4 ms·

Would you then also force developers to stick with the very limited set of native components, or are they allowed to make custom ones?

donkeybeer 3y ago
Lets say a date picker was not supported in html, I'd at least prefer they made one aggregating native buttons instead of from scratch with colored divs/whatever.
Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
They can make custom ones when a native one doesn't exist. There's literally no reason to write your own implementation of a drop-down menu. Zero. None. And yet, I occasionally run into a site where I need to enter my mailing address, and they have a drop-down menu to choose my state. In a native component, I can just tab to it, type "or", and Oregon (or OR if they're using the abbreviation) will be chosen, and I can just tab on to the next input field. But every now and then, I find myself on a form where that doesn't work. It turns out, what looks like a drop-down menu is actually a fancy div, and when you click on it, another div pops up with divs for each item. Oh, but I can't even use my keyboard to choose an option! I HAVE to click! WHY DO WEB DEVS DO THIS!? What was gained by this? Someone spent time to reimplement something for absolutely zero gain, and a LOT of loss! WHY!? And my complaints don't even begin to address how the custom solution is probably awful for accessibility. You don't need to make a custom button. You don't need a custom date picker. I'm struggling to think what custom components you think need to be made.
- MereInterest 3y ago
  My best guess is that these abominations are made in order to adhere to some pre-made design that specified all the visual aspects without regard for the existing technology. If somebody gives you an export of a design made in Photoshop and says that you need to match it pixel for pixel, that design might not be readily implementable. Depending on the approvals needed, or the cost of hiring external designers, asking them to revisit the design in order to match the tech stack might be politically infeasible. So instead of design being the intersection of form and function, design becomes entirely detached from the function.
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    They can use CSS to change the design. It does not require the developer to completely rebuild the component behavior from scratch using JavaScript.

donkeybeer 3y ago

Lets say a date picker was not supported in html, I'd at least prefer they made one aggregating native buttons instead of from scratch with colored divs/whatever.

Sohcahtoa82 3y ago

They can make custom ones when a native one doesn't exist. There's literally no reason to write your own implementation of a drop-down menu. Zero. None. And yet, I occasionally run into a site where I need to enter my mailing address, and they have a drop-down menu to choose my state. In a native component, I can just tab to it, type "or", and Oregon (or OR if they're using the abbreviation) will be chosen, and I can just tab on to the next input field. But every now and then, I find myself on a form where that doesn't work. It turns out, what looks like a drop-down menu is actually a fancy div, and when you click on it, another div pops up with divs for each item. Oh, but I can't even use my keyboard to choose an option! I HAVE to click! WHY DO WEB DEVS DO THIS!? What was gained by this? Someone spent time to reimplement something for absolutely zero gain, and a LOT of loss! WHY!? And my complaints don't even begin to address how the custom solution is probably awful for accessibility. You don't need to make a custom button. You don't need a custom date picker. I'm struggling to think what custom components you think need to be made.

MereInterest 3y ago
My best guess is that these abominations are made in order to adhere to some pre-made design that specified all the visual aspects without regard for the existing technology. If somebody gives you an export of a design made in Photoshop and says that you need to match it pixel for pixel, that design might not be readily implementable. Depending on the approvals needed, or the cost of hiring external designers, asking them to revisit the design in order to match the tech stack might be politically infeasible. So instead of design being the intersection of form and function, design becomes entirely detached from the function.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  They can use CSS to change the design. It does not require the developer to completely rebuild the component behavior from scratch using JavaScript.