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My hot take: hamburger menus are a really bad UX paradigm in almost all cases, and bottom tab bars are much better. So, I disagree entirely: iOS can easily sup

My hot take: hamburger menus are a really bad UX paradigm in almost all cases, and bottom tab bars are much better. So, I disagree entirely: iOS can easily support fantastic HTML5 mobile apps... if push notifications ever become available. From what I remember, Google started switching to bottom tab bars a couple of years ago, even on Android. But, when you have a bunch of features, it's much easier on the developer (not the end user) to just stuff them in a hamburger menu and say "eh, good enough..." Link that seems relevant, but I've really only skimmed it: https://uxplanet.org/tab-bars-are-the-new-hamburger-menus-9138891e98f4 https://uxplanet.org/tab-bars-are-the-new-hamburger-menus-91...

dheera 6y ago
Side note -- I do wish iOS would get ahead with Bluetooth and WebRTC support, both of which I use heavily on my (private) HTML5 apps. Push notifications would be necessary for a complete feature set too, although I don't really use them for my private apps since I disable almost all push notifications on my phone.
- coder543 6y ago
  https://caniuse.com/?search=webrtc https://caniuse.com/?search=webrtc I think WebRTC is supported on iOS? Maybe it's missing some important features? I'm not personally familiar with what's going on there. Web Bluetooth doesn't seem to be going anywhere fast, for better or worse.
- hackerfromthefu 6y ago
  Its clear Apple wants to force people to native apps where they can extort, err charge, 30% (of the revenue, much larger share of the profit). So these features almost certainly won't be delivered, in a working state, until they are irrelevant to making useful apps which could move money out of the ios appstore.
robocat 6y ago
> bottom tab bars are much better The last time I looked they were incredibly fragile to implement on mobile device browsers. Mobile Safari had borkage: rotation or tab addition/deletion changing the page height such that you occasionally lose the bottom bar; input focus loses the bottom bar or leaves the bottom bar occluding elements (position sticky doesn’t recalc when page scrolls). Problems with strange interactions with the browsers own bottom bar. Both have problems when the page is zoomed, which seems to happen sometimes even if explicitly disabled e.g. input focus? I could make something that looked like it worked, but when actually manually testing it hard, there were show-stopping problems.
- coder543 6y ago
  To be clear, I'm talking about HTML5 mobile apps. Apps that you add to your home screen from the web, where none of the Safari chrome is visible to interfere with things. You rarely encounter this kind of thing precisely because notifications aren't supported, as I've been saying. Chat apps? Most users want notifications. Forum apps (like Reddit)? Most users want notifications. Calendar apps? Shopping apps? Podcast apps? Weather apps? Almost every user wants to have the option of notifications for these apps. Video games? Most companies want notifications to drive user re-engagement... even if a lot of users don't allow games to spam them with notifications. Virtually every kind of app benefits from or completely requires being able to alert you that things have happened. There's very little reason for good tools to exist right now, when notifications don't, and this seems intentional on Apple's part. Great tooling could definitely exist for HTML5 mobile apps to make it a good experience to build great apps that way... except for the lack of notification support on iOS. Historically, the Google Play Store is so lax about things that there's no reason not to just submit apps there. You don't even have to give Google a 30% cut on a lot of things, if you provide your own payment mechanisms. So, making HTML5 mobile apps for an Android audience has never been that appealing. But, that might be changing soon. On iOS, there have always been a lot of motivating reasons for companies to release apps as HTML5 Mobile Apps, but the lack of notifications just completely stops the idea flat. For HTML5 mobile websites, a hamburger menu is often an unfortunate reality, but I think having the most frequently used links always clickable at the top of the page is better than stuffing absolutely everything into the hamburger menu. HN does a great job with this.

dheera 6y ago

Side note -- I do wish iOS would get ahead with Bluetooth and WebRTC support, both of which I use heavily on my (private) HTML5 apps. Push notifications would be necessary for a complete feature set too, although I don't really use them for my private apps since I disable almost all push notifications on my phone.

coder543 6y ago
https://caniuse.com/?search=webrtc https://caniuse.com/?search=webrtc I think WebRTC is supported on iOS? Maybe it's missing some important features? I'm not personally familiar with what's going on there. Web Bluetooth doesn't seem to be going anywhere fast, for better or worse.
hackerfromthefu 6y ago
Its clear Apple wants to force people to native apps where they can extort, err charge, 30% (of the revenue, much larger share of the profit). So these features almost certainly won't be delivered, in a working state, until they are irrelevant to making useful apps which could move money out of the ios appstore.

robocat 6y ago

> bottom tab bars are much better The last time I looked they were incredibly fragile to implement on mobile device browsers. Mobile Safari had borkage: rotation or tab addition/deletion changing the page height such that you occasionally lose the bottom bar; input focus loses the bottom bar or leaves the bottom bar occluding elements (position sticky doesn’t recalc when page scrolls). Problems with strange interactions with the browsers own bottom bar. Both have problems when the page is zoomed, which seems to happen sometimes even if explicitly disabled e.g. input focus? I could make something that looked like it worked, but when actually manually testing it hard, there were show-stopping problems.

coder543 6y ago
To be clear, I'm talking about HTML5 mobile apps. Apps that you add to your home screen from the web, where none of the Safari chrome is visible to interfere with things. You rarely encounter this kind of thing precisely because notifications aren't supported, as I've been saying. Chat apps? Most users want notifications. Forum apps (like Reddit)? Most users want notifications. Calendar apps? Shopping apps? Podcast apps? Weather apps? Almost every user wants to have the option of notifications for these apps. Video games? Most companies want notifications to drive user re-engagement... even if a lot of users don't allow games to spam them with notifications. Virtually every kind of app benefits from or completely requires being able to alert you that things have happened. There's very little reason for good tools to exist right now, when notifications don't, and this seems intentional on Apple's part. Great tooling could definitely exist for HTML5 mobile apps to make it a good experience to build great apps that way... except for the lack of notification support on iOS. Historically, the Google Play Store is so lax about things that there's no reason not to just submit apps there. You don't even have to give Google a 30% cut on a lot of things, if you provide your own payment mechanisms. So, making HTML5 mobile apps for an Android audience has never been that appealing. But, that might be changing soon. On iOS, there have always been a lot of motivating reasons for companies to release apps as HTML5 Mobile Apps, but the lack of notifications just completely stops the idea flat. For HTML5 mobile websites, a hamburger menu is often an unfortunate reality, but I think having the most frequently used links always clickable at the top of the page is better than stuffing absolutely everything into the hamburger menu. HN does a great job with this.