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Comment by yesimahuman | Hacker News Reader

I'm honestly not sure which word to be using, hybrid or native? I don't like hybrid because once the app is shipped, it's a native app and the user hopefully won't care or know which is which. Just because it's using one level higher of abstraction (i.e. only the web view for now), doesn't mean it's not a native app.

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Hybrid is the generally agreed upon term for running a local app in a webview. A native HTML5 app would be something like a Win8 app using WinJS where HTML5 is a fully supported runtime.

I'd say you are for developing "Hybrid apps that look and feel completely native"

You might not like "hybrid" but it is, by definition, what you've built.

Agreed. We are tweaking the terms around.

In my book 'native' isn't clear cut but a mixture of 'able to interact with the operating system / hardware and not running through an extra virtual machine layer'. I can't quite reconcile that with JavaScript. I did look in the docs but they don't make much further mention of it.

JS compiles at runtime (or JIT), C++ compiles at build time. What's the big difference? Real hackers code nothing but ASM.

I'm not saying one is better than the other.

But I would say the main difference is OS APIs. Ability to manage memory, interact with filesystem objects etc.

That's one of the main reason for using web apps. I can trust them totally, because they're so sandboxed! They can't even read or write to filesystems!

But we as devs do care.

What do you recommend then? I'm happy to change it. I'm just not sure "hybrid" is clear that this is for building cordova/phonegap style apps, not for building mobile websites.

I don't understand where there is confusion:

mobile website = run in mobile safari, assets loaded over http

hybrid app = run in a webview, most assets stored locally, some data optionally loaded over http

native app = written in the officially supported language of the platform

Well, what was Facebook back when it used HTML5 in the news feed? The lines are blurring quite a bit. Just because you are abstracting one part of the app to the browser runtime (that can still easily access the native layer) doesn't change the fact that you are shipping a native binary at the end of the day. We have decided to go with Hybrid since it is causing confusion, but I disagree it's so cut and dry.

A quick perusal of the comments here makes me think that the issue is more cut and dried than you'd like it to be.

What _should_ the terms mean is a very different question than what _do_ the terms mean.

As far as end users are concerned there are only two categories: native and mobile websites (though they're more likely to describe them as "apps" and "websites"). Hybrid is a term used by developers to communicate a particular technology stack, it is a subset of end-user native.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. which is why we are making the change. I'm merely throwing out the other question because I find it interesting.

You could use a phrase instead of a word: "HTML5 bundled as native"

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