Interesting article. Comments?

It has been my experience that iOS Mobile Safari is the most reliable mobile browser overall from the HTML5 standpoint. Android's built-in browser and Mobile Chrome are both pretty solid, but have occasional quirks, some more annoying than others. Of course there were a few things that worked better in Android than iOS as well, but this is one of the areas where Android fragmentation works heavily against it. I can't recall more than a couple of times where some issue would be only reproducible on iPhone 5 vs iPhone 4/4S with the same version of iOS (don't remember the exact details, just that it was a combination of both h/w & s/w), but on Android it's more common. It doesn't help that there are many variants of the same Android version dressed in manufacturer's "skin". For example, there's Android 4.2.2, but Samsung's version of it is not the same as HTC's and so on.

I have no personal experience with the Samsung's Galaxy S4 that the article is talking about. All I can say is that on my S4 Chrome is the only browser, the built-in browser is not available. As far as comparing Android flagships and iPhone 5 to the Z10: Z10 blows these away as far as HTML5 compliance goes, assuming you have the patience to wait for the Z10 to be done processing. Yes, the pure HTML5 test suite scores are higher, but the performance lags noticeably (in my limited experience).

 

vf - interesting post, dmapr - good info in your reply.

So some take-away advice is... set the Chrome browser as default?

 

Thanks very much for the detailed explanation.

Question: What are some of the things that worked better in Android? Anything that a mere mortal would recognize/understand?

 

While on the topic of web-browsers, did Android remove Flash support in some recent releases? I noticed the new Android phone I got is not having Flash installed by default on it, and it doesn't seem to be on the Play store anymore. I had to install an archived version from Adobe's website. I hear HTML5 is the way of the future, but there's still alot of content that requires it today, so it's still nice to have.

 

While I had both browsers (Galaxy Nexus) Chrome was my go to, and only if the page failed to load/process correctly I'd fall back to the built-in one. I remember last year having issues signing into hotel wifi using Chrome (of course it has been updated since then). But I never set the Chrome as default, I always allowed the OS to prompt me.

I remember fixed header had more issues in iOS than Android. You can see a demo (which will work perfectly on both) here: jQuery Mobile Framework - Fixed Toolbars. In real-life application the iOS was not as reliable in rendering it correctly.

Yes, I think ICS was the last version with Flash out of the box. Considering the combined market share of Android and iOS you probably have to give in and live in a flash-less mobile world

 

My first smartphone was the the original iPhone. I remember how awesome Mobile Safari was. I've had every iPhone since. I did use Android for a while as well. I just remember how un-impressed I was with Android web browsing.

Now, in general, I believe that each will have their pros and cons. I've seen that as I'm sure many have. So for me, it comes down to which has the most pros and go from there. For me, iPhone/iOS/Mobile Safari is getting me by perfectly fine.

I did find that article interesting as well. It reminds of the constant surveys and polls that constantly contradict one another. One says iPhone is ruling the world....others say its Android....ummm, ok? LOL.

I took that as, in terms of revenue, iPhone, in terms of raw specs, tier one Android devices, in terms of market share...Android (only because of all the variants). Not everyone will know those details and would be totally and understandable confused by those polls and surveys.

Ok, I'm done with my random rambling. LOL

 

Thanks, interestingly of all the websites I regularly visit only CNET had a fixed header. Of course maybe the other sites do not use it. Can you please check if any of the following show fixed header on an Android?

CNN
BBC
USA Today
BGR
AppleInsider
All Things D

Thanks much.

 

No header, but do any of these sites use jQuery Mobile?

 

How would I know?

 

Well, if you wouldn't, then you wouldn't learn anything by checking the presence or absence of the header

 

Keeping in mind that I am definitely a mere mortal, perhaps you could explain what I need to do so I can learn something?

As opposed to being a smart a$$ about it.




