Having said that, AIR is still a viable choice for mobile currently. Starling has made great strides in bringing hardware acceleration to Flash. It's really great on new devices but much like HTML5 the performance isn't super hot on low end stuff.
I first thought that an external process that snaps a window reference to opened browser window with minimum of browser trated resources (output on window, input of window) is the best fastest possibility, but that is 2 things :
- it is flash(ing)
- forever lucking of security on OS of the browser in question
- no need of provider to invest in effective compiling of trated instructions (swf)
- OS dependancy
Such a plug in way will always force the developer to OS dependancy, or, force provider to maintain everlasting problematic providing off from OS (Flash)
yet, HTML5 is totaly OS unspecific, with browser becoming the actual robust standardized platform. JS compilation those days will outperform c++, asmjs, ask any V8 enginer. JS does not have to be slower- it can be as fast as native perfect code (perfect js), this is just a job of compiler which has also an advantage of intime compilation, or even run time recompilation. That is realy the future with no trade of"s. There is only a difficulty for developers, no one else, and that said, it has to be done. There are still performance gaps left (are there yet?), but they will get sealed soon.