The web on mobile
February 21, 2025
Ten or fifteen years ago, the gap between the web and native apps on mobile was entirely technical. There were certain things that you just couldn’t do in web browsers. That’s no longer the case now. The web caught up quite a while back.
But the experience of using websites on a mobile device is awful. Never mind the terrible performance penalties incurred by unnecessary frameworks and libraries like React and its ilk, there’s the constant game of whack-a-mole with banners and overlays. What’s just about bearable in a large desktop viewport becomes intolerable on a small screen.
This is not a technical problem. This doesn’t get solved by web standards. This is a cultural problem.
The web struggles to compete on mobile as much for cultural as technical reasons. So that’s on us to fix.