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Although I agree with the point made in this case about the number input (provided "inputmode" is set so a mobile device presents the right kind of keyboard), t

by jen20 4y ago

Although I agree with the point made in this case about the number input (provided "inputmode" is set so a mobile device presents the right kind of keyboard), this kind of thinking drives me nuts: > As a programmer, you might find this acceptable, but there’s a good chance your designer and/or product manager will not. I couldn't care less if a designer is unhappy with the native functionality my browser exposes, it's called a user agent for a reason. They probably aren't happy with my custom style sheet either and this idea that designers' whims can override user preferences needs to stop.

barneygale 4y ago
Bizarre, isn't it? The goal seems to be to rely entirely on Javascript and throw away any native OS/browser handling. If your designers/product managers are asking for that it's time to find another job.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  Sometimes when I want to depress myself, I try to imagine the total collective engineering-hours ever wasted re-implementing standard OS or browser controls, just because a designer did not like the aesthetic choices of the OS or browser vendor. When I think back to the least intrinsically rewarding programming tasks I've ever had, they were all along the lines of "XyzOS's combo box drop-down is ugly. Here is a Photoshop of how we think a combo box should look. Go write 10K lines of code to re-implement the functionality we could otherwise get with one line."
  - spookie 4y ago
    I totally agree with you. I guess most non-programmers would roll their eyes reading this, but honestly, stop trying to make every single web page a native app replacement. And it's nuts how far we've gone into this. Companies don't want you to run their software natively, which is fair enough. But, somehow THIS is the best anyone comes up with. It's really, quite a sad state of affairs.
esrauch 4y ago
First I think in this case the browsers are all stuck with a bad decision made in a different era because they don't want to break back compat, and there's no user or product owner who thinks this is actually the right behavior. Do you expect every user and every product to be happy with bad behavior for philosophical reasons? Second a browser is less and less a user agent and more and more just an app runtime. It's only the lingering history that separates browsers from native app runtimes and not any real difference in expected semantics about experience control.
- jen20 4y ago
  > Do you expect every user and every product to be happy with bad behavior for philosophical reasons? No but I expect them to realise the boundary of their own control. > Second a browser is less and less a user agent and more and more just an app runtime. It's only the lingering history that separates browsers from native app runtimes and not any real difference in expected semantics about experience control. This is only true if we let it be true. I detest browser applications, which almost never are accessible, never use platform-native UI, do not integrate properly with system services. Except in dire circumstances, I simply refuse to use them. I am in no way willing to give up my uniform platform to appease someone who things that every UI element should be "branded".
  - esrauch 4y ago
    I think most of your concern isn't actually relevant to this case. The point of the article is that default numeric input basically just fundamentally doesn't work unrelated to wanting "branding", it just doesn't validate user input in a way that is acceptable to either users or product owners: even if you wanted literally zero visual customization you shouldn't use it, and if you were building a native app you also wouldn't accept that behavior. And while there's a whole area about browsers becoming an app platform, this also isn't strongly relevant here because it's a meaningful problem even when building a trivial form submit. The choices here aren't branded vs unbranded, it's "does the website form submit validate user input or does it not validate user input?" Everyone wants the form to validate, and you can't reasonably validate input if you use that component, so no one can use the component.

by jen20 4y ago

barneygale 4y ago

Bizarre, isn't it? The goal seems to be to rely entirely on Javascript and throw away any native OS/browser handling. If your designers/product managers are asking for that it's time to find another job.

ryandrake 4y ago
Sometimes when I want to depress myself, I try to imagine the total collective engineering-hours ever wasted re-implementing standard OS or browser controls, just because a designer did not like the aesthetic choices of the OS or browser vendor. When I think back to the least intrinsically rewarding programming tasks I've ever had, they were all along the lines of "XyzOS's combo box drop-down is ugly. Here is a Photoshop of how we think a combo box should look. Go write 10K lines of code to re-implement the functionality we could otherwise get with one line."
- spookie 4y ago
  I totally agree with you. I guess most non-programmers would roll their eyes reading this, but honestly, stop trying to make every single web page a native app replacement. And it's nuts how far we've gone into this. Companies don't want you to run their software natively, which is fair enough. But, somehow THIS is the best anyone comes up with. It's really, quite a sad state of affairs.

esrauch 4y ago

First I think in this case the browsers are all stuck with a bad decision made in a different era because they don't want to break back compat, and there's no user or product owner who thinks this is actually the right behavior. Do you expect every user and every product to be happy with bad behavior for philosophical reasons? Second a browser is less and less a user agent and more and more just an app runtime. It's only the lingering history that separates browsers from native app runtimes and not any real difference in expected semantics about experience control.

jen20 4y ago
> Do you expect every user and every product to be happy with bad behavior for philosophical reasons? No but I expect them to realise the boundary of their own control. > Second a browser is less and less a user agent and more and more just an app runtime. It's only the lingering history that separates browsers from native app runtimes and not any real difference in expected semantics about experience control. This is only true if we let it be true. I detest browser applications, which almost never are accessible, never use platform-native UI, do not integrate properly with system services. Except in dire circumstances, I simply refuse to use them. I am in no way willing to give up my uniform platform to appease someone who things that every UI element should be "branded".
- esrauch 4y ago
  I think most of your concern isn't actually relevant to this case. The point of the article is that default numeric input basically just fundamentally doesn't work unrelated to wanting "branding", it just doesn't validate user input in a way that is acceptable to either users or product owners: even if you wanted literally zero visual customization you shouldn't use it, and if you were building a native app you also wouldn't accept that behavior. And while there's a whole area about browsers becoming an app platform, this also isn't strongly relevant here because it's a meaningful problem even when building a trivial form submit. The choices here aren't branded vs unbranded, it's "does the website form submit validate user input or does it not validate user input?" Everyone wants the form to validate, and you can't reasonably validate input if you use that component, so no one can use the component.