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I think we've lost focus here. Web pages as apps are silly, but there are just things you can't do from a web page on a mobile phone, like interface with the camera, GPS, compass, local caching, etc... That's where apps come in (or should).


The only reason you can't do that from the web is because nobody's build the APIs yet. You can certainly do it from the web once they are available, and they are about to be:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI


you can't do from a web page on a mobile phone, like interface with the

camera Not yet.

GPS Geolocation: http://dev.w3.org/geo/api/spec-source.html

compass Slightly related, gyroscopes & device orientation http://slides.html5rocks.com/#slide-orientation

local caching Loads of ways to locally cache things: http://slides.html5rocks.com/#offline-storage-title

2½ out of 4. Not bad


A Qualcomm tech showed me a picture taken from the web browser in android. Said should be out in a year


PhoneGap exposes those features to JavaScript through Device APIs.


Lol, was about to mention PhoneGap.


These are all excellent points. I'm sure we'll get there, but there's going to be major differences in browser compatibility for a long time (3+ years, I think).

I've been using PhoneGap for a while now. It'd be really cool if similar API's were available without the native wrapper.

BTW, the browser caching link is helpful, but I experienced some limitations with what's currently available... http://zikkir.net/tech/102558


You can use an application to enable web apps to get access to images from the iPhone camera:

http://picupapp.com/




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