4 ms·

Netflix's web developers might enjoy working on the HTML5-based app, but (at least on iOS) the user experience is poor: - Scrolling is slow, jerky, and is less

by nupark2 15y ago

Netflix's web developers might enjoy working on the HTML5-based app, but (at least on iOS) the user experience is poor: - Scrolling is slow, jerky, and is less useful than standard scrolling (for instance, there's no inertia). - The application uses none of the standard UI components, and the components they use are poorly implemented and difficult to use; Netflix is failing to take advantage of the UI R&D you get for free when you use standard OS components (eg, see inertia above). - The application's UI is very very slow to load compared to native apps; since nothing is local, everything has to be fetched. There's a lot more that a proper critique of their UI would involve, but in short, I'd say that Netflix is placing the enjoyment of their web developers over the happiness of their actual users.

DenisM 15y ago
Check out Sencha Touch, in particular the "kitchen sink" demo. They have inertial scrolling and a whole bunch of other stuff.
- nupark2 15y ago
  Between Qt, Swing, and even SWT's attempt to expose native widgets, you'd think that it would be well established that emulating native components (especially behind a generic API) never produces a result on-par with an application written against the real native APIs. I just quickly tested the Sencha demo on an iPad 1. In terms of just the scrolling, Sencha Touch seems unable to implement glassy-smooth scrolling of a simple text-only list view -- something that was achievable on the original non-3G iPhone. On top of that, their UI looks like a poor clone of Apple's, is slow to respond to interaction events, implements jerky-at-best animations. In short, it is obviously non-native, to the detriment of the user experience; it performs poorly, provides a lesser user-experience, uses non-default widgets, and will constantly be playing catch-up with the native APIs and UI.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    Emulating native UI is definitely the wrong approach; it only highlights your apps weaknesses. However I think you're overstating the important of things like scrolling inertia; users do not mind this too much. It's shown by the fact that they all choose "inferior" experiences on the desktop when they log into their Yahoo Mail and Hotmail account; or worse, just use pop3. Users will choose a solution 1) That they know about, 2) that meets their needs, 3) that is easiest. UX is probably 4th. Trivialities like page transitions and scrolling inertia only matters to the SXSW crowd.
    - nupark2 15y ago
      Trivialities like page transitions and scrolling inertia only matters to the SXSW crowd. Scrolling inertia is about utility -- being able to easily flick through a long list (such as Netflix's movies). It's a real, intentional user experience feature, not just some easily dismissed "SXSW crowd" aesthetic. That said, I agree that foremost, users choose products that solve their problems. However, that doesn't mean that a quality native application isn't a significant competitive advantage. If there are two products that solve their problems equally, they'll choose the one with the best user experience. If users are choosing a product with a lesser user experience, chances are good that the competition with a seemingly better UX isn't actually solving their problems.
Androsynth 15y ago
Those are not issues that will stop the spread of webapps though. One major impediment into the mobile market is the fragmented environments. Using a common environment (ie open web) would allow much more flexibility to develop multiplatform apps. At that point, most people would be willing to give up some of the platform specific features (inertia, etc) to run across platforms. edit: this is my opinion as a web developer who is thinking of getting into the mobile market, not as a mobile developer.
- nupark2 15y ago
  As a mobile developer, our clients are either in the business of selling products/services to users, or selling users to advertisers. Either way, our clients need people to download and use their application. In turn, we must provide the best possible user experience for those prospective users; If our application provides a worse user experience than the competitor's, users will choose the competitor. In some cases, you might get away with a worse user experience -- if you want Netflix's content, you have to use Netflix's application, and a competitor can't edge out Netflix without providing replacement content, as well. However, this is unlikely to be to your benefit if another competitor does offer content of equivalent value to users, and they choose to spend their attention on an application with a superior user experience.
- bad_user 15y ago
  Unfortunately phones have lots of useful features that aren't exposed in the browser. For instance, I just installed an app on my Android that creates a blacklist of phone numbers to reject, both calls and SMS and also cleans up the phone's logs. Basically once you add a phone number to that app, it may as well not exist anymore. I love this little app so much that I would rather do without all available web apps out there on my phone ... because the main purpose of my phone is to connect with people and not having API integration with its core functionalities, like voice calls and SMS would make whatever "smartness" it has basically useless. I'm still baffled as to why this isn't a standard feature in phones, but whatever, at least on Android you can add it (versus the iPhone, which requires rooting). And exposing these low-level features in the browser through proprietary extensions wouldn't help the fragmented market. It also doesn't help that each environment has its own look&feel, so you'll have to add lots of platform specific stylesheets and Javascript for emulating standard behavior. The best combination for me (as in fast development, not the best user experience) is building native apps with a web interface exposed through an embedded web view.
ZoFreX 15y ago
I don't see that those disadvantages are inherent to using an HTML 5 based application at all. After all, the browsers on my desktop use native scrolling, widgets, etc. There's no reason Netflix couldn't spruce up the browser side of things to make it more "native", and continue to enjoy the benefits of having most of the application logic server-side.

