Hey, thanks for the mention of the free BigOven app! (I'm the founder of BigOven.com). The app allows you to search 170,000+ recipes on the site.
It's just a shortcut to the web site. Not really an app.
That's not really true. The app provides the following feature that the mobile version of the website does not provide:
* Leftover Wizard -- simply enter 3 ingredients and find out what you can make
* Browse the BigOven Food Glossary -- see over 1,000+ articles on food and common ingredients
* "What's for Dinner?" -- get (and share) food updates from around the world.
You can also mark favorites, build a free Try Soon Queue, rate and comment on recipes and much more.
Yes, we do use HTML for rendering the output at present. Among other things, this allows us to get you this free app with 170,000+ recipes much, much sooner. It also provides seamless, instant synchronization between what might be done on the desktop (e.g., saving favorites, building a list of Try Soon recipes, etc.) and what's on your handheld. All in all, we think these tradeoffs are worth it for the time being.
Over time, we plan to move the UI to more native display, but we wanted to get this free app to you and the many Android users as quickly as possible. With over 2 million downloads on the iPhone (and growing), it's been one of the most popular food apps on the iPhone, and now everything you could do on the iPhone version of BigOven can be done on the Android!
Happy cooking from us in Seattle.