Facebook's iOS app is essentially a mobile website wrapped around familiar navigation elements. Most of the app is HTML5, and since Apple hasn't brought the Nitro JavaScript engine to UIWebViews, Facebook on iPhone is annoyingly slow.According to The New York Times' Nick Bilton, Facebook will be throwing away the app's HTML5 dependencies and going fully native sometime next month.
Bilton writes:
According to two Facebook engineers who asked not be named because they are not authorized to speak about unreleased products, Facebook has completely rebuilt its iOS application to optimize for one thing: speed.
[...]
Bilton notes that there won't be substantial changes to the look of the app, just the internals would be getting a revamp.
I had the opportunity to see the as-yet unreleased iPhone application, and it is fast. Blazing fast. The two engineers I spoke with said the new application is being tested by Facebook developers and is expected to be updated this summer.
Facebook adopted the HTML5 strategy to ensure ease of development across multiple platforms and pushing out updates easily, without waiting for Apple's review provess. But eventually, it seems, user experience triumphs development convenience.
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