Mozilla

Weekend Roundup: Fiddle Favorites

“Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday.”

-Unknown Author

With the first quarter of 2012 now just about in the books, it is tempting to take a minute and reflect on the events that have taken place so far this year. Unfortunately for us, trying to wrap our head around all the enormous leaps and near light-speed developments that have gotten us where we are today would likely make our heads literally explode and in turn probably put a damper on our productivity today. That’s why instead we’ll stick to what we always do, and keep our fond reminiscing to just the week past. Here are some of the stories we loved this week.

  • If you haven’t seen Google’s Mobile Playbook that was released this week, drop everything (unless you’re reading this while holding a small child) and go read it now. Amazing information, awesome ideas, and really fantastic advice. Of course once you finish reading it, make sure to come back to your favorite mobile web blog (ahem) for more cool stuff.
  • Remember that guy you saw on the subway who was smelling his phone? Well, it turns out he might not actually be crazy.

That’s all for now everyone, time to put April in the books and coast on into May. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for new developments from us here t FiddleFly, as well as in the world of mobile. We’ll be doing the same so make sure to follow and find us on Twitter @fiddlefly , Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.


Weekend Roundup: Fiddle Favorites

“I’ve been thinking Hobbes –”
“On a weekend?”
“Well, it wasn’t on purpose…” ~ Calvin & Hobbes

Ah the weekend is upon us and we all know what that means; time to look back at some of our favorite happenings from the past week. It was a big week for us here at FiddleFly as we launched our new site with all new content and brand new features, and while we were busy churning out great things, big stories were breaking all over the mobile web industry. Check them out:

So enjoy your weekends fiddle followers. Whether you spend it relaxing at home or building a rocket ship in your garage, just make sure to remember to follow us on Twitter @fiddlefly and check us out on Facebook (there are rumors of a new timeline wink wink) and Google+.

The native app is dead…well almost anyway.

It was in 1899 that Charles H. Duell, Commisioner of the US Patent Department famously said, “Everything that can be invented, has been invented.”

Things didn’t shake out exactly as Mr. Duell predicted and for the better part of the century or so since, technology has evolved faster than just about anything on Earth. Until very recently, technological evolution has always tended to be a very tangible thing. Phones shed their cords and grew smaller and smaller, televisions became thinner and their pictures brightened, music went from vinyl to tape to disk. Now that we’ve entered the mobile era, technological leaps may not be quite so visible, but for those of us looking, they are still plain to see.

While we know the mobile web is the wave of the future, it’s also becoming more and more clear that mobile web apps are soon going to render native apps obsolete. This notion is one that has been circling the web development community for years now, and it seems the final push is already underway. Now that Adobe has ceased production of Flash for mobile devices (a move that, unsurprisingly, Steve Jobs made several years earlier for Apple) and switched to exclusively focusing on HTML5, the writing is all but on the wall for native apps.

While Apple’s App Store is still a money-making juggernaut, mobile users are beginning to realize that web apps are far more user friendly as they offer accessibility across devices, smoother transitions between apps, and allow for unlimited usage without clogging up memory.

App developers have already begun to lean heavily towards developing mobile web apps versus native apps as it is far more cost effective to build a single model of their app that works across all HTML5 devices as opposed to building individual models for different platforms. Facebook recently launched its new HTML5 platform and companies like Mozilla are launching large-scale web app development efforts in order spread the mobile web app to a larger market.

So, are native apps officially dead? Well, not quite yet, but as the wave of mobile web users spreads across the globe, so too will the web apps they use.

Let us know what you think about the web app debate and make sure to follow us on Twitter @fiddlefly as well as checking us out on Facebook.

 Scroll to top