Developing for the mobile web is a constant headache

https://popmotion.io/blog/20170710-mobile-web-is-awful-and-were-all-to-blame/

by SirHound • 9 years ago

99 74 9 years ago

xj92• 9 years ago

the web was a mistake. not as a concept, but as an application platform. the question i ask myself is: how do we take the Good Parts of the web and bring them to the native application side? how do we create an ecosystem as free as the web, that doesn't erode user trust with spam, malware, and so on?

Andrex• 9 years ago

The lesson taken from email and chat platforms seems to be "centralize and control it," unfortunately. See Google's attempts with AMP as a potential solution. I know AMP isn't popular on HN, but it's a possible answer to your question.

Speed, freedom, and usability - choose two, I suppose.

opportune• 9 years ago

I actually disagree. I think there are too many companies trying to put everything in an app when their content can be served and digested just fine via the web. And the blame there ultimately rests with the businesses that try to push their users into apps for whatever reason (gathering more data, easier to keep users within your ecosystem and not clicking away).

SirHound6• 9 years ago

We have an ecosystem that's free, it is the web. The spam, the malware: A great deal of web apps don't have these issues. We need to continue to enhance the web as an application platform, rather than hobble it.

xj92• 9 years ago

i don't really see web applications ever being good mobile applications.

to start with, jit compiling applications on a energy-constrained device is straight stupid. you should compile the application for me on some system that isn't already struggling to make it though to day on a single charge. wasm might help some, but pls don't make my mobile do more work than it has to.

#p2p applications often need special capabilities or native libraries to work well (or at all). the web offers some weak apis for this, but really isn't up to par with what i would be interested in using (or building on). again wasm might help here, only time will tell.

finally, web standards move very slowly and really don't exist as a disruptive force. if you need buy-in from all of the major vendors to push new/interesting features through, you aren't going to get much unless it favors them somehow.

oblio2• 9 years ago

I keep hearing this and it seems wrong. I think the actual problem is a social one. In a free, decentralized environment, you'll get jackals (tragedy of the commons). In a centralized one, you'll get dictators.

I don't think you can work around this with any kind of technology.

I know that what I'm saying is basically anathema for HackerNews, but I think it's the truth.

apatters2• 9 years ago

It's also worth noting that these dictators don't appear out of thin air. They come from somewhere else when they see an opportunity.

The Web was successful because it was decentralized and egalitarian. Anyone could run a server. You could access any site you wanted. Everybody could link to everybody else. People loved this and the Web spread for these reasons.

Modern app ecosystems spread because capital wanted a return. It noticed people were getting rich off of this tech thing, and all that money from the rest of the world came pouring in. The defining feature is control: of experience, sharing, attention, and revenue. Because controlling all these things allows capital to extract greater returns.

There are pros and cons to each model, but let's be clear, one was built from the ground up by financiers looking to make another buck. If it's easier to build a bottom nav bar or something, that's incidental to their plans.

Why do you want a bottom nav bar, anyway? If you're truly building for the users, the first lesson is that they want their information on their terms.

iainmerrick2• 9 years ago

In a free, decentralized environment, you'll get jackals (tragedy of the commons)

That phrase "tragedy of the commons" has an interesting history! It's propaganda used to justify the privatization of common land, according to George Monbiot: http://www.monbiot.com/1994/01/01/the-tragedy-of-enclosure/

richthegeek• 9 years ago

I think the main problem with that, coming from someone who has been programming on the web since around 2001, is that many of the attempts to 'fix' the web as an 'application platform' seem to come in very Enterprise Java costumes.

Hundreds of files of abstraction and encapsulation, layers of indirection, tonnes of new nomenclature... and all without any obvious reason other than "that's what works for desktop applications" I think?

Angular 1.x is the example I'm most familiar with (primarily because it was JS and 'easy' for the first 1000 lines), where most of StackOverflow was occupied with the "factory vs service vs provider" question.

amelius• 9 years ago

I think the problems all start with having a small number of companies controlling the OSes.