Sent From My iPhone 5 Using Tapatalk

 

Well, that can't be helped But basically I gave you a link to a demo page hosted by jQuery Mobile, a Javascript framework widely used by mobile web applications to illustrate what their fixed header looks like. I don't have a link to a page that shows the problem, but as I recall we have seen cases when that header would jump around instead of staying put. You would have to find a site that a) is built using jQuery Mobile, b) uses fixed headers and c) runs into the same problem to learn something about it, assuming such a combination of factors does exist. For example, we opted to not use the fixed headers instead

 

BTW, this is the wrong answer to give when your wife when she is yelling at you and asking why her old phone played videos fine and her new one doesnt

 

The trick for me was to make sure her old phone didn't play videos either

 

Interesting. I've heard of "backwards compatibility" before, but never "backwards incompatibility". I think you're onto something new there

 

No, you just looked at it from the wrong angle. You have to be thinking from the previous phone standpoint, then it's called "forward compatibility" :-D

Sent from my GT-I9505G using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

My first GSM phone in 1998 didn't support Flash either, my God, they were genius to be thinking that far ahead :biggrin:

 

But seriously, you can't expect backwards compatibility to go on forever. Things get dropped all the time. Pretty much can't play old DOS games anymore. I have scanners that won't work with newer versions of Windows because there are no drivers and so on.

Almost all video providers have an option of making videos available in H264 format. All the sites have to do is use it
BTW, wasn't it Adobe themselves who dropped the flash for Android development?

 

I'm all for moving forward, and I'm good with dropping Flash in favor or HTML5, but since about 20% of websites are still using Flash, it's in my opinion, still a little too premature to move on just yet. From my point of view, I don't see any disadvantage of having installed on my phone so it's available when I need it. It's a small piece of free software.

Google is very HTML5 friendly (Chrome, cloud, etc.) and I would guess probably had a hand in getting Adobe's Flash out of their Play store. I can't really see any reason favorable to Adobe that would make them decide to remove it?

 

You answered your own question. They no longer have to maintain it, and they don't make any money on it. They have to maintain it on several desktop platforms already, but they only get paid once, for creation of the content.

 

Good point, no sense in Adobe wasting more time/money on something thats on the way out.

Is there any reason why me, as an end user, shouldn't have Flash installed on my phone?

 

None that I'm aware of. Just grab the archived copy off Adobe and enjoy

 

Many interesting articles. My take on it can be broken down into 3 areas:

1-"High Level": Technology Drivers (Adobe, Apple, Google)

Adobe created Flash back in the 90's and altho it's proprietary and can be considered insecure/buggy/resource hog, etc, it's still managed to reign in the internet in the multimedia area (video, games) for some time. Apple and Google are now focused on HTML5 and browser/cloud based technology, and away from Flash. Adobe tried to hold on, but apparently finally embraced the fact that Flash is being forced out, and jumped head-first into HTML5 in order to stay relevant in the internet multi-media area.

2-"Mid Level": Developers

The developers who are behind driving the content (games, videos, etc.) follow the direction of the "high level" technology drivers, and are sometimes caught between the incoming and outgoing technologies. HTML5 is bound to replace Flash in the future as the prime way to deliver graphic media, however as HTML5 is still relatively new, it's not as "mature" as Flash, meaning tools/methods/debugging may be lacking and client-side support may not be lacking as well (ie: people using old browsers without HTML5 support, etc.). As developers need to get products to market TODAY to make money, they need to do what works NOW, which means a large amount of content is still generated in Flash, or HTML5 and Flash in parallel.

3-"Low Level": End-Users

The end-users, the billions of people with internet-enabled devices, mostly don't know or care about the technologies, they are just interested to see the content on their device, ie: "it just works". To have Flash installed on the end-users device would help in that sense, as it enables more types of content to be played ("backwards compatible"), just as having updated browsers capable of HTML5 would help as well ("forward compatible").

The crux of the original article of this thread as a comparison of HTML5 in different mobile web-browsers:

However it's not mentioned how many mobile apps/games/videos are actually run inside of the HTML5 browser? Flash is still dominant in this area. Most developers would prefer to build a cross-platform app only once in HTML5, but complain about lack of tools, poor graphics and lack of an official standard. HTML5 will not actually be an official standard until soonest 2015-2016!
Plan 2014

So benchmarking of HTML5 performance is interesting, but when put into the context and relevancy of "overall user experience" I am not sure it really plays a very big role at the moment. But I have no doubt it will going forward, and I'm sure browsers will catch up with it as it does. Apple has shunned Flash since 2007, so I am sure they have invested heavily into a good HTML5 browser from early on.

 

As a matter of fact, Apple, Google & Blackberry all use WebKit-based browsers, so the base support is nearly identical. But the devil is in the details. Web applications are usually very CSS-heavy, and processing CSS takes time. Android seems to speed that up some by "cheating" on heavy calculations. iOS used their speediest engine in the Mobile Safari, but homescreen bookmarks got non-accelerated processing and so on.