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The main thing that makes a non-native app stand out today isn’t performance, it’s all the little UI inconsistencies. And not just the shapes and colors; the fo

The main thing that makes a non-native app stand out today isn’t performance, it’s all the little UI inconsistencies. And not just the shapes and colors; the font sizes, the types of transitions that happen between screens, the “pressed” and “loading” states on buttons (or lack thereof), etc. The modern web gives you everything you need to do all these things, but you don’t get them for free. And many devs don’t think to implement these details, and even if they do give them attention and make the experience good, it may still be inconsistent with the host platform. That’s what’s hard. For this app it makes total sense, because it already seems to have a pretty custom look and feel; there’s nothing that needs imitating. Many others out there are probably in a similar boat, but certainly not all of them.

nicolas_17 5y ago
The number of "native" apps where I discover I can select and copy UI elements because it's all actually HTML...
- brundolf 5y ago
  Yeah. You can prevent that too with a CSS property, but again, it’s not the default; you have to have enough time and attention to detail to go out of your way and handle it
  - hedora 5y ago
    My favorite feature in recent iOS is that you can defeat that CSS property by taking a screenshot and letting the phone OCR the image, then copy paste from the result. Disabling copy is abused by all sorts of apps. (Yelp street addresses are a prime offender.). I’m not convinced allowing it to be disabled is a net positive.
    - brundolf 5y ago
      It’s fairly essential for things like buttons and tabs that get tapped all the time and have mostly non-content text. But it does need to be used sparingly
- magnio 5y ago
  Isn't that a good thing? Text should be selectable and copyable by default, since that does not induce any harm whether the user do it or not, but the reverse is not true. The number of times a Windows UI shows me an non-copyable error code is vastly greater than the number of times I wish I cannot select any text (which is zero).
  - blub 5y ago
    The copied content is often mixed nonsense like a comment combined with a button text. How often do you want to copy button text like “Ok”, “Cancel”, etc? Never…
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      It's pretty handy when reporting an error or bug. Often the text is more involved than ok/cancel.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    I don't know about the Windows 10/11 UWP stuff, but in any good version of Windows you can hit control+c on any standard dialog to copy the error text and the text of all buttons to your clipboard. It's a little annoying that you can't easily make subselections in dialogs, but that's been a core Windows UI design element going back to Windows 1.0. It's a grossly underadvertised feature of Windows and I bet the people reimplementing the Windows UI for the third time in ten years don't know about it either.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    On iPhones at least with latest OS, using built in OCR is supposed to be especially easy now. Maybe that has been exaggerated now, but if it is a one step thing, that could be better than being able to copy as copying stuff sometimes includes things you don’t want and can’t exclude.
- Y-bar 5y ago
  This used to be the norm on older versions of Mac OS, and that was good. It would help enormously when writing blog posts (e.g. copy the descriptive text somewhere rather than transcribing it) or searching the web for the content of a en error message that popped up.
chris_nielsen 5y ago
Hey, author here. Yeah you make a really good point, if I had to start an app today where the visual design was pretty close to the default iOS and Android styles that would definitely be a factor. Funnily enough though (and this might just be my lack of skill in iOS development) I always find the UIKit components surprisingly tough to customize.
- jen20 5y ago
  > I always find the UIKit components surprisingly tough to customize. Good - apps should look and feel like the platform.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    Not if you're trying to make a playful app design like the author is doing. This design is halfway between a normal application and a game. I would do silly things like clickable image views to get the style right if buttons don't provide the necessary customisability, were I in the author's position. I don't think anyone would be happy with that. I'm all for platform consistency, which there is very little of these days, but for every API you restrict someone will find a good reason to work around it and that's where the ugly hacks come in.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    Really disagree with this. Apps are rarely unique to a platform, and most users aren't on a single platform. I want Google Maps to look the same on the web regardless if I'm on macOS, Linux or Windows, and on my Android phone.
    - jen20 5y ago
      On the web that is fine. As a native app, it should fit in with the platform. On iPhone Google use the Android design language, and it produces apps which simply do not meet expectations.
- hnaccount_rng 5y ago
  I would bet the last thing is intentional. iOS has a reasonably high level of consistency over all apps. Mostly because it’s hard to customize UI elements. And that’s what at least I like about it most
tomcam 5y ago
Do you think muggles actually care about this? I tend to doubt it but I am asking with an open mind.
- brundolf 5y ago
  I think small bits of irregularity in a UX breed uncertainty, which breeds anxiety, probably even moreso for non-technical people who can’t quantify what they’re seeing. It may not be something conscious that they can articulate, but I’m confident that it matters.
- saurik 5y ago
  I also always wonder this, as it constantly seems like the only people I know who care are people who have gone out of their way to study UI; everyone else seems to find bespoke UIs "fun". It certainly doesn't seem to have hurt game developers much that every game has an unrelated UI..
  - rapsey 5y ago
    Also desktop cross platform native GUIs. Programmers always complain about this, but most users are on windows and for them the GUI is just going to be ugly. No user is going to care that it is native.
- DecoPerson 5y ago
  Absolutely do non-tech-savvy people care about this. It’s like a film — they may not be able to explain it, but they know a good film from a bad one. I’m the “tech guru” for many of those who know me, and I’ve seen people of all ages struggle with mobile UIs. There’s two axes with two values, making four categories that I find problems fall into: - Simple concept + familiar UI: User is at fault (usually a misconception). I rarely see problems in this category. - Complex concept + familiar UI: User struggles to understand what they’re trying to achieve. A little bit of extra info helps them make sense of the situation. Very easy to help the user over the phone in this situation. Often, thanks to good UI, the user figures it out themselves. - Simple concept + strange UI: The user knows what they want to do but can’t understand what the UI is conveying, can’t find the UI controls, can’t express what they want via the UI controls, or sometimes don’t even realise something is interact-able. Even if the user understands the concept, they often struggle to succeed after stumbling their way through the app for any length of time, and need assistance. Apple iOS’s “swipe from different corners to get notifications & control panel & home & etc” and “three fingers/hold to do textual things” are good examples of this. - Complex concept + strange UI: Situations in this category can get so difficult & time-consuming that it’s often easy to just do what the user is asking for on their behalf, or give them a step by step process they can repeat. The things that make a UI familiar or otherwise are subtle, like what makes a film good or bad. UI/UX designers come up with all these “clever” ways to do things, like the breadcrumbs interface on the Notion app, but many users simply don’t figure out how to use them. And they don’t think to use an element/gesture when they seek to achieve the very things which that element/gesture achieves.

