The Android platform does a good job of supporting applications. There are many tools for application developers to get their apps on people's phones, make the applications easy to find, and manage the running applications. The market is a great way for users to find new applications; users have the application dock where they can launch the application; the platform will allow users to run multiple apps at the same time with the user being able to switch between the apps.
Why doesn't Android have the same support for web apps? Google has many times stated that they prefer people to develop web applications. Google spends a lot of their development time on mobile web apps. So why does the Android support applications better than web applications. Why as a developer can't I put my web app into the market? Why can't the users launch web apps "downloaded" from the market in their application dock? The app could open the browser and the user would be directed to the entry of the application. With more support for web apps on a Google platform, the gap between an Android application and a web app would be narrowed a great deal. It seems that many developers are creating a shell app that hosts their mobile site. This works, but if there needs to be changes in the shell app (i.e. new authentication) then they have to have users update the shell app instead of doing all development on the web side. It seems with all of Google's push for web apps, they could have better support on Android to support web apps. Google could also add better support by having the Google search engine index mobile web apps. Web app developers could add a meta tag indicating the support for mobile web. Google could then index this content and provide a search for mobile apps within the regular Google search. This would allow web developers to write an app on the web and not have to submit their app to each different phone marketplace. Users would be able to search and find web apps that were not easy to find before. It could be the market place for all phones. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en.
