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Why do you assume that it's just web designers? Have you ever shown a web app vs. a native app to someone who doesn't write code? Or just someone who has design

Why do you assume that it's just web designers? Have you ever shown a web app vs. a native app to someone who doesn't write code? Or just someone who has design sensibility? The lightbulb example is also not a good one. A lightbulb transitions between two states. An interactive application transitions between hundreds of states. Full page refreshes make each transition clunky and noticeable. Only programmers look at it and say "yea, that's fine," because we know how difficult a web browser is to implement. But end users don't care about difficulty. They care about the end result.

fenwick67 6y ago
I don't really have a problem with web apps doing incremental loading when it makes sense (Facebook, for example, or letting the user add a comment in situ), but many many sites would be better off just loading documents instead of moving to an application framework. Take for instance TechCrunch.com vs Wired.com, Wired is much easier to use because it acts like a website. Yes, it does full page refreshes instead of showing a full-page loading spinner, but it behaves more consistently and doesn't require the user to learn new UI paradigms.
- amw-zero 6y ago
  What about Google Sheets? It would be pretty strange to input a number into a cell and have the page refresh to perform a calculation no? Frankly I'm not sure how any application falls into the document paradigm. It was created for linking documents of text, not interactive applications.
MayeulC 6y ago
Well, I might be biased as you are saying, and much of this is subjective, but I much prefer a snappy browsing experience, where clicking a link takes no longer than the round-trip time (25-50 ms in most cases) to load the web page. Have you tried the dillo web browser, for instance? It's refreshingly fast and snappy (including on my old atom netbook from 2008) to use. I have had a subjective feeling for a while that some user interfaces felt "solid", almost tangible. To me, Windows XP does that. Windows 10 feels like a smokescreen next to it. There might be pretty colors, fancy gradients, but I do not feel like I directly control the UI anymore, I am forced to wait for an animation to finish, I have trouble determining where the window border is. And I've found it much harder to rely on my positional memory to navigate apps that have a smooth transition, like mobile apps. This is not a rant against Windows10's UI (I have barely used it, and just use it to draw a comparison in the Windows family, you could also compare different KDE versions), but with contemporary user interfaces in general. That could even be said of some command-line interfaces. We're also used to progress bars, or worse: spinners. Trained to wait idle in front of our computers, while a dozen megabytes of frameworks are stuffed down the pipe so that the page background is just the right white shade (probably while I am using a dark theme, and the CSS rules to apply that shade probably only work correctly on Google chrome). That's what modern web feels like to me.
fleddr 6y ago
"Only programmers look at it and say "yea, that's fine," because we know how difficult a web browser is to implement." No, not just programmers. Also end users. It's a complete myth that the traditional link/page refresh method is jarring to users. It's perfectly normal and expected to click a link and to have it loaded in a reasonable time frame, without some weird transition in between.
- amw-zero 6y ago
  Not the end users that I talk to and interview. So ‘complete myth’ just means that you have a strong opinion. It doesn’t mean it’s actually true.

fenwick67 6y ago

I don't really have a problem with web apps doing incremental loading when it makes sense (Facebook, for example, or letting the user add a comment in situ), but many many sites would be better off just loading documents instead of moving to an application framework. Take for instance TechCrunch.com vs Wired.com, Wired is much easier to use because it acts like a website. Yes, it does full page refreshes instead of showing a full-page loading spinner, but it behaves more consistently and doesn't require the user to learn new UI paradigms.

amw-zero 6y ago
What about Google Sheets? It would be pretty strange to input a number into a cell and have the page refresh to perform a calculation no? Frankly I'm not sure how any application falls into the document paradigm. It was created for linking documents of text, not interactive applications.

MayeulC 6y ago

Well, I might be biased as you are saying, and much of this is subjective, but I much prefer a snappy browsing experience, where clicking a link takes no longer than the round-trip time (25-50 ms in most cases) to load the web page. Have you tried the dillo web browser, for instance? It's refreshingly fast and snappy (including on my old atom netbook from 2008) to use. I have had a subjective feeling for a while that some user interfaces felt "solid", almost tangible. To me, Windows XP does that. Windows 10 feels like a smokescreen next to it. There might be pretty colors, fancy gradients, but I do not feel like I directly control the UI anymore, I am forced to wait for an animation to finish, I have trouble determining where the window border is. And I've found it much harder to rely on my positional memory to navigate apps that have a smooth transition, like mobile apps. This is not a rant against Windows10's UI (I have barely used it, and just use it to draw a comparison in the Windows family, you could also compare different KDE versions), but with contemporary user interfaces in general. That could even be said of some command-line interfaces. We're also used to progress bars, or worse: spinners. Trained to wait idle in front of our computers, while a dozen megabytes of frameworks are stuffed down the pipe so that the page background is just the right white shade (probably while I am using a dark theme, and the CSS rules to apply that shade probably only work correctly on Google chrome). That's what modern web feels like to me.

fleddr 6y ago

"Only programmers look at it and say "yea, that's fine," because we know how difficult a web browser is to implement." No, not just programmers. Also end users. It's a complete myth that the traditional link/page refresh method is jarring to users. It's perfectly normal and expected to click a link and to have it loaded in a reasonable time frame, without some weird transition in between.

amw-zero 6y ago
Not the end users that I talk to and interview. So ‘complete myth’ just means that you have a strong opinion. It doesn’t mean it’s actually true.