by nupark2 15y ago

DenisM 15y ago

Check out Sencha Touch, in particular the "kitchen sink" demo. They have inertial scrolling and a whole bunch of other stuff.

nupark2 15y ago
Between Qt, Swing, and even SWT's attempt to expose native widgets, you'd think that it would be well established that emulating native components (especially behind a generic API) never produces a result on-par with an application written against the real native APIs. I just quickly tested the Sencha demo on an iPad 1. In terms of just the scrolling, Sencha Touch seems unable to implement glassy-smooth scrolling of a simple text-only list view -- something that was achievable on the original non-3G iPhone. On top of that, their UI looks like a poor clone of Apple's, is slow to respond to interaction events, implements jerky-at-best animations. In short, it is obviously non-native, to the detriment of the user experience; it performs poorly, provides a lesser user-experience, uses non-default widgets, and will constantly be playing catch-up with the native APIs and UI.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Emulating native UI is definitely the wrong approach; it only highlights your apps weaknesses. However I think you're overstating the important of things like scrolling inertia; users do not mind this too much. It's shown by the fact that they all choose "inferior" experiences on the desktop when they log into their Yahoo Mail and Hotmail account; or worse, just use pop3. Users will choose a solution 1) That they know about, 2) that meets their needs, 3) that is easiest. UX is probably 4th. Trivialities like page transitions and scrolling inertia only matters to the SXSW crowd.
  - nupark2 15y ago
    Trivialities like page transitions and scrolling inertia only matters to the SXSW crowd. Scrolling inertia is about utility -- being able to easily flick through a long list (such as Netflix's movies). It's a real, intentional user experience feature, not just some easily dismissed "SXSW crowd" aesthetic. That said, I agree that foremost, users choose products that solve their problems. However, that doesn't mean that a quality native application isn't a significant competitive advantage. If there are two products that solve their problems equally, they'll choose the one with the best user experience. If users are choosing a product with a lesser user experience, chances are good that the competition with a seemingly better UX isn't actually solving their problems.

Androsynth 15y ago

Those are not issues that will stop the spread of webapps though. One major impediment into the mobile market is the fragmented environments. Using a common environment (ie open web) would allow much more flexibility to develop multiplatform apps. At that point, most people would be willing to give up some of the platform specific features (inertia, etc) to run across platforms. edit: this is my opinion as a web developer who is thinking of getting into the mobile market, not as a mobile developer.

nupark2 15y ago
As a mobile developer, our clients are either in the business of selling products/services to users, or selling users to advertisers. Either way, our clients need people to download and use their application. In turn, we must provide the best possible user experience for those prospective users; If our application provides a worse user experience than the competitor's, users will choose the competitor. In some cases, you might get away with a worse user experience -- if you want Netflix's content, you have to use Netflix's application, and a competitor can't edge out Netflix without providing replacement content, as well. However, this is unlikely to be to your benefit if another competitor does offer content of equivalent value to users, and they choose to spend their attention on an application with a superior user experience.
bad_user 15y ago
Unfortunately phones have lots of useful features that aren't exposed in the browser. For instance, I just installed an app on my Android that creates a blacklist of phone numbers to reject, both calls and SMS and also cleans up the phone's logs. Basically once you add a phone number to that app, it may as well not exist anymore. I love this little app so much that I would rather do without all available web apps out there on my phone ... because the main purpose of my phone is to connect with people and not having API integration with its core functionalities, like voice calls and SMS would make whatever "smartness" it has basically useless. I'm still baffled as to why this isn't a standard feature in phones, but whatever, at least on Android you can add it (versus the iPhone, which requires rooting). And exposing these low-level features in the browser through proprietary extensions wouldn't help the fragmented market. It also doesn't help that each environment has its own look&feel, so you'll have to add lots of platform specific stylesheets and Javascript for emulating standard behavior. The best combination for me (as in fast development, not the best user experience) is building native apps with a web interface exposed through an embedded web view.

ZoFreX 15y ago

I don't see that those disadvantages are inherent to using an HTML 5 based application at all. After all, the browsers on my desktop use native scrolling, widgets, etc. There's no reason Netflix couldn't spruce up the browser side of things to make it more "native", and continue to enjoy the benefits of having most of the application logic server-side.