It seems like there are a jillion articles floating around regarding the subject of native apps versus HTML5 apps. The problem is most of them end up being entirely too vague and generally end in a ymmv recommendation. Having spent a bunch of time reading the same advice over and over often tainted by the same bias I realized there really is an answer to the question, but just not a one size fits all answer. In order to answer the question in a useful way for my own endeavors I will have to break it down into functional areas including hybridization in order to truly come up with a practical resolution of this very commercial question.

Currently I have 5 commercial app concepts and 1 customer project in the pipeline. In this series of posts I will build functional modules and evaluate their performance, appearance and development cost in a way that will help me make cost-benefit decisions going forward. I do not expect this undertaking to answer all of the questions others may have, but I think I can share with you some specific metrics that I need to know about various HTML5 functionality and how it stacks up against the more costly and complicated development of native apps in a commercial versus custom project environment.

Of course I want to hear that HTML5 is close enough to use as much as possible. It is far more rapid and inexpensive, but is it good enough for the expectations of users? I hope this will be as informative as I expect.