native
Tends to be more
expensive
Tends to be cheaper
Because building a native app for an iPhone must be written in a different
programming language than the exact same native app running on an
Android device (Objective C vs Java), the cost of development for authoring
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HTML5 v Native: An Event Planner’s Primer
Copyright © 2014 – Pathable, Inc.- pathable.com
and maintaining separate application offerings for multiple platforms goes
up with the number of platforms supported. It costs twice as much to
develop native apps for iPhone and Android as it does either alone.
HTML5 however, runs exactly the same code on iPhone, iPad, Android,
Blackberry, Windows Phone and other major platforms. The cost of
development is profoundly lower. These cost savings are often passed to
the consumer (or pushed back into broader feature support).
In addition, when submitting to Apple’s store, there may be a several week
delay while Apple reviews and approves the app (Google’s store, called
“Google Play” does not review apps, so the process of releasing an Android
app can be much quicker than Apple.)
To deploy an HTML5 web app, on the other hand, the developer simply
enters the data for the app into their database and it’s available on the web.
When new features are added, a single change is available on all platforms
without extra effort.
As such, it can be less expensive to deploy an HTML5 web app than a native
app on multiple platforms.
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HTML5 v Native: An Event Planner’s Primer
Copyright © 2014 – Pathable, Inc.- pathable.com
Summary
Native
Installing
Launching
From iTunes App Store,
Google Play, Windows
Phone Store, etc.
No install required, just
click link or open URL
Tap desktop icon
Desktop icon requires
manual install.
Signing In
Requires manually typing Click link
username / password
Speed
Tend to run faster
Offline
Usually, but not always,
supports offline
Usually does not support
offline, but can. Pathable
does support offline.
Cost and Deploy
Time
Tends to be more
expensive
Tends to be cheaper
So, which one is better?
The bottom line is that a well-written HTML5 app will be “better’ than a
poorly written native app, and a well-written native app will be better than
a poorly written HTML5 web app.
From our experience, the only strong advantage native holds over mobile
web apps is that some people have become accustomed to installing an app
from the app store. Even if they don’t need to, they will still search for it
there and may become frustrated if they don’t find it. Honestly, that’s the
main reason Pathable is moving to support native as well as HTML5.
On the other side, Pathable and other mobile web app providers are able to
go from start to launch literally in hours, as opposed to the weeks it takes
to pull together and launch a native app. As a result, mobile web apps can
fit a budget that a native app can not.
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HTML5 v Native: An Event Planner’s Primer
Copyright © 2014 – Pathable, Inc.- pathable.com
Should you choose to offer both (and many do), be sure to evaluate the
HTML5 web app experience that your mobile app vendor is providing
carefully. Many native app producers offer an HTML5 web version that
comes off feeling like an afterthought, and may leave your BlackBerry or
other users who don’t have a native option feeling like second-class
citizens.
Pathable is the leading provider of desktop and mobile event apps, including
online community and business networking software for conferences,
tradeshows and events.
Contact:
www.pathable.com
866 809-0252
[email protected]
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HTML5 v Native: An Event Planner’s Primer
Copyright © 2014 – Pathable, Inc.- pathable.com