But this is one of the things that I think will disappear over time. What parts of the user experience are bad for you? Accessibility? Raw speed? Native transitions?
It's entirely possible to write a completely native app with terrible user experience. Right now making an app with great UX is hard, but I don't think it gets easier by solving it separately for different platforms, I think it's easier to build giants to stand on by focusing on one platform.
Also, people talk about UX a lot, but half of the most successful apps out there have really basic UX, and are basically websites to start with.
- Not able to use OS widgets. They might look similar with lots of CSS effort, but we stay at the L, instead of L&F
- PWAs are a step in the right direction, yet ServiceWorkers feel like a hack for what native applications get for free
- As a example, writing an application that can seamless transition between mobile and desktop platforms, like Microsoft's Project Rome.
Many successful apps with lousy UX are successful, because they are the only way to access certain services.
As a consumer I only use web apps when there is no way around it.
As a developer I don't get to be picky about which projects I get to work on, but I surely make my point of view every time customers ask for something that can only be provided by proper OS integration.
I'm not sure what this means... You mean like the propensity of web apps to open non-native modals?
> - Sluggishness
This really depends on what kind of blended app you're using. Cordova (PhoneGap) and all the webview-based things are pretty terrible for this, but newcomers (react-native, nativescript) have been doing much better with the bring-your-own-js-engine-and-render-on-separate-thread approach.
> - Not able to use OS widgets
This is completely overcome-able with sustained effort, and appropriate sharing. Flutter literally decided to draw every single pixel on the screen and was able to do it, CSS styling is easier in comparison.
Also, this isn't a problem for the hybrid frameworks like react-native or nativescript, they do use native widgets, but you lay them out, style them, and perform interactions with HTML/CSS/JS mostly, which is preferable to trying to figure out each platforms layout quirks.
> - PWAs are a step in the right direction, ...
Yeah I think I wasn't clear enough with what I wrote -- I don't mean I want the web itself to become the mobile platform, I just mean I like approaches like nativescript and react-native/vue-native much more than learning ios and android separately, and think the HTML/CSS/JS paradigm is better than those things individually.
ServiceWorkers are the only solution if you are talking about a purely web app (webview) -- you can actually shim and use native stuff if you want, OR serviceworkers, or whatever else if you take the hybrid approach, while maintaining html/css/js for most interactivity.
> I'm not sure what this means... You mean like the propensity of web apps to open non-native modals?
There is a reason why it is called Look and Feel, not just Look.
You can make them Look as close as possible with looks of CSS work, or even canvas drawing, but they don't Feel like native widgets.
> This is completely overcome-able with sustained effort, and appropriate sharing. Flutter literally decided to draw every single pixel on the screen and was able to do it, CSS styling is easier in comparison.
Drawing pixels is only half way there to how native widgets interact between each other, or even basic stuff like dragging content between them, in different applications.
If we take the web part of it, on native rendering side, HTML/CSS are not as powerful as native rendering. For example the visual layer in Windows 10, animations engine in iOS and Android.
HTML/CSS is kind of ok, if one only cares about CRUD applications.
It's entirely possible to write a completely native app with terrible user experience. Right now making an app with great UX is hard, but I don't think it gets easier by solving it separately for different platforms, I think it's easier to build giants to stand on by focusing on one platform.
Also, people talk about UX a lot, but half of the most successful apps out there have really basic UX, and are basically websites to start with.