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0 pointsrobocat8y ago0 comments

Of course it is Microsoft's fault. They could have chosen to put resources into making those projects work better on Windows Phone.

Microsoft made a bet on Xamarin instead.

Also you had to use their proprietary touch events in the webview browser, which (a) was buggy, (b) had little information about how to use it in practice, and (c) the webview was a branch of IE11 specific to Windows Phone. I think for Update 1 the webview supported the Apple touch event API but it was broken (disappeared in update 2).

The dumbest thing is that supporting Cordova properly would have immediately got them a whole heap of lesser known apps without having to give money directly to developers. Money multiplier investments are smart.

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4 comments · 3 top-level

saagarjha8y ago· 1 in thread

> Of course it is Microsoft's fault.

What? This makes no sense; why would Microsoft be at fault for supporting a platform that makes demonstrably poorer apps? Doing that would just be shooting themselves in the foot. Are Apple and Google at fault for not making Cordova work well on their mobile platforms?

robocatOP8y ago

> why would Microsoft be at fault for supporting a platform that makes demonstrably poorer apps?

I have experience developing an app using a WebView, and I agree it is poor. However, it is a good compromise if:

- a team of one that has experience with HTML5. It is possible to develop an app for Apple, Google, and Windows Phone this way.

- a web first, mobile second app

- an app that is more about presenting information than entering data.

> Are Apple and Google at fault for not making Cordova work well on their mobile platforms?

Irrelevant: they are the incumbents not the chasers.

traspler8y ago

As far as I can remember they supported Pointer Events but not Touch Events. It was only in a few cases where this mattered to me but there it was quite a pain.

MS really tried to get Cordova on Windows Phone. They had a dedicated blog and dedicated developers who were quite active for a while and laid a lot of the groundwork and developed the necessary workarounds and tutorials but then they suddenly stopped and abandoned it completely. Quite a while before Windows Phone was discontinued.

I wouldn't phrase it the way you have. Some choices they made were really problematic for Cordova and no help and effort they put into it could overcome them.

pavlov8y ago

Having more Cordova crap on the Windows Phone app store wouldn’t have made a difference. There was no shortage of lesser known apps on Windows Phone, and enabling even more webview junk would have made the problem worse.

Microsoft spent a lot of money on initiatives that got unknown developers to flood the platform with apps of dubious quality. All along the real app problem they had was the lack of top 20 apps, everything from YouTube to Snapchat to Instagram to Uber.

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