Archive: May, 2013

I’m not a fan of false dichotomies. Chief among them on the web is the dichotomy between documents and applications, or more broadly, “websites vs. web apps”:

Remember when we were all publishing documents on the web, but then there was that all-changing event and then we all started making web apps instead? No? Me neither. In fact, I have yet to hear a definition of what exactly constitutes a web app.

I’ve heard plenty of descriptions of web apps; there are many, many facets that could be used to describe a web app …but no hard’n’fast definitions.

One pithy observation is that “a website has an RSS feed; a web app has an API.” I like that. It’s cute. But it’s also entirely inaccurate. And it doesn’t actually help nail down what a web app actually is.

Like obscenity and brunch, web apps can be described but not defined.

I think that Jake gets close by describing sites as either “get stuff” (look stuff up) or “do stuff”. But even that distinction isn’t clear. Many sites morph from one into the other. Is Wikipedia a website up until the point that I start editing an article? Are Twitter and Pinterest websites while I’m browsing through them but then flip into being web apps the moment that I post something?

I think there’s a much more fundamental question here than simply “what’s the difference between a website and a web app?” That more fundamental question is…

Why?

Why do you want to make that distinction? What benefit do you gain by arbitrarily dividing the entire web into two classes?

I think this same fundamental question applies to the usage of the term “HTML5”. That term almost never means the fifth iteration of HTML. Instead it’s used to describe everything from CSS to WebGL. It fails as a descriptive term for the same reason that “web app” does: it fails to communicate the meaning intended by the person using the term. You might say “HTML5” and mean “requires JavaScript to work”, but I might hear “HTML5” and think you mean “has a short doctype.” I think the technical term for a word like this is “buzzword”: a word that is commonly used but without any shared understanding or agreement.

In the case of “web app”, I’m genuinely curious to find out why so many designers, developers, and product owners are so keen to use the label. Perhaps it’s simply fashion. Perhaps “website” just sounds old-fashioned, and “web app” lends your product a more up-to-date, zingy feeling on par with the native apps available from the carefully-curated walled gardens of app stores.

In his recent talk at Port 80, Jack Franklin points to one of the dangers of the web app/site artificial split:

We’re all building sites that people visit, do something, and leave. Differentiating websites vs. web apps is no good to anyone. A lot of people ignore new JavaScript tools, methods or approaches because those are just for “web apps.”

That’s a good point. A lot of tools, frameworks, and libraries pitch themselves as being intended for web apps even though they might be equally useful for good ol’-fashioned websites.

In my experience, there’s an all-too-common reason why designers, developers, and product owners are eager to self-identify as the builders of web apps. It gives them a “get out of jail free” card. All the best practices that they’d apply to websites get thrown by the wayside. Progressive enhancement? Accessibility? Semantic markup? “Oh, we’d love to that, but this is a web app, you see… that just doesn’t apply to us.”

I’m getting pretty fed up with it. I find myself grinding my teeth when I hear the term “web app” used without qualification.

We need a more inclusive term that covers both sites and apps on the web. I propose we use the word “thang.”

“Check out this web thang I’m working on.”

“Have you seen this great web thang?”

“What’s that?” “It’s a web thang.”

Now all I need is for someone to make a browser plugin (along the lines of the cloud-to-moon and cloud-to-butt plugins) to convert every instance of “website” or “web app” to “web thang.”

I occasionally get sent some devices for the Clearleft device lab (which reminds me: thank you to whoever at Blackberry sent over the “Dev Alpha B” Blackberry 10).

Last week, an interesting little device showed up.

I had no idea who sent it. Was it a gaming device ordered by Anna?

The packaging was all in Chinese. Perhaps some foreign hackers were attempting to infiltrate our network through some clever social engineering.

It turns out that Rich had ordered it, having heard about it from Chris Heathcote who mentioned the device during his UX London talk.

It’s an S18 Mini Pad. You can pick one up for about £30. For that price, as Chris pointed out, you could just use it as an alarm clock (and it does indeed have an alarm clock app). But it’s also a touchscreen device with WiFi and a web browser …a really good web browser: it comes with Chrome. It’s an Android 4 device.

It has all sorts of issues. The touchscreen is pretty crap, for example. But considering the price, it’s really quite remarkable.

We’ve got to the point where all the individual pieces—WiFi, touchscreen, web browser, operating system—can be thrown together into one device that can be sold for around the thirty quid mark. And this is without any phone company subsidies.

Crap as it is, this device really excites me. A cheap mobile web-enabled device …I find that so much more thrilling than any Apple keynote.

I have some dConstruct news for you. First and foremost, mark your calendar:

Tickets for dConstruct go on sale at 11am on Tuesday, May 21st.

That’s just eight days from now. In some previous years, tickets went very quickly. I don’t think we’ll see a repeat of those heady days of selling out within 24 hours this year, but it’s still worth grabbing your ticket nice and early. At £135+VAT, it’s a steal (as usual).

If you want to be all set next Tuesday, the Eventbrite page for tickets will be dconstruct2013.eventbrite.com. Speak, friend, and enter.

