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I just visited flutterfolio.com. The very first thing I tried to do is enter a username and Tab to the password field. But Tab just catapulted my input focus to

by mdoms 6y ago

I just visited flutterfolio.com. The very first thing I tried to do is enter a username and Tab to the password field. But Tab just catapulted my input focus to the browser address bar. I mean, come on.

mgkimsal 6y ago
Strange - I didn't see that behaviour, then did on a reload, then didn't again on the next reload. ??
lwansbrough 6y ago
Haha I just read your comment, totally forgot about it, then tried to do the same thing and it happened to me too. Firefox.
hnuser123456 6y ago
works on firefox
ledak 6y ago
It strongly reminds of mid-2000s sites written in Flash
- bliteben 6y ago
  To be fair there were some flash sites I’ve still never seen anything that equals. I think the way flash marketed to more designers and content creators was both what made it awesome and maybe its downfall.
- miohtama 6y ago
  It is the same. But at least runtime, WebAssembly and canvas are open source and natively integrated to the browser. Less security holes, but the same UI integration problems. Good for games.
ClawsOnPaws 6y ago
I know I do almost nothing on HN but complain about accessibility, but it's really important to me because, well, that's how I uze my tech. And so far, sadly, Flutter hasn't impressed either with its previous versions. Edit boxes in particular were a major pain point, and things like you're describing were also less than optimal. I never knew where the focus was and what it was doing. With broken markup there was at least ways around it. But I'm scared of things that render on the canvas. Most browsers actually get this right and have support for these things that don't require ugly hacks if you use the DOM. And there is no real way to interface with assistive tech from JavaScript except through it. So you have to somehow still actually represent your apps UI in the Dom in some way.
SamBam 6y ago
Yup, that happened to me. Then I clicked again and tab worked correctly. It will be hard to overlook little details like this -- and there will be a million tiny details like this -- when decades of browser development have led us to expect a DOM experience that Just Works for UX like that.
danShumway 6y ago
The accessibility is a bigger concern, but flutterfolio.com also A) lags on my work machine when tabbing through fields B) doesn't handle HDPI screens well (the entire interface looks blurry) C) keeps fields visually indicated as selected even when I click outside of the browser (if I start typing, is it going to go into the field or not?) D) has a separate touch mode? Touch doesn't just work? Looked up another of their sample apps: A) doesn't respect my OS scroll direction B) lags on scroll C) mousing over any of the buttons has a 0.5 second delay before my cursor turns into a hand icon. And all of these sample apps take about a second to fully load for me, despite the fact that most of them aren't doing anything complicated. The "we can rebuild the browser in Canvas" idea is alive and well in GUI toolkits, but I have never seen an implementation that didn't have these kinds of basic problems. How many UI toolkits do we need to see that can't figure out how to do scrolling before we acknowledge that having one team try to independently reimplement decades of work on the web might just be a bad idea?
- eseidelGoogle 6y ago
  [Flutter Eng. Dir. here] I really appreciate the feedback. We clearly have more work to do on the Web side of Flutter. Unlike the Mobile side which has shipped 100,000s of apps, the Web side may be up to like 1000. :) So many more issues to address as we work closely with more users to get their apps into production. If you'd like to track progress on any of these, I'd encourage you (or anyone else reading) to please file issues at flutter.dev/support. We read (and try to address) each and every one which comes in via Github.
  - rektide 6y ago
    The CanvasKit renderer[1] is highly concerning to the general health of the web. It's nice that it's easy for developers, but it remove all the power of the web. To an end user, their accessibiliy tools, & user extensions, the page might as well be VNC'ed in to some system. Everything is opaque. There's no HTML elements. I can not state strongly enough how immoral & unethical this path is. Bending the web to the developers will & breaking all the contracts of what a web page is a grevious act, is enormously harmful. This is one of the worst possible things that could happen to the web. Please for god sake don't do this to us. Don't injure the web like this. This will be raised again and again and again until the ends of time as an incredible black mark on the name of Flutter. Edit: constructive feedback welcome. Whether it's me or others, folks pointing out this peril often find themselves hit by downvotes as I do now. This seems like an existential challenge for the web, to keep humans able to be in the loop when browsing the internet. We would all love if you would defend or explain or have something to offer in your critiques about this crisis. [1] https://flutter.dev/docs/development/tools/web-renderers https://flutter.dev/docs/development/tools/web-renderers
mediaman 6y ago
On safari it doesn't do that if the contents are blank, but if you type something in the email box, tab directs to the address bar. Weird. Works fine on Firefox and Chrome.
wott 6y ago
> flutterfolio.com I can't experience this problem, for my browser only displays for this site a beautiful, immaculate, plain white page :)
- ainar-g 6y ago
  If your situation is like mine, you have to wait for some fifteen seconds or so. And then greeted with a login input. Also, my CPUs were at around 50 % the whole time. I'm sorry, but if that's the “future of web UIs”, I'd rather stay with the “troglodytes”, who write simple HTML forms with a bit of vanilla scripting here and there.
pmontra 6y ago
I went there. It didn't register my first attempts to tap into the email field. I tapped the password and it worked after that. But a demo site asking to register an account to see the demos? I gave up. It almost like they are not interested to show their demos.
perryizgr8 6y ago
Also, try to select any text on that page. This is Flash all over again IMO.