KaoruAoiShiho• 9 years ago

The article addresses the Bad Parts which are all browser side. The browsers suck. The web is fine. What we need are more powerful browsers that can be programmed by websites to act like native apps. Security can be handled through curation.

What Mozilla (or a new browser startup) should do:

Enable a new type of "extension".

This extension is pre-approved and pre-checked for malware.

This extension lives on the Mozilla cdn and is only downloadable from there.

This extension is automatically installed on a site-specific basis with no user visible UI.

This extension is powerful enough to control the browser and make it resemble a native app.

When a user goes to the website it'll automatically just work just like the native app.

dmux2• 9 years ago

I believe this is what Rebol IOS was trying to implement: http://www.rebol.com/ios/ios-intro.html

ivraatiems2• 9 years ago

I disagree with the conclusion that we're in this position because of anything designers or developers did. Of the examples the author listed, most are the result of business meddling making things worse - see Reddit and Facebook in particular. I think this is "all you," not "mostly you," or if it is mostly, it's "mostly almost to the point of nothing else."

SirHound6• 9 years ago

Designers and developers are definietly not blameless. Although AMP is clearly a Business People invention, it wouldn't have been adopted if the web was quicker on mobile networks and CPUs.

zelos• 9 years ago

Implementing simple design features like overlays or bottom navigation on mobile browsers invariably involves trawling through blogs and forums to find that special hack that worked for that one guy that one day in June.

Then why do so many bloody mobile sites implement them then? They're terrible for reading and interaction.

ceejayoz2• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming

ashark2• 9 years ago

I think that when this happens in design it's more about looking normal so as to project credibility (so that people will take you seriously/give you money). The important part is not that actual browers/people-spending-money feel this way, but that product owners and designers think they do (and maybe they're right, I don't know, though Kalzumeus' post about the success of the Big Ugly Button makes me think they're at least sometimes wrong). This is what drives web design trend-chasing, when really the old two-or-three-column-header-footer sites of The Distant Past of A Decade Ago were totally fine and often more usable than the "beautiful" crap put out today. But they look "old" so out they go.

msoad• 9 years ago

Biggest reason you see all those prompts to install an app is that native apps get a big icon in your home screen but mobile web doesn't.

It's as simple as that. Everything else is easy to solve

ivraatiems2• 9 years ago

At least on iOS, sites can be bookmarked to app icons. but I've only seen that advertised by a mobile site once.

dingo_bat2• 9 years ago

Ditto on Android, and I've also seen only one website try to do that.

detaro• 9 years ago

On Android websites that fulfill some criteria to be a "PWA" even cause Chrome to ask the user about adding them to the homescreen if they are visited repeatedly.

protonfish• 9 years ago

It is possible, and works well, but this option is buried in the browser menu. Until you are able to include the "save to home" option in the UI, it is hobbled compared to native.

apatters2• 9 years ago

Another big one is that it's harder to block ads in an app.

SippinLean• 9 years ago

That's part of the reason, another big reason is the Google is eating so many businesses. Thus why Yelp is pushing their app so hard, they can't compete in the browser with Google's restaurant reviews.

ddeck• 9 years ago

They also (potentially) get the ability to push notifications to you whenever they please, access your contacts, calls, sms, installed apps, show non-blockable ads etc. For many apps this is extremely valuable.

Angostura• 9 years ago

You know the only thing worse than a mobile website? A website that demands that you download and install their execrable app.

ceejayoz2• 9 years ago

Ooof, yes. I was out camping the other day and wanted a trail map of the park we were in. Site called "AllTrails" had a "downloadable PDF" link for it, but clicking it just opened up a "Wouldn't you rather use our app?" popup. No alternative option, despite the wording - intensely frustrating.

noobiemcfoob• 9 years ago

I ran into a similar frustration with AllTrails last camping trip. That said, their service is really great otherwise

rocky11382• 9 years ago

I don't mind mobile websites if they are done correctly. An example of a perfect mobile website is Wikipedia.

remline3• 9 years ago

Wikipedia mobile annoys me by removing the other languages column without seeming to offer any alternative but forcing desktop. That column is about 60% of Wikipedia's utility for me.

yincrash2• 9 years ago

Why was 'web' excluded from the HN title?

