Why Mobile Web Apps Should Stop Trying to Act Like Native Apps

I love this piece by Craig Villamor:

If you’ve decided to deliver your app via the Web, you should embrace the capabilities and constraints of the Web. Don’t spend time and resources making a pretender app, spend that time making a great app that works on the Web.

Villamor cites Bagcheck as an example of a mobile web app that embraces its webbiness and doesn’t pretend to be a native iPhone app. I’d cite 37signals’s mobile version of Basecamp as another. Basecamp maybe veers closer to the pretending-to-be-a-native-app line, but it doesn’t cross it. I like the mobile version of Basecamp more than the “full” version.

(Via Faruk Ateş.)

★ Monday, 20 June 2011