by mdoms 6y ago

mgkimsal 6y ago

Strange - I didn't see that behaviour, then did on a reload, then didn't again on the next reload. ??

lwansbrough 6y ago

Haha I just read your comment, totally forgot about it, then tried to do the same thing and it happened to me too. Firefox.

hnuser123456 6y ago

works on firefox

ledak 6y ago

It strongly reminds of mid-2000s sites written in Flash

bliteben 6y ago
To be fair there were some flash sites I’ve still never seen anything that equals. I think the way flash marketed to more designers and content creators was both what made it awesome and maybe its downfall.
miohtama 6y ago
It is the same. But at least runtime, WebAssembly and canvas are open source and natively integrated to the browser. Less security holes, but the same UI integration problems. Good for games.

ClawsOnPaws 6y ago

I know I do almost nothing on HN but complain about accessibility, but it's really important to me because, well, that's how I uze my tech. And so far, sadly, Flutter hasn't impressed either with its previous versions. Edit boxes in particular were a major pain point, and things like you're describing were also less than optimal. I never knew where the focus was and what it was doing. With broken markup there was at least ways around it. But I'm scared of things that render on the canvas. Most browsers actually get this right and have support for these things that don't require ugly hacks if you use the DOM. And there is no real way to interface with assistive tech from JavaScript except through it. So you have to somehow still actually represent your apps UI in the Dom in some way.

SamBam 6y ago

Yup, that happened to me. Then I clicked again and tab worked correctly. It will be hard to overlook little details like this -- and there will be a million tiny details like this -- when decades of browser development have led us to expect a DOM experience that Just Works for UX like that.

danShumway 6y ago

The accessibility is a bigger concern, but flutterfolio.com also A) lags on my work machine when tabbing through fields B) doesn't handle HDPI screens well (the entire interface looks blurry) C) keeps fields visually indicated as selected even when I click outside of the browser (if I start typing, is it going to go into the field or not?) D) has a separate touch mode? Touch doesn't just work? Looked up another of their sample apps: A) doesn't respect my OS scroll direction B) lags on scroll C) mousing over any of the buttons has a 0.5 second delay before my cursor turns into a hand icon. And all of these sample apps take about a second to fully load for me, despite the fact that most of them aren't doing anything complicated. The "we can rebuild the browser in Canvas" idea is alive and well in GUI toolkits, but I have never seen an implementation that didn't have these kinds of basic problems. How many UI toolkits do we need to see that can't figure out how to do scrolling before we acknowledge that having one team try to independently reimplement decades of work on the web might just be a bad idea?

eseidelGoogle 6y ago
[Flutter Eng. Dir. here] I really appreciate the feedback. We clearly have more work to do on the Web side of Flutter. Unlike the Mobile side which has shipped 100,000s of apps, the Web side may be up to like 1000. :) So many more issues to address as we work closely with more users to get their apps into production. If you'd like to track progress on any of these, I'd encourage you (or anyone else reading) to please file issues at flutter.dev/support. We read (and try to address) each and every one which comes in via Github.
- rektide 6y ago
  The CanvasKit renderer[1] is highly concerning to the general health of the web. It's nice that it's easy for developers, but it remove all the power of the web. To an end user, their accessibiliy tools, & user extensions, the page might as well be VNC'ed in to some system. Everything is opaque. There's no HTML elements. I can not state strongly enough how immoral & unethical this path is. Bending the web to the developers will & breaking all the contracts of what a web page is a grevious act, is enormously harmful. This is one of the worst possible things that could happen to the web. Please for god sake don't do this to us. Don't injure the web like this. This will be raised again and again and again until the ends of time as an incredible black mark on the name of Flutter. Edit: constructive feedback welcome. Whether it's me or others, folks pointing out this peril often find themselves hit by downvotes as I do now. This seems like an existential challenge for the web, to keep humans able to be in the loop when browsing the internet. We would all love if you would defend or explain or have something to offer in your critiques about this crisis. [1] https://flutter.dev/docs/development/tools/web-renderers https://flutter.dev/docs/development/tools/web-renderers

mediaman 6y ago

On safari it doesn't do that if the contents are blank, but if you type something in the email box, tab directs to the address bar. Weird. Works fine on Firefox and Chrome.

wott 6y ago

> flutterfolio.com I can't experience this problem, for my browser only displays for this site a beautiful, immaculate, plain white page :)

ainar-g 6y ago
If your situation is like mine, you have to wait for some fifteen seconds or so. And then greeted with a login input. Also, my CPUs were at around 50 % the whole time. I'm sorry, but if that's the “future of web UIs”, I'd rather stay with the “troglodytes”, who write simple HTML forms with a bit of vanilla scripting here and there.

pmontra 6y ago

I went there. It didn't register my first attempts to tap into the email field. I tapped the password and it worked after that. But a demo site asking to register an account to see the demos? I gave up. It almost like they are not interested to show their demos.

perryizgr8 6y ago

Also, try to select any text on that page. This is Flash all over again IMO.