nicolas_17 5y ago

The number of "native" apps where I discover I can select and copy UI elements because it's all actually HTML...

brundolf 5y ago
Yeah. You can prevent that too with a CSS property, but again, it’s not the default; you have to have enough time and attention to detail to go out of your way and handle it
- hedora 5y ago
  My favorite feature in recent iOS is that you can defeat that CSS property by taking a screenshot and letting the phone OCR the image, then copy paste from the result. Disabling copy is abused by all sorts of apps. (Yelp street addresses are a prime offender.). I’m not convinced allowing it to be disabled is a net positive.
  - brundolf 5y ago
    It’s fairly essential for things like buttons and tabs that get tapped all the time and have mostly non-content text. But it does need to be used sparingly
magnio 5y ago
Isn't that a good thing? Text should be selectable and copyable by default, since that does not induce any harm whether the user do it or not, but the reverse is not true. The number of times a Windows UI shows me an non-copyable error code is vastly greater than the number of times I wish I cannot select any text (which is zero).
- blub 5y ago
  The copied content is often mixed nonsense like a comment combined with a button text. How often do you want to copy button text like “Ok”, “Cancel”, etc? Never…
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    It's pretty handy when reporting an error or bug. Often the text is more involved than ok/cancel.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  I don't know about the Windows 10/11 UWP stuff, but in any good version of Windows you can hit control+c on any standard dialog to copy the error text and the text of all buttons to your clipboard. It's a little annoying that you can't easily make subselections in dialogs, but that's been a core Windows UI design element going back to Windows 1.0. It's a grossly underadvertised feature of Windows and I bet the people reimplementing the Windows UI for the third time in ten years don't know about it either.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  On iPhones at least with latest OS, using built in OCR is supposed to be especially easy now. Maybe that has been exaggerated now, but if it is a one step thing, that could be better than being able to copy as copying stuff sometimes includes things you don’t want and can’t exclude.
Y-bar 5y ago
This used to be the norm on older versions of Mac OS, and that was good. It would help enormously when writing blog posts (e.g. copy the descriptive text somewhere rather than transcribing it) or searching the web for the content of a en error message that popped up.

