8 ms·

Trying to Recreate iOS on the Web

• reddalo 2y ago
  It's impressive, but it's completely broken on Macs with a normal mouse connected and Firefox, because scrollbars appear everywhere and they break the layout.
• kookamamie 2y ago
  The icons look blurry.
  • aziaziazi 2y ago
    Device, OS and browser names (versions are even better) would probably help a lot the site author to fix it. Looks nice on iPhone 12 mini iOS 18.0.1 and iPhone SE iOS 15.8.3, both safari.
    • MrMid 2y ago
      On desktop Firefox (133) on Ubuntu (24.10) it does look blurry.
    • kookamamie 2y ago
      Good point. The setup was Windows/Chrome/1440p.
  • graup 2y ago
    Blurry for me too, Chrome on Mac OS on a non-retina external display.
  • mensetmanusman 2y ago
    Crystal clear for me - nice! ip16pm
  • llm_nerd 2y ago
    The "screen" div has a transform scale attached, which on Chromium based browsers (Chrome, Edge, etc) leads to blurriness.
• jsheard 2y ago
  Remember when optimizing sites for mobile was new and everyones first impulse was to unironically turn their site into a fake iOS app? Those were the days.
  • starfezzy 2y ago
    No.
    • davidavidavid 2y ago
      [flagged]
  • zoover2020 2y ago
    I still see the fake, 2010 era mobile banners bases on my device' user agent
  • gpmcadam 2y ago
    The biggest contributor to this was jQuery Mobile. Surprisingly, the "ThemeRoller" is still up, despite the project being discontinued. Quite a fun trip down memory lane. https://themeroller.jquerymobile.com https://themeroller.jquerymobile.com
    • moolcool 2y ago
      Take me back
    • m_st 2y ago
      Don't laugh, but we still have a big software solution based on jQuery Mobile up and running, used daily by hundreds of users on tablets and smartphones, and getting new features every few weeks. (yes, a successor is planned, but it will be a huge amount of work)
    • patwolf 2y ago
      I kind of miss the days where building a mobile app was just plopping giant widgets on a screen, and we didn't need giant figma files and design languages. I don't, however, miss dealing with the 300ms click delay.
• fatih-erikli-cg 2y ago
  [dead]
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• yesimahuman 2y ago
  Really nice, and I say that as someone that built a quite popular mobile web framework that duplicated a lot of iOS UI (Ionic). One thing I noticed is the swipe gestures aren’t working. This is all very doable on the web which many people don’t believe. It’s pretty wild what the web platform is capable of, the gap is absolutely with web devs who don’t know how to put the many modern APIs and capabilities into practice.
  • indeyets 2y ago
    It’s usually the difference between having a low-level api and high-level api. iOS gives a lot “for free”. Creating stuff from scratch is not a fun experience
    • duxup 2y ago
      >Creating stuff from scratch is not a fun experience It's one of those things that I love the idea of doing. I'd love to create my own look and feel and design. But day to day at my job I just need a dang button that does the thing or transition between things, a spinner or ... whatever.
      • Maxion 2y ago
        And the amount of fine-tuning done on ios for the various gestures is quite astounding. Re-creating them using browser APIs isn't really entire possible.
        • yesimahuman 2y ago
          You can extremely close if not imperceptibly there for a lot of interactions. The bigger issue is actually mobile browser “chrome” getting in the way (i.e. baked in gestures in mobile browsers)
    • jeffhuys 2y ago
      > Creating stuff from scratch is not a fun experience I'd have to say that I completely disagree here - it's one of the things I get most fun out of, even at work.
• nmstoker 2y ago
  Authentic in so far as there's no back button and using it in Android backs you out of the whole site!
  • ThatMedicIsASpy 2y ago
    I don't even know how to go back on ios so I am stuck on firefox.
    • esskay 2y ago
      Fun anecdote, firefox on iOS is still broken years after its launch. If you play a video in horizontal mode, then go back to horizontal mode the bottom bar vanishes and never comes back, meaning to actually manage tabs you have to keep your iphone horizontal.
      • nmstoker 2y ago
        I like Firefox but with mobile they do seem to sit on pretty major bugs for multiple years
        • Jotalea 2y ago
          On Android it is a pretty normal experience, I haven't found any bugs yet.
