12 ms·

Yup -- it's annoying that Safari does this, but that's Apple for you. Ensuring that webapps have a worse experience than native ones is presumably considered a

Yup -- it's annoying that Safari does this, but that's Apple for you. Ensuring that webapps have a worse experience than native ones is presumably considered a feature.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
Safari is perfectly fine, thank you. When I swipe back, I want to go back to the previous website, where I came from. I don't care about your website's bespoke little internal navigation system.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  While I completely agree with you for normal websites, web apps are an entirely different beast. I think it's quite reasonable that applications have some extra logic to deal with navigation, because they're built for complex interaction, not for displaying information. I think it's quite reasonable to want to respond to a back gesture to cancel a modal that asks if you're sure about deleting <some resource>. You could render everything server side to get website-like navigation, but for these things JS is probably one of the better mechanisms to make user interaction more pleasing. This stuff should absolutely be kept away from news sites, blogs and other web resources because they're awful enough already with their constant popups about signing up for newsletters, accepting notifications and pitiful pleas to use their app. For your average PWA, though, this is definitely a bad thing.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > web apps are an entirely different beast. They are not. They are websites running inside a browser. So, they must respect the browser. If they pretend to be standalone and not care about the browser, it's their own fault, and not the browser's. And yes. The browser cannot distinguish between your shitty "web app" and a regular site.
  - aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
    >This stuff should absolutely be kept away from news sites, blogs and other web resources because they're awful enough already with their constant popups about signing up for newsletters, accepting notifications and pitiful pleas to use their app I’m sure these sites would respect your wishes and not use this for nefarious purposes! You see, features like this would make the Web worse for 99.99% of users by enabling shitty websites’ abuses, while making it just a tiny bit better for those who insist on the subpar experience of running general purpose applications in their browsers. So yeah, that’s gonna be a no from me.
    - cyral 5y ago
      The History API [1] already allows browsers to change the back button behavior. Safari seems to ignore it when the swipe is large enough to trigger the back animation though, but it is most definitely a thing on desktop. [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History
      - jb_s 5y ago
        yep I love accidentally visiting Business Insider and having to click back about 30 times through clickbait to leave the godawful place
- lewantmontreal 5y ago
  This is something I’ve been thinking about lately. What real benefits are there to keeping entire web services as a single page apps? We could run the same reacty things as multi page apps if loading time is kept low, which should be easier since we don’t need to load the entire set of features.
  - csande17 5y ago
    There aren't really many benefits to single-page apps, outside niche use cases like "offline first" websites. People make single-page apps either because they're misinformed (see every single reference to Javascript enabling "flicker-free" navigation; modern browsers do not flicker when changing pages), or because they're trying to pave over performance problems caused by their single-page app framework.
    - hezedu 5y ago
      In Webview(not the browser), you cannot open in a new window.At this time, single-page applications should be good.
  - cyral 5y ago
    The largest benefit is initializing and requesting things once. For example, Twitter is a single page app and is built the same way you would build a native app. The code needed to render it is downloaded once, and only small API requests are made to fetch content as needed. Sure, it could be built as a regular website (as it once was), but it runs even better now since it doesn't have to re-render and re-initialize everything on each "page". It uses the History API so the back/forward buttons still work as expected.
    - lewantmontreal 5y ago
      For me twitter the website runs very slow and does not feel snappy at all, e.g. you have to wait for tweets to load again after back button, and replies to load after each transition. Perhaps it is easier on the servers but very, very few services run on twitter scale.
hackmiester 5y ago
What should it do instead when you pull from the left side of the screen?
- warning26 5y ago
  Their behavior is fine, but the problem is that there's no way to detect it. If it was possible to check if the user had used the swipe gesture, then it would be possible to use that to control whether or not to display the custom animation, preventing a double-animation scenario.
  - mikewhy 5y ago
    You can detect if the interaction started from the side of the screen. From there, you can do something different when the history is manipulated.
    - warning26 5y ago
      That wouldn't work, since Safari completely intercepts the touch event if it's a back gesture. Pressing the back button in the browser is indistinguishable in code from the back swipe gesture.

