Before it was hard coded what HTML elements react would represent in its virtual DOM. With 0.12 thats no longer the case, so it can now also render to custom elements. So now it might be possible to define fancy UI elements in web components and then keep state and structure with React.
I started on a project to port the paper elements from material design to react components (https://github.com/OlavHN/react-paper), but the paper elements I ported all seemed really stateless. More like high level input elements. Now I'm hoping that they can be used directly by mapping custom element attributes to react props or maybe they would work with a small wrapper. Needs more experimentation ..
Cool! Handling CRUD APIs and authentication desperately needs a flexible library! I can't seem to find any kind of versioning, changelist, etc to facilitate reactive clients tho. Is it lacking or am I not seeing it?
I guess you're running the version that shipped over a year ago. Try switching to one of geeksphones other update channels on downloads.geeksphone.com. I've been dogfooding for a year now and its getting more plesant all the time!
Its really awesome to see Google taking the web seriously by giving it more access to hardware, but it would be nice with some indication of where these APIs are headed.
Are they "forking off the web" or just experimenting before standardising?
These are UI elements built on top of (a shim for) the coming standard Web Components.
For another Web Components shim check out polymer-project.org along with a small, opinionated framework leveraging Web Components. Especially look at the awesome Sandbox application allowing you to compose web components :)
By using a browserId enabled user agent/browser and an email provider who has implemented the browserId -protocol you already have a fully decentralised Persona experience.
If you check out the next version of angular (currently 1.1.5) it includes an enhanced ngClick directive in a mobile module that handles click / touch directly to overcome the 300ms delay, etc.
Initiate it with app.module('myapp', ['ngMobile'], .. )
If all you want is a simple, privacy friendly login then check out Mozillas persona: https://login.persona.org/
Chances are your users won't have it already, but it's the only single sign-on solution I would use without calculating how much privacy I'm willing to "sell" for not having to register yet another time and remember yet another password.
It's interesting (and somewhat surprising) that very few in this thread are criticising the "web stack" for being slow or lacking features or something along those lines.
If web standards now are getting performant and expressive enough to compete with dedicated, close-to-the-metal, technology stacks on mobile then the altruistic incentives of the web ecosystem might be enough. The incumbents have their incentives less aligned with users.
I'm not convinced Google will crush attempts at making the web a first class citizen on phones. After having pushed and developed the web for so long I think they already see it as their turf.
If you refer to fragmentation as manufacturers slowing down upgrades because they are "differentiating" their Android devices then I believe the web ecosystem already has some experience there dealing with different browsers :)
I believe an alternative mobile ecosystem not centrally controlled like iOS and Android, but rather with a standardised core and fragmentation / innovation on top is a very exciting model. It's working great for the web, why is mobile fundamentally any different? It beats having to program every application three times from scratch to reach a full market.
Livefyre.com - I work there as an intern this summer and I really like the system. You have to sign up for the beta as we're still rolling out, but should be quick.
At school we had business case on the facebook platform yesterday. It said googles main worry was facebook data being used to make a search engine. And it makes sense - data about me and my network is a huge heuristic in ranking pages. Also, the lecturer said sites increasingly saw more referrals coming from facebook and twitter than google. That was news to me.