  • aziaziazi 2y ago
    Tap on the button line. AFAIK there’s no such a think as back button in iOS. Apps can display one from the SDK but don’t if no need. Going to the homescreen is done by swiping from bottom on iOS. This site doesn’t handle swipe and use the bottom bar visual indicator as a home button like in the old’ days. As a long time user I find it evident but totally get that it’s not obvious for those not accustomed
  • radicality 2y ago
    I normally use iOS, but recently got a Pixel as a secondary phone. Whenever I try to use the Pixel and swipe “back” or “forward” (left and right), often times something I wasn’t expecting happens, I think my mental model is missing/incorrect of what “back” is on Android.
• deanc 2y ago
  I once did something like this for Nokia when their phones moved to Windows Phone. The devil is in the details, and 90% of the time was spent mimicking the animations and transitions.
• Jackknife9 2y ago
  They really missed the opportunity to show a gorilla or something when you flip the camera.
• byyoung3 2y ago
  looks good. Main thing is the swipe gestures need some work
• coder543 2y ago
  Thinking about what feels different here, there are a couple of things that could be fun to implement: - On iOS, opening and closing an app also scales and blurs/unblurs the wallpaper at the same time that it’s animating the app entering/exiting the foreground. - Also, years ago, Apple added a very subtle 3D effect to the Home Screen. Essentially, when you’re looking at the Home Screen, as you tilt the phone, the icons and widgets move a few pixels in the direction of the tilt, which makes it feel like they’re popping out of the screen a little. To study the effect in detail, you can just look at the edge of an icon or the text below an icon and tilt the screen around and notice how it moves relative to the background image. It’s meant to be a very subtle effect, not some garishly dramatic effect.
  • mentalgear 2y ago
    I actually added the parallax effect back in my version of iOS 7 on the web (2013). It was meant for people to check the new design out on their phones before upgrading. You could even open/zoom into folders. Spend quite too much time on it, but it was quite novel back then. https://streamable.com/pki7ux https://streamable.com/pki7ux
  • afavour 2y ago
    I did that parallax background effect on a web site many years ago. Unfortunately (but understandably) accelerometer data is now behind a permission prompt on the web. Displaying a garish modal permission prompt so that you can do a subtle background transition doesn't make sense as a tradeoff.
    • KTibow 2y ago
      I'm a bit confused, what permissions would this animation require?
      • kossae 2y ago
        Accelerometer data from the phone in order to determine the position for the parallax effect.
      • 2y ago
• notum 2y ago
  [flagged]
• codefeenix 2y ago
  Here I was expecting to see emulated Cisco software
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• thih9 2y ago
  Loosely related, there are frameworks for recreating native UI for mobile apps written in JS, e.g: https://framework7.io/ https://framework7.io/ > free and open source framework to develop mobile, desktop or web apps with native look and feel
  • mentalgear 2y ago
    yup, also used the excellent swiper.js by the same guy back in 2013 for a homescreen clone.
    • xattt 2y ago
      Sproutcore.js was the framework used for early day iCloud. It was super snappy and got implemented for the Web UI on Transmission.
  • sroussey 2y ago
    Here is a demo page of the individual ui widgets for iOS: https://framework7.io/kitchen-sink/core/?theme=ios https://framework7.io/kitchen-sink/core/?theme=ios
  • redbell 2y ago
    There's another great one called Konsta UI: https://konstaui.com/ https://konstaui.com/ . Live demo here: https://konstaui.com/kitchen-sink/react/dist/ https://konstaui.com/kitchen-sink/react/dist/
• mentalgear 2y ago
  Well done! This reminds me of my own recreation (11 years ago!) of the iOS 7 homescreen as a webapp! :P
• solarkraft 2y ago
  I thought this would be about the interactions that are so charactetistically iOS and are hard to recreate on the web. Well, it seems that the things that are hard to recreate have been omitted, making this not all that interesting. On that note: It would be interesting to see something that actually does this.
  • toastercat 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • rw_panic0_0 2y ago
      your commenting here is wasted effort
  • Jotalea 2y ago
    I've been trying to do that, though it's not entirely finished yet. Settings-like app: https://jotalea.com.ar/iOS https://jotalea.com.ar/iOS Homescreen test: https://jotalea.com.ar/tests/animations.html https://jotalea.com.ar/tests/animations.html
• hk1337 2y ago
  It even replicates how annoying it is to swipe with a mouse.