Yup -- it's annoying that Safari does this, but that's Apple for you. Ensuring that webapps have a worse experience than native ones is presumably considered a feature.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago

Safari is perfectly fine, thank you. When I swipe back, I want to go back to the previous website, where I came from. I don't care about your website's bespoke little internal navigation system.

jeroenhd 5y ago
While I completely agree with you for normal websites, web apps are an entirely different beast. I think it's quite reasonable that applications have some extra logic to deal with navigation, because they're built for complex interaction, not for displaying information. I think it's quite reasonable to want to respond to a back gesture to cancel a modal that asks if you're sure about deleting <some resource>. You could render everything server side to get website-like navigation, but for these things JS is probably one of the better mechanisms to make user interaction more pleasing. This stuff should absolutely be kept away from news sites, blogs and other web resources because they're awful enough already with their constant popups about signing up for newsletters, accepting notifications and pitiful pleas to use their app. For your average PWA, though, this is definitely a bad thing.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > web apps are an entirely different beast. They are not. They are websites running inside a browser. So, they must respect the browser. If they pretend to be standalone and not care about the browser, it's their own fault, and not the browser's. And yes. The browser cannot distinguish between your shitty "web app" and a regular site.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
  >This stuff should absolutely be kept away from news sites, blogs and other web resources because they're awful enough already with their constant popups about signing up for newsletters, accepting notifications and pitiful pleas to use their app I’m sure these sites would respect your wishes and not use this for nefarious purposes! You see, features like this would make the Web worse for 99.99% of users by enabling shitty websites’ abuses, while making it just a tiny bit better for those who insist on the subpar experience of running general purpose applications in their browsers. So yeah, that’s gonna be a no from me.
  - cyral 5y ago
    The History API [1] already allows browsers to change the back button behavior. Safari seems to ignore it when the swipe is large enough to trigger the back animation though, but it is most definitely a thing on desktop. [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History
    - jb_s 5y ago
      yep I love accidentally visiting Business Insider and having to click back about 30 times through clickbait to leave the godawful place
lewantmontreal 5y ago
This is something I’ve been thinking about lately. What real benefits are there to keeping entire web services as a single page apps? We could run the same reacty things as multi page apps if loading time is kept low, which should be easier since we don’t need to load the entire set of features.
- csande17 5y ago
  There aren't really many benefits to single-page apps, outside niche use cases like "offline first" websites. People make single-page apps either because they're misinformed (see every single reference to Javascript enabling "flicker-free" navigation; modern browsers do not flicker when changing pages), or because they're trying to pave over performance problems caused by their single-page app framework.
  - hezedu 5y ago
    In Webview(not the browser), you cannot open in a new window.At this time, single-page applications should be good.
- cyral 5y ago
  The largest benefit is initializing and requesting things once. For example, Twitter is a single page app and is built the same way you would build a native app. The code needed to render it is downloaded once, and only small API requests are made to fetch content as needed. Sure, it could be built as a regular website (as it once was), but it runs even better now since it doesn't have to re-render and re-initialize everything on each "page". It uses the History API so the back/forward buttons still work as expected.
  - lewantmontreal 5y ago
    For me twitter the website runs very slow and does not feel snappy at all, e.g. you have to wait for tweets to load again after back button, and replies to load after each transition. Perhaps it is easier on the servers but very, very few services run on twitter scale.

hackmiester 5y ago

What should it do instead when you pull from the left side of the screen?

warning26 5y ago
Their behavior is fine, but the problem is that there's no way to detect it. If it was possible to check if the user had used the swipe gesture, then it would be possible to use that to control whether or not to display the custom animation, preventing a double-animation scenario.
- mikewhy 5y ago
  You can detect if the interaction started from the side of the screen. From there, you can do something different when the history is manipulated.
  - warning26 5y ago
    That wouldn't work, since Safari completely intercepts the touch event if it's a back gesture. Pressing the back button in the browser is indistinguishable in code from the back swipe gesture.