4 ms·

To be fair, just because bigs use their own frameworks doesn't mean they produce great UX. There's an added learning curve to any non-native app that users incu

by npunt 8y ago

To be fair, just because bigs use their own frameworks doesn't mean they produce great UX. There's an added learning curve to any non-native app that users incur when this happens - things are out of place, don't work as expected, features don't exist, etc. For example: - Facebook doesn't use standard share sheets or web views. So if you're viewing an article, you can't use reader mode and you lose the (considerable) power of share sheets to do things like sending an article to another app or take an action on it. - Gsuite doesn't register left swipe as back even though 99% of apps on iOS do. Icons for common actions are subtly different and make you double-take while you understand what they do. Accessibility options like larger text do not work, so if you're vision impaired good luck trying to figure out what you're looking at. And there's a ton of other quirks that have existed over the years including scaling to new resolutions/ipads, problematic text selection, performance, etc. It's not as bad as it used to be, but it's still not a pleasure to use Gsuite or any material design on iOS. While many apps may use cross-platform frameworks solely for saving developer/designer time, the bigs use them for an additional strategic purpose that is detrimental to users. - Google wants you to be familiar with their apps regardless of platform, so that its easier to get you to switch to Android or Chromebooks. - Facebook wants to keep you in the app as long as possible, limit social sharing outside of their app, and spy on your browsing activity, so they add friction and don't use modern iOS web views that prevent that. I wouldn't take cues from the bigs and just assume because they do it, it's the best course of action.

EGreg 8y ago
It depends on what you mean by best. For us, we want to use the web stack so our stuff works across all platforms. So we use Cordova. We realize that over 90% of users just want to use the main interface and not some fancy OS feature. All our effort goes into making the product rock solid stable, engaging and easy to use. We aren’t actually interested in making it feel exactly like a native iOS or Android app.
- johannes1234321 8y ago
  Well, such things are causing subtle annoyance for users. This works as long as the value you provide is good, but the more and app is just a bad we view the more likely it becomes that people uninstall it or look for alternatives. Unsurprising consistent behavior is a value.
  - s17n 8y ago
    > Unsurprising consistent behavior is a value. Looking at the last 30 years of software development, it's pretty clear that users don't care very much.
    - ridiculous_fish 8y ago
      They do care. Try writing a DOS or Blackberry-style app today and see what happens. Software today has internalized the idioms so much that its developers don't even realize it. "My app is a snowflake and needs a custom design language and UI." You're vim or Photoshop or AutoCAD or Excel: you're targeting dedicated users who are prepared to invest in learning a specialized UI. Fair enough. But if you're not one of these highly professional apps, then custom control just makes the app less predictable, harder to use, and often inaccessible for users with disabilities. Not good.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        >They do care. Try writing a DOS or Blackberry-style app today and see what happens. Nothing much. Some of the most downloaded and bought apps (desktop and mobile) have horrible custom UIs. As long as the app has the crucial functionality, few care. And I'm talking for average users. As for pros? Well, vim and Emacs are DOS style apps (well, in that they use curses and totally un-native GUI paradigms), and they're still strong. UI concerns of that level only matter when apps otherwise have marginal utility and small other differences with competitors.
        npunt 8y ago
        Sure but lets not forget the single most successful consumer product in history (iPhone) owes much of its success to it's clean, consistent UX across a suite of built-in apps. More people probably use those than downloaded apps.

by npunt 8y ago

EGreg 8y ago

It depends on what you mean by best. For us, we want to use the web stack so our stuff works across all platforms. So we use Cordova. We realize that over 90% of users just want to use the main interface and not some fancy OS feature. All our effort goes into making the product rock solid stable, engaging and easy to use. We aren’t actually interested in making it feel exactly like a native iOS or Android app.

johannes1234321 8y ago
Well, such things are causing subtle annoyance for users. This works as long as the value you provide is good, but the more and app is just a bad we view the more likely it becomes that people uninstall it or look for alternatives. Unsurprising consistent behavior is a value.
- s17n 8y ago
  > Unsurprising consistent behavior is a value. Looking at the last 30 years of software development, it's pretty clear that users don't care very much.
  - ridiculous_fish 8y ago
    They do care. Try writing a DOS or Blackberry-style app today and see what happens. Software today has internalized the idioms so much that its developers don't even realize it. "My app is a snowflake and needs a custom design language and UI." You're vim or Photoshop or AutoCAD or Excel: you're targeting dedicated users who are prepared to invest in learning a specialized UI. Fair enough. But if you're not one of these highly professional apps, then custom control just makes the app less predictable, harder to use, and often inaccessible for users with disabilities. Not good.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >They do care. Try writing a DOS or Blackberry-style app today and see what happens. Nothing much. Some of the most downloaded and bought apps (desktop and mobile) have horrible custom UIs. As long as the app has the crucial functionality, few care. And I'm talking for average users. As for pros? Well, vim and Emacs are DOS style apps (well, in that they use curses and totally un-native GUI paradigms), and they're still strong. UI concerns of that level only matter when apps otherwise have marginal utility and small other differences with competitors.
      - npunt 8y ago
        Sure but lets not forget the single most successful consumer product in history (iPhone) owes much of its success to it's clean, consistent UX across a suite of built-in apps. More people probably use those than downloaded apps.