What is your experience with Android webapps (limitations, tips, best practices)?

I have implemented two projects that use webview, one is with jqtouch and other with jquery-mobile frameworks.

You are starting like a breeze and go on, but at last when you look at the application it is very far from native user experience. Android browser is much more slower than iphone browser. Hope it will be resolved later, as a result you will have slower response times when you are dealing with css3 heavy applications. While developing in emulator, webview will make you mad as it is sooo slow.

If you want to implement native like elements or fixed tabbar you are working a lot and at last not getting a good solution when you compare your application with native applications, it just sucks.

At last I have decided to learn native development and being a first class citizen. Of course this will take much more time but the result will satisfy me.

I think native development is not the future, sometime later we will write html-css-js applications again and they will work like native code, but it is not likely to be in 2-3 years according to my opinion.

I can suggest you that, try building web apps, if performance does not satisfies you like me, then switch to native development.

I would choice with those rules in this preference order

• Full web if you do not need to limit to android
• Phone Gap if you want other smartphone platforms.
• Full native if you need contacts, high graphics, or any native component
• webview if you want to be on the market and maybe gain some money
• Hybrid (native with webview) if you want to mix approaches

After my experience with the WebView, I find it to be fantastic. I had built an app and wanted to port it to Android, but the second I realized WebView was working flawlessly, I never looked back. All of my functions were built into the Web App and thus there was little need for function in the app (Internet connection detection/changes, etc)

I've gone the 'Hybrid' route. I have a select few features you get through the Android App that the website doesn't offer -- so keep that in mind for marketing.

Either way, my only issue is the scrolling speed can stutter when you are using heavy CSS3 styling -- and I'm talking border radius', shadows, gradients, etc, all over. I wanted to see how it responded... but yeah, besides that, you should be golden!

Good luck!

(edit) Added the Following: I also wanted to add that my app uses jQuery in the WebView. It seems to stagger more than a native animation would, but that's pretty much a given. Though don't get me wrong, they still are animations and still work great! If I could give the jQuery animations a FPS (slide up/down), I'd say they're about 20 while native animations are a fluid 25-30 (on a scale from 1-30). Noticeable, but doesn't take away anything from the experience.

Again, don't get me wrong here it's perfectly good to use! For example, I have a timer that starts when the page loads and counts down... this works perfectly from within the App > WebView. No bugs, and if there was one, it was reflected on the website (aka jQuerys fault)

Just wanted to add some more to my 2 cents =)