entitlement

I complain about blogger a lot for a guy who pays nothing for the service. I know that. The main thing about it that gets at me isn't really Blogger's fault. It's that the web page works poorly on the iPad. George W. Bush was fond of the phrase 'soft bigotry of low expectations'. Blogger didn't set out to make a web page that worked poorly. I guess they just lost sight of the fact that the web can be really good and let their preconceptions be their default.


John Gruber is one of many luminaries who enable this bigotry. I have blogged before about this post of his. I think my real objection is to his claim "Today, in 2013, even the best-crafted mobile web apps come nowhere near the quality of experience of the best native apps". The claim bothers me but I can't really disagree. I know the many technical limits of 2013-era web apps. My problem with Gruber's line is the leap many make by asserting that the technical limits of the browser are the same limits that separate the best web apps from the best native apps. This is not the case.

One non-technical problem with web apps is that it's difficult to charge money for the app. That's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that web apps have to come from somewhere.

I know many folks who have built a forge in their backyard, or at least dream of it. I know nobody who wants to do their own colonoscopy. The intrinsic joys of running an SMTP server seem closer to the colonoscopy and the joy of running a public facing web server is headed in the same direction.

I don't really want to run a web server. I don't want to maintain an SQL database or apply software updates or even deal with the e-commerce site of a web hosting provider. I don't even really want to hassle with the domain name system. If I just give Apple their $99 and send my apps their way, then I don't have to do any of that.

What I do want to do is write Javascript. I love it. I love the browser. The combination feels to me like the ultimate victory of the LISP machine. Apple, Google, Mozilla, Opera, Microsoft, and others have all actually done a lot for the world by rowing in more or less the same direction with this technology. As large as their differences have seemed, I think they are all more interoperable than were the LISP or UNIX machines and dialects of the '80s.

I have written apps with Cordova. I admire that project but I don't think of it as a cross-platform development tool. I think of it as a tenacious effort to keep the Javascript/DOM platform relevant. I admired Palm's WebOS more. I already feel sad about the pending failure of FirefoxOS. I like the web, I think it's important, but I love a good browser.

I wrote previously about developing and deploying an HTML5 web audio app using Kiosk Pro on iOS.

I would like to share that serverless app with you but the the logistics are frustrating. Blogger won't host the files. Dropbox won't serve up a web app. I found a LifeHacker post from last year about serving web apps out of Google Drive. I uploaded a simple web app I built for my kids to my Google Drive account. The Google Drive iOS app doesn't seem to let me make a folder public. Google themselves provide some notes on this topic, though their notes do not work on iOS. They work a little better whenever you can find a link that lets you opt-out of 'mobile view'.

I'll keep trying. If I can figure out a way to anonymously serve a couple of files for less than the cost of my lifetime AdSense earnings to date (about seven dollars) then I'll share some web apps.

I wrote this post in 'blogsy' for iOS on my iPad. Five bucks. It's better than the free Blogger app. It supports hyperlinks -- a critical feature that somehow didn't fit the Blogger app view of the world. I think it's better also than the Blogger web interface. I think the blogsy people just cared more. I'm about to publish but I have some trepidation. Blogsy looks like it may attach 'Posted with Blogsy' to the bottom of the post. It's a waste of five dollars if that is the case.

Posted with Blogsy