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Comment by no_butterscotch | Hacker News Reader

> our wrapper is pure native code. We cold start to a native view and boot the web app in the background. Our throughout & latency to native APIs is substantially faster without the extra bridge hops into and out of the RN JavaScript VM. We managed the original architecture swap from RN -> true native wrapper

Does this mean you boot the web app in a native WebView in the background (not visible), while showing a [splash?] screen until the web-app sends a signal from the web-view to java (or swift?) that it's ready?

Or have you started to build out native-views too? eg. Splash screen, some other super top level screens, etc?

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> Does this mean you boot the web app in a native WebView in the background (not visible), while showing a [splash?] screen until the web-app sends a signal from the web-view to java (or swift?) that it's ready?

Yeah, that's what the RN codebase did, and for our initial switch over to native, we did the same thing there too.

These days we launch into a native "Home tab" view that lists all the pages in the workspace, as well as recently edited pages. Our philosophy is to progressively convert views to native, working from the outside in towards the editor. Soon we'll be launching a beta for native-ifying another of our top-level tabs.

Cool, do you try to make it a seamless transition to native with the web views matching styles, etc.? Or do users know which sections are native versus not based on appearance or interactivity (slower)?

I occassionally use the Notion Android app - and you can feel the difference in the native interface and the webview in this case. But only due to the interactivity - appearance is similar and cohesive.

My experience wasn't good before the introduction of the native home tab - I experienced high loading times right on opening the app and degraded usability - which made me quit from that page most of the time. Opening a page from the home tab now still has delay associated and the transition is not yet seamless (for me - I get a blank screen and then the page starts to load). But the home tab helps significantly improve the overall experience as the initial wait time is no longer present. Like mentioned the experience is improving - and I'm looking forward to the beta with more native interfaces!

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