SirHound6• 9 years ago

I submitted with the original headline, seems to have been edited?

Brakenshire• 9 years ago

Now they've changed it to a third title, and relegated it.

dang3• 9 years ago

The site guidelines ask you not to use the original headline when it's misleading or linkbait, and this was certainly the latter. A good HN title is accurate and neutral, so when changing a title that's what to shoot for. It's best to look for a representative phrase from the article itself that can serve as an accurate and neutral title.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mirimir3• 9 years ago

Maybe because there is no "mobile web"? I mean, there's the Web. There's the mess that smartphones make of it. And there's the mess that devs make designing for smartphones. But that's not a problem with the Web.

iainmerrick2• 9 years ago

That sure sounds like a problem, and the problem exists on the web. "Mobile web" is a useful and descriptive name for the bit of the web that suffers most from this problem.

yincrash2• 9 years ago

Leaving the title as 'Developing for mobile' makes it sound like it's referring to native mobile development. This article is definitely about web development, specifically when targeting mobile devices.

dang3• 9 years ago

The original title is baity, so we changed it in accordance with the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

When we change titles we always try to use a representative phrase from the article itself if we can find one. In this case we found one. Of course we could have just reinserted the word 'web', but we've found that there's value in sticking to what an article literally says, and in this case a moderator stuck with the latter. Just one of those judgment calls.

You make a good point at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14738404, though, so we'll put 'web' back in.

yourduskquibble2• 9 years ago

Reflecting this shift, design guidelines are increasingly recommending putting app navigation at the bottom of the screen.

IMHO the mobile web is terrible BECAUSE of lost screen real estate due to all these sticky elements. I have started a filter list [0] for uBlock Origin that attempts to fix this by pinning scrolling nav bars that block real estate to a fixed location as well as blocking other annoying web elements.

I also think these items are terrible for web usability on a desktop (and my filter list works well against them on desktop as well) but taking up such a large portion of the readable screen size with a 'download our app banner' and a navigation scroll bar plus a button that scrolls with you so that you can click to jump back to the top of the page is really horrible.

Feel free to subscribe to the filter list [1] by pasting the url into the 'Custom' section under the '3rd-party filters' tab of uBlock Origin and let me know your thoughts.

[0] Project Homepage https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances

[1] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoya...

SirHound6• 9 years ago

IMHO the mobile web is terrible BECAUSE of lost screen real estate due to all these sticky elements.

I agree, and fight these at work (with varying success). That's no excuse to block the most accessible real estate - there are plenty of valid use-cases that aren't floating social links.

csydas• 9 years ago

Thank you for this. Just added it to mobile Firefox.

I agree with you and have found such elements very annoying since I've had a smartphone. When I was on iOS I was constantly annoyed by this and assumed it was a childish attempt to get accidental clicks from ios users trying to access the page navigation. This article doesn't really inspire faith in web devs since they're staking out territory on my device as if they have say in what I do and do not do on their site. Ultimately I find the attempts to fight with apple or Google to do things the way the web dev wants just makes it worse for me. Apple had a functional means of getting around the page on mobile. Scroll bars have told me how far I was on a page since scrolling existed, and for cases where the page extends past the content, I can survive without a reading progress bar. I'm perfectly fine guessing on my own.

I appreciate that web devs do some cool projects but don't just tack stuff on.

yourduskquibble2• 9 years ago

Thanks for testing it out!

