zlacker

>>iBelie+(OP)
My primary concern with this is that different applications are inherently optimized for the platform on which they were originally designed. There are some applications that have a very dense UI because there's simply alot of functionality that the program handles (think of a video editor, an IDE, etc). Trying to slim down those applications to make them reactive so that they will scale onto a phone or tablet just seems silly, and I fear that in the name of making "everything work everywhere", we're going to compromise a bunch of apps that worked beautifully on one platform in favor of making them work adequately on several platforms.

I mean, if someone said, "I've successfully ported Vim to Android!", my first thought would be, "Why in god's name would I want to run vim on my phone?"*

* Ruling out, of course, someone plugging their phone into external KVM.

>>Admira+K7
IDEs and productivity tools often approximate a tile-based window managers where you can collapse all but the central tile (or conversely, put the central one in fullscreen) if you want the maximal real estate for the content instead of the auxiliary bars and then slide them in for a moment when you need them.

This mode seems suited for mobile UIs, so that flexibility should get them pretty close to being convergent. There probably still need to be some adjustments to make it really usable on mobile, but a lot of the work has already been done.

>>Tohqua+7e
Except... In IDEs you can have code side by side, and then a tool running in a third pane (let's say a debugger, or tests), and you have quick and convenient shortcuts to switch between these panes, and hidden panes, and other windows on desktop.

Phones have none of that. And they really can't really provide them because of limited screen estate and touch being the only way to interact with it.