If you’re wavering about whether or not to come this year, dispel your doubts. Just look at how much people enjoyed last year’s dConstruct—it was truly awesome, as you can hear for yourself on the dConstruct archive. This year’s line-up continues the tradition of blowing minds with brilliance.

On the subject of this year’s line-up, it is now complete with the addition of Simone Rebaudengo who will share his tells of neurotic network-enabled toasters. He was a huge hit at this year’s UX London and it became clear to me that I had to have him for dConstruct. I mean, the theme is “Communicating With Machines”, for crying out loud!

I’ve also been rounding up the finest and brightest teachers for full-day workshops that will precede the conference. The workshop tickets also go on sale next Tuesday. A workshop costs £395+VAT and that includes a complementary ticket to the conference day as well. Your choices are:

• Seb: CreativeJS,
• Aaron: Planning Adaptive Interfaces, and
• Luke: Designing Mobile to Multi-Device Experiences.

(Speaking of workshops, if you fancy a full day of responsive design with me, I’m doing a workshop on a workshop right before Ampersand in June and you can grab a 20% discount before the end of this month—‘twould be lovely if you could join me.)

In case you can’t tell, I’m getting very excited indeed about this year’s dConstruct. It’s going to be a lot of fun! Hope to see you there.

The programme for this year’s Mobilism conference in Amsterdam looks hot, hot, hot! It will wrap up with that hottest of hot things: a hot topics panel. Hot!

By the way, there are still tickets available. I suggest you grab one if you haven’t already. It’s a great gathering but for some reason it’s not selling as well this year, which means this could be your last chance to attend.

I’ve really, really enjoyed the previous two Mobilisms, and I always get a kick out of moderating panels so I’m pretty chuffed about getting the chance to host a panel for the third year running.

The first year, the panel was made up of Mobile browser vendors (excluding Apple, of course). Last year, it was more of a mixed bag of vendors and developers. This year …well, we’ll see. I’ll assemble the panel over the course of the conference’s two days. I plan to choose the sassiest and most outspoken of speakers—the last thing you want on a panel is a collection of meek, media-trained company shills.

Mind you, Dan has managed to buy his way onto the panel through some kind of sponsorship deal, but I’m hoping he’ll be able to contribute something useful about Firefox OS.

Apart from that one preordained panelist, everything else is up in the air. To help me decide who to invite onto the panel, it would be really nice to have an idea of what kind of topics people want to have us discuss. Basically, what’s hot and what’s not.

So …got a burning question about mobile, the web, or the “mobile web” (whatever that means)? I want to hear it.

If you could leave a comment with your question, ‘twould be much appreciated.

Someone sent an email to Clearleft recently pointing out what they thought was a certain similarity between our website and the website for a company called Kent Web Host.

I can’t see it myself. But I can’t guarantee that we weren’t somehow unconsciously influenced by these guys.

Just to set the record straight, I gave them a call.

Update: a few points of clarification:

• Garry from Kent Web Host is totally cool with me publishing our conversation.
• I’m not publishing this out of any spirit of schadenfreude. I’m publishing it because it was a fun conversation and Garry handled the situation like a true gent.
• Garry is a really nice guy. If you want to say unkind things about him on Twitter when you’re linking to this, don’t: you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Last year’s dConstruct was amazing. I know I’m biased, but you don’t have to believe me: everyone agreed it was an amazing conference.

Personally, I had the time of my life. Literally. The one-two punch of Brighton SF and dConstruct was one of the best couple of days I’ve ever had in my life.

But the day after dConstruct 2012 I remember waking up and thinking “ah, shit …how am I ever going to top that?”

Well, clearly, I can’t. But I can still do my damnest to put together a fantastic line-up for dConstruct 2013 …so that’s what I’ve done:

• The funny and geeky Adam Buxton,
• The cyborg anthropologist Amber Case,
• Hacker and tinkerer Dan Williams,
• Security cyberpunk Keren Elazari,
• The future-friendly Luke Wroblewski,
• My favourite writer on the web, Maciej Cegłowski,
• The queen of CSS, Nicole Sullivan, and
• Friend to the robots, Sarah Angliss.

I think you’ll agree that’s not your typical conference line up. It’s going to be great! And it’s going to be a lot of fun. Trust me.

Trust is something I feel I’ve earned after last year’s tour-de-force. Last year’s line-up was pretty unusual too, but it worked superbly. Now I’ve got to make sure that I don’t squander the trust I earned.

So if you came to dConstruct last year, I don’t need to tell you why you should come back this year.

If you didn’t make it to last year’s dConstruct, you can make up for it this year. You don’t want to miss out two years in a row now, do you?

Tickets will go on sale in a few weeks time. I’ll announce the exact date soon. I’ll also be updating the information about the workshops we’ll be running this year.

And if you’re planning to come to Brighton for dConstruct, make sure to stick around for the weekend. The Brighton Digital Festival is happening again this September. That means a Maker Faire, meetups, hack events, and art shows all around town.

See you on the first Friday of September!