I spent a few hours today getting familiar with the Framer.js project and I think—and indeed hope—that it is the future of how we build rich HTML/CSS/JS interfaces for mobile devices. On desktops the standards-compliant, semantic, and progressively enhanced interfaces are still the way to go for serving the vast variety of users that exist, however in the mobile space of more fixed set of environments of operation Framer shows a way forward for quickly building performant interfaces on top of the DOM without the hassles of constructing complex interfaces in platform-specific interface frameworks.

For delivering truly exceptional mobile experiences native is still by and large the way to go. That said, the leaps and bounds being made in mobile processor capability, JavsScript engine performance, and the advent of rich interface toolkits like Framer will probably make the fully-native route eventually unnecessary. Let’s hope that some day soon we won’t have to code our interfaces in Objective-C or Java and instead will build them in tools like Framer. I know I’m heavily considering using Framer for more than just prototyping.