chris_nielsen 5y ago

Hey, author here. Yeah you make a really good point, if I had to start an app today where the visual design was pretty close to the default iOS and Android styles that would definitely be a factor. Funnily enough though (and this might just be my lack of skill in iOS development) I always find the UIKit components surprisingly tough to customize.

jen20 5y ago
> I always find the UIKit components surprisingly tough to customize. Good - apps should look and feel like the platform.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  Not if you're trying to make a playful app design like the author is doing. This design is halfway between a normal application and a game. I would do silly things like clickable image views to get the style right if buttons don't provide the necessary customisability, were I in the author's position. I don't think anyone would be happy with that. I'm all for platform consistency, which there is very little of these days, but for every API you restrict someone will find a good reason to work around it and that's where the ugly hacks come in.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Really disagree with this. Apps are rarely unique to a platform, and most users aren't on a single platform. I want Google Maps to look the same on the web regardless if I'm on macOS, Linux or Windows, and on my Android phone.
  - jen20 5y ago
    On the web that is fine. As a native app, it should fit in with the platform. On iPhone Google use the Android design language, and it produces apps which simply do not meet expectations.
hnaccount_rng 5y ago
I would bet the last thing is intentional. iOS has a reasonably high level of consistency over all apps. Mostly because it’s hard to customize UI elements. And that’s what at least I like about it most

tomcam 5y ago

Do you think muggles actually care about this? I tend to doubt it but I am asking with an open mind.

brundolf 5y ago
I think small bits of irregularity in a UX breed uncertainty, which breeds anxiety, probably even moreso for non-technical people who can’t quantify what they’re seeing. It may not be something conscious that they can articulate, but I’m confident that it matters.
saurik 5y ago
I also always wonder this, as it constantly seems like the only people I know who care are people who have gone out of their way to study UI; everyone else seems to find bespoke UIs "fun". It certainly doesn't seem to have hurt game developers much that every game has an unrelated UI..
- rapsey 5y ago
  Also desktop cross platform native GUIs. Programmers always complain about this, but most users are on windows and for them the GUI is just going to be ugly. No user is going to care that it is native.
DecoPerson 5y ago
Absolutely do non-tech-savvy people care about this. It’s like a film — they may not be able to explain it, but they know a good film from a bad one. I’m the “tech guru” for many of those who know me, and I’ve seen people of all ages struggle with mobile UIs. There’s two axes with two values, making four categories that I find problems fall into: - Simple concept + familiar UI: User is at fault (usually a misconception). I rarely see problems in this category. - Complex concept + familiar UI: User struggles to understand what they’re trying to achieve. A little bit of extra info helps them make sense of the situation. Very easy to help the user over the phone in this situation. Often, thanks to good UI, the user figures it out themselves. - Simple concept + strange UI: The user knows what they want to do but can’t understand what the UI is conveying, can’t find the UI controls, can’t express what they want via the UI controls, or sometimes don’t even realise something is interact-able. Even if the user understands the concept, they often struggle to succeed after stumbling their way through the app for any length of time, and need assistance. Apple iOS’s “swipe from different corners to get notifications & control panel & home & etc” and “three fingers/hold to do textual things” are good examples of this. - Complex concept + strange UI: Situations in this category can get so difficult & time-consuming that it’s often easy to just do what the user is asking for on their behalf, or give them a step by step process they can repeat. The things that make a UI familiar or otherwise are subtle, like what makes a film good or bad. UI/UX designers come up with all these “clever” ways to do things, like the breadcrumbs interface on the Notion app, but many users simply don’t figure out how to use them. And they don’t think to use an element/gesture when they seek to achieve the very things which that element/gesture achieves.