For anyone reading who is curious how to use the list on your iPhone, unfortunately since iOS doesn't actually allow browsers (Firefox on iOS is not actually true Firefox with add-on support) this filter list (and any others) only work for uBlock Origin using Firefox for Android.

ukyrgf• 9 years ago

I've recently started adding my own filters actively toy ad blocker as well. It felt like a weird step towards being a contrarian to the modern web. It's how I make my living so I played along as much as I could, but now I want to corner myself off more than ever.

miguelrochefort4• 9 years ago

Modern application development is horrible.

Why on earth do we still design and implement user interfaces by hand? Shouldn't 99% of development be about creating semantic models and let generic clients take care of rendering it properly based on form-factor, context, preferences, etc?

Today, every single app needs to re-implement the user class, authentication system, profile management interface, responsive design, loading indicators, caching and offline support, third-party access, sharing, filtering, theming, localization, accessibility, etc. This is insane.

ashark2• 9 years ago

Designers and product owners won't allow it. See also: tons of custom styling and behaviors on mobile platforms that break user expectations and double or triple development time, just so the designer has something to do other than arrange in a grid and choose colors for the perfectly-fine built in UI elements which are, most of the time, more pleasant to use than whatever they come up with.

miguelrochefort4• 9 years ago

I never asked for branded or fancy UI. I want consistency, and I expect the platform to drive design decisions, not the feature that happens to be packaged as an app. I'm sure most rational people would agree.

Design hubris is one of the world's most important problem.

camus2• 9 years ago

Why on earth do we still design and implement user interfaces by hand? Shouldn't 99% of development be about creating semantic models and let generic clients take care of rendering it properly based on form-factor, context, preferences, etc?

Oh look, XHTML2, oh wait, it's dead ...

https://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-i18n.html#s_i18nmodule

Today, every single app needs to re-implement the user class, authentication system, profile management interface, responsive design, loading indicators, caching and offline support, third-party access, sharing, filtering, theming, localization, accessibility, etc. This is insane.

You're mixing up server-side and front-end development. The client shouldn't take care of authentication or profile management.

dmux2• 9 years ago

Shouldn't 99% of development be about creating semantic models and let generic clients take care of rendering it properly based on form-factor, context, preferences, etc?

If you're not familiar with the Naked Object's pattern, you may find it interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_objects

harryf• 9 years ago

I’ve long held that the web experience can be just as performant and polished as native.

Recently I've been starting to think the assumption "apps are faster" is wrong when you factor in app start time. Two well known offenders here are LinkedIn and Twitter; opening a push message from either it frequently takes 10+ seconds of staring at their logo (which they use as a launch screen counter to recommendations at https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/g...) before I can read anything.

For this type of transactional UX, slow-to-load apps are doing a poor job

Danihan• 9 years ago

I never even knew that was a widely held assumption...

dingo_bat2• 9 years ago

Why not just ditch js on mobile? What's the big need for sticky toolbars and other such cruft. Juts detect if it is a mobile and serve up good old html (of the non-5 variety).

ryandrake• 9 years ago

Thank you! Just serve me HTML. Stop messing with scrolling. Get rid of the pop-ups and prompts for me to sign up for your newsletter. Stop permanently attaching buttons to the top or bottom. Throw away your "navigation bar". If I wanted an "app" experience I'd download an app.

SirHound6• 9 years ago

There's nothing better about pre-5 html and JS is used for a lot more than sticky toolbars (which can be made with just CSS anyway)

ravenstine• 9 years ago

Businesses will never agree to not having Google Analytics, as pointless as most of those metrics are.

Yizahi• 9 years ago

If any webdev want to convince me that mobile "is working" then please make a layout that will not jump like it's having a seizure during page load. Don't make hovering, floating, overlaying and gesture controlled elements. Basically don't make stuff that makes your site harder to use.

luord• 9 years ago

I remember my first job, where I had to spend hours upon hours hoping that then-new features and technologies that were barely supported in desktop browsers would work in mobile too, and hack around those features if not.

It was hell, still is and that's why I only take desktop or server work now.

Developing for the mobile web is a constant headache

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