hymanroth

Assuming a mobile service needs to be launched in 6 months time, does it make sense to go straight to HTML5? Will the market be ready?

The recent release of the first version of JQuery mobile looks promising, for example.

There is a huge temptation to bypass native apps altogether (even with tools like PhoneGap). Not only does one avoid the app approval process, but, just like having to download plugins causes friction for desktop websites, giving users the opportunity to directly interact with a mobile-specific site as if it were a native app sounds like a big win all round.

I've been playing with Chrome recently, and have decided to use it as my main browser for a week or so.

But I've noticed an apparently subtle behavior: the back button takes you back to the previous website you visited, not the previous page. This makes it practically useless for navigation.

After a quick search, it appears that most people consider this a bug - but it could be nothing of the sort.

As anyone who designs (no refresh) web apps can tell you, the back button is their worst enemy. People instinctively use it for navigation, but in a web app, all it does it take you out of the app.

By emulating this behavior on page-based websites, where the back button now essentially takes you 'out of' the web site, is Google trying to train us not to use the back button?

If they had a bit more market share for their browser, it might even work...