Tim Bray on ‘Web’ vs. ‘Native’ Apps

Tim Bray:

I’m pedantic enough to be a little irritated by the common “Web vs Native” usage. They’re all Web apps, and this argument is really about client platforms; no more, no less.

That’s not the thrust of his piece, but it’s a good aside. I’ve made a similar argument in the past, that we should perhaps use “web app” to mean any app that is built around HTTP communication, and “browser app” to mean a kind of web app written in HTML/CSS/JavaScript which runs in a web browser. Things like iOS and Android Twitter clients are web apps, in my mind, they’re just written using platform-native toolkits.

★ Wednesday, 15 June 2011