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Many, many web developers would disagree with your assertion that you can't build great apps (including desktop and mobile (hello Electron and Capacitor)), or t

Many, many web developers would disagree with your assertion that you can't build great apps (including desktop and mobile (hello Electron and Capacitor)), or that the UI technologies available to web developers are a "hack" or aren't actually extremely productive and enjoyable to use. The argument that the web is only for documents and not app experiences is simply a relic of a different time.

Aaargh20318 4y ago
> your assertion you can't build great apps (including desktop and mobile (hello Electron and Capacitor)) I have yet to see a great app built on web technology. All Electron apps provide a terrible UX, they are slow, unresponsive and feel out of place with the rest of the OS I'm running on. I want my apps to feel native, to look and feel exactly like all other apps. One of the greatest tragedies of web UI's is the lack of a standard UI toolkit. Almost evert web-based app has to roll their own UI components, there is no consistency. This is terrible for usability, especially for users that are not as tech-savvy as we are. It's one thing to have to explain what a certain UI component is and does once, but it gets infinitely worse if every app has their own spin on it. Who doesn't love teaching their grandma 1232043 different variations on a checkbox ?
- yesimahuman 4y ago
  This is just your opinion and perception then, because Electron apps have been hugely commercially successful and teams using it have built very strong experiences that users love. If they were so "terrible" and "out of place" users would reject them, and they don't. The HN crowd has been consistently wrong about this.
  - Aaargh20318 4y ago
    > If they were so "terrible" and "out of place" users would reject them, and they don't. You are acting like users have a choice. For example: Microsoft Teams is an abomination of an app. It's slow, clunky, eats memory like there is no tomorrow and feels totally out of place on macOS. Still it's a huge commercial succes and I use it every day, even though as a user I absolutely hate it. I simply have to use it because my employer chose it as the company collaboration tool. And they didn't choose it because of it's incredible UX, they chose it because we already have an Office365 subscription and it was included in that, so we already paid for it anyway. Some Electron apps have been huge commercial successes despite their terrible UX.
    - yesimahuman 4y ago
      You are certainly entitled to feel that way about Teams and these kinds of apps. My point is that's just your opinion and doesn't necessarily reflect the majority of the users of those products. I can just as easily say that I love the UX of Spotify/Slack/Discord/etc and don't care at all that they don't use platform UI controls to render most of the app.
  - layer8 4y ago
    > strong experiences that users love Oh my god, that sounds so cringey, right out of a marketing copy. It’s hard to wrap my head around someone writing this with a straight face.
    - yesimahuman 4y ago
      Ah yes, the classic attacking of the author instead of engaging in a debate on substance
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  In fairness we seem to have managed to cock up the standard UI toolkit on native applications as well. Things like office, chrome, Spotify all invent there own UI these days.
  - layer8 4y ago
    That’s strongly influenced (actually, caused) by mobile UI design, though. For all the benefits of mobile, it is destroying the desktop UI experience.
spideymans 4y ago
> or that the UI technologies available to web developers are a "hack" In the year 2022, multitouch gestures on the web still feel janky and wierd and just don’t work all that well.

Aaargh20318 4y ago

> your assertion you can't build great apps (including desktop and mobile (hello Electron and Capacitor)) I have yet to see a great app built on web technology. All Electron apps provide a terrible UX, they are slow, unresponsive and feel out of place with the rest of the OS I'm running on. I want my apps to feel native, to look and feel exactly like all other apps. One of the greatest tragedies of web UI's is the lack of a standard UI toolkit. Almost evert web-based app has to roll their own UI components, there is no consistency. This is terrible for usability, especially for users that are not as tech-savvy as we are. It's one thing to have to explain what a certain UI component is and does once, but it gets infinitely worse if every app has their own spin on it. Who doesn't love teaching their grandma 1232043 different variations on a checkbox ?

yesimahuman 4y ago
This is just your opinion and perception then, because Electron apps have been hugely commercially successful and teams using it have built very strong experiences that users love. If they were so "terrible" and "out of place" users would reject them, and they don't. The HN crowd has been consistently wrong about this.
- Aaargh20318 4y ago
  > If they were so "terrible" and "out of place" users would reject them, and they don't. You are acting like users have a choice. For example: Microsoft Teams is an abomination of an app. It's slow, clunky, eats memory like there is no tomorrow and feels totally out of place on macOS. Still it's a huge commercial succes and I use it every day, even though as a user I absolutely hate it. I simply have to use it because my employer chose it as the company collaboration tool. And they didn't choose it because of it's incredible UX, they chose it because we already have an Office365 subscription and it was included in that, so we already paid for it anyway. Some Electron apps have been huge commercial successes despite their terrible UX.
  - yesimahuman 4y ago
    You are certainly entitled to feel that way about Teams and these kinds of apps. My point is that's just your opinion and doesn't necessarily reflect the majority of the users of those products. I can just as easily say that I love the UX of Spotify/Slack/Discord/etc and don't care at all that they don't use platform UI controls to render most of the app.
- layer8 4y ago
  > strong experiences that users love Oh my god, that sounds so cringey, right out of a marketing copy. It’s hard to wrap my head around someone writing this with a straight face.
  - yesimahuman 4y ago
    Ah yes, the classic attacking of the author instead of engaging in a debate on substance
VBprogrammer 4y ago
In fairness we seem to have managed to cock up the standard UI toolkit on native applications as well. Things like office, chrome, Spotify all invent there own UI these days.
- layer8 4y ago
  That’s strongly influenced (actually, caused) by mobile UI design, though. For all the benefits of mobile, it is destroying the desktop UI experience.

spideymans 4y ago

> or that the UI technologies available to web developers are a "hack" In the year 2022, multitouch gestures on the web still feel janky and wierd and just don’t work all that well.