Fwd: Changing the Social Contract of the Web

Surely the end user doesn't choose to use the Web or not choose to use the Web, the user chooses a service and the service provider chooses one or more means of providing the service. If Web technologies fulfil their objectives, they will use them. Presumably lots of native apps use Web technologies even if they don't use embedded browser for user experience, since they may well use HTTP to fetch content and so on. 

I'm not sure that I understand that any user would choose one app over another just because it was 100% Web inside. Though the fact that it can be reached from any device anywhere providing there is a Web browser and connectivity might be a compelling reason for choosing one product over another.

So it seems to me that "closing the gap" is about increasing the amount of Web technology that is usable in composing a service, preferably to the point where a significant number of use cases is filled by use of Web (and therefore cross platform) technology alone. As you point out specific uses of that technology in specific deployments may push to the background some things that are prominent in browsers, like unrestricted navigation by URL, linking, search and so on.

As to what a Web technology is, well, answering that may be the same question as "What is the Web?" ... I suppose a related question is the relationship between Web technologies and Cross Platform technologies. Web technologies are platform neutral and so are cross platform? Cross platform technologies are not necessarily Web technologies, though, are they?

> One action point could be : documenting the user experience we are tying to enable when we talk about closing the gap?

Yes, a good point. A Web technology doesn't have to have a direct user experience component, or does it? Can one imagine a headless Web app, like a file sync daemon being composed only of Web technologies - and would that be a Web app even if it was? 

On User Experience, I guess that a motivation for making native apps used to be that you'd like the user experience to harmonise with the look and feel of the device. Increasingly though, you'd like the user experience across devices to be similar, as users are likely to experience your service on more than one device. It's a source of considerable frustration to me that a well known music service and a prominent chat/voice service have completely different interfaces on the various devices I use them across. 

Cheers
Jo



On 13 Mar 2013, at 18:43, "Appelquist Daniel (UK)" <Daniel.Appelquist@telefonica.com> wrote:

> On 13 Mar 2013, at 15:55, "Jo Rabin" <jo@linguafranca.org> wrote:
> 
>> Catching up belatedly on this interesting thread …
>> 
>> … I'm just not clear what Social Contract is being broken? 
> 
> I didn't say broken. I said changed. "Social contact" is perhaps a bit strong but I think we are in the process of changing something about how people perceive the web - what the web is - and we need to be clear on this. 
> 
>> 
>> Not long ago a  PC was a device that you used to do Web browsing. In some sense the notion of PC and browsing were intertwined. 
>> 
>> Having observed that use of the Web doesn't require a PC, if we're now transitioning to an understanding that use of the Web doesn't require a browser, does that matter? 
> 
> I think it does. I think there is a value to being able to say "this is the Web" and "this is not the Web" and explain why. I think this helps answer the question: "If a webapp behaves much the same as a native app then why should I prefer one over the other? Why should I change my behavior? Why should I choose the Web?" As an example, Linkability has often been touted as one of those reasons, but if you pull a webapp out of the browser you lose some aspects of linkability (or at lease you do with current implementations).
> 
> One action point could be : documenting the user experience we are tying to enable when we talk about closing the gap?
> 
> Dan
> 
>> Am I completely missing the point?
>> 
>> Jo
>> 
>> 
>> On 13 Mar 2013, at 13:47, Marcos Caceres <w3c@marcosc.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Wednesday, 13 March 2013 at 11:32, Appelquist Daniel (UK) wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi folks (and/or mobile Web fans as the case may be) -
>>>> 
>>>> One of the questions that has crossed my mind as I've been reading the conversations on this thread is : how do people think about using the Web as opposed to using apps, and does "closing the gap" between the Web and apps necessitate changing those perceptions? Indeed, are those perceptions (which have built up after a decade of usage) already changing under our feet?
>>> I've been personally viewing "closing the gap" more on the side of capabilities, tooling, and performance.  
>>>> The "social contract" of the Web is that you open your browser, type a URL into the address bar (or select a bookmark or similar) and away you go interacting with some content or service provider. When I go to slashdot.org (http://slashdot.org) I see a page of articles and I'm able to read them and otherwise interact with the content – leave comments, troll,
>>> 
>>> how did I know that was you!  
>>>> etc… I can do things from the browser chrome (e.g. bookmarking) that I generally understand are not to do with the Web site but with my browser.  
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Also, a fundamental difference is opening many many tabs. Essentially, these views are discardable except in some particular cases where it can be destructive (e.g., two compose windows editing the same email on GMail… it's happened to me a few times). but I generally don't go hunting for open tabs like I go hunting for open applications: if I want to "open gmail", I just http://gmail.com… be damned if it's already open in another tab or window.  
>>> 
>>> This is fundamental difference for me, at least. On Desktop, I can only open one app… but in a browsers, I have like a million tabs open by the end of the day (mostly pointing at Github tab, a bunch at twitter, and random emails from the W3C archive etc.).  
>>>> When I go to Slashdot..org on an (IOS) mobile device however, I am asked if I want the "new mobile" experience.
>>> 
>>>> If I select "yes" I get a page that starts to act more like an app – for instance, pulling the page down refreshes the content, mirroring the gesture-driven UI of native apps. I'm also prompted to add a bookmark to "my home screen." If I do this, I get an icon sitting next to my other apps with no visual indication that this is a bookmark to the Web.  
>>> 
>>> Yes, same happens on audible.com. I'm still not used to this kind of approach, but don't dislike it: I just wish it was more "responsive-design"…ish…. in the "one web sense".   
>>>> If I tap it, it comes up in its own chromeless web view (possibly with different security context – no way of knowing), apparently as an app but actually a webapp. I can't get access to the URL bar from this Web view, nor can I bookmark or do other functions normally available from the browser chrome – the experience is totally constrained to what the webapp is doing in the web view.
>>> 
>>> Yes, this is bit of a shift. I think this model still needs some tweaking.     
>>>> So this is one example of how a webapp manifests on mobile – not a hybrid app (which I think is defined by use of a packaging tool to package a webapp inside a native shell) but a fully mobile webapp that needs nothing other than the browser to function, but none-the-less manifests as a native app. There are many other nuances that you could go into and obviously this only describes the IOS experience.
>>> 
>>> This also translates a bit to FireFox OS.   
>>>> My point is : this may be the Web but not as we know it. The kind of user experience described above changes the user impression of what the Web is – it changes the social contract of the Web.  
>>> 
>>> I don't know if it does or not. For me, it's just another thing the Web affords you to do (currently through proprietary extensions).  
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --  
>>> Marcos Caceres
>>> http://datadriven.com.au
>>

Received on Wednesday, 13 March 2013 20:10:38 UTC