• klausa 2y ago
  My main takeaways from this are: — wow there sure are a lot of subleties in iOS animations and interactions that seem very _very_ hard to replicate — why is my brain _so good_ and noticing those little things?! I shouldn't be able to notice that the battery indicator is too thick; that the squircles are not continnous, or that the curves on all animations are just ever so slightly off.
• oefrha 2y ago
  Nice, the most jarring difference to me is when you scroll up in Photos or Settings, the topmost area isn’t blurred.
• maxcruer 2y ago
  at least the calculator should work...
• btown 2y ago
  https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=linux%20touchpad%20like%20macbook&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... is a parallel saga for mimicking the macOS touchpad behavior on Linux; it's been a full 8 years in the making. It's so much more than acceleration settings! I really appreciate, and will buy a beverage of choice anytime for, anyone who tries to go down these paths, including OP, whether with web or desktop technology. Painstakingly mimicking, then eventually improving on, Apple's interactivity/motion design is IMHO one of those things that could make open-source desktops a superior option to both Windows and Apple from a mainstream user viewpoint, and those possibilities should be cherished.
  • awesomeMilou 2y ago
    I've tried looking up the source code, but this seems to be the CEO of a security company blogging about their closed source side project.
  • ant6n 2y ago
    I’m not sure why people always praise Apple on interaction Design. I just got a MacBook again, and there’s little things that just drive me crazy: when you use tap-to-drag on macOS, there’s a delay when releasing the drag (presumably so u can continue dragging by putting the finger back down). This doesn’t exist in windows or Linux, so when working with multiple OSs, one keeps mis-dragging, making a big mess every time. But there doesn’t seem to be a setting for it, either. Or why does Apple insist on having a non-standard keyboard in Germany, it doesn’t even have characters like ~{}[] on it, only accessible via hidden key combinations that don’t match the standard keyboard. Oh and the US keyboard is only available in the Apple Store, where everything is 200€ more expensive. Just like, why mess with basic interaction design in a way that’s really unrefined and infuriating.
    • samatman 2y ago
      Something being unfamiliar doesn't make it worse. Or better necessarily, but it seems noteworthy that your frustration is with a feature designed to make it possible to drag draggable things around without losing them if your finger leaves the trackpad for an instant. > Or why does Apple insist on having a non-standard keyboard in Germany, This: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MXCL3D/A/magic-keyboard-usb-c-german https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MXCL3D/A/magic-keyboard-u... Appears to my eye to match this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_keyboard_layout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_keyboard_layout Precisely. I just switched to the german layout, which has some amusing consequences for words like layout, but: []{}~, looks like everything is where Wikipedia says that a T1 German layout should put things. What's the complaint exactly? Because it's not that the keyboard is nonstandard, is it? If you'd rather use another layout, you very easily can, right? I mean, I just did.
• EugeneOZ 2y ago
  Font size in inputs should be strictly 1rem / 16px. Otherwise, they’ll be zoomed in Safari iOS.
• davidavidavid 2y ago
  com
• jaegerpicker 2y ago
  Interesting bug: if you swipe on screen with the mouse button pressed and slide of screen to release the mouse button the on screen swipe action stays attached to the mouse cursor. Only sort of a bug because it's only because it runs in a web page vs on an actual phone. Still would be interested in how to fix that in general. Overall it looks cool, I'm a native mobile app guy so I'm always skeptical about mobile web. This doesn't change that for me but I can see growth in the web platform for mobile.
  • wruza 2y ago
    It’s a common ui bug in all software, happens due to release event firing outside of controlling element. People don’t know about pointer grab, which should be used in drag operations, and frameworks don’t even inform nor encourage it. Modern ui/ux school.
• roblh 2y ago
  There's a really specific behaviour that iOS has with its collapsible top bars that I've been trying off and on to nail with CSS for ages as a little puzzle, but for some reason it's always not quite right. As you scroll down or up, the bar remains perfectly in place and only starts moving up once it's fully revealed or down once it's fully gone. There should be a way to do it with `position: sticky` but whether you use some javascript or not, it's always slightly jerky or wrong, especially on safari. Apple really does pay attention to these little things in ways others don't. And then they go and release that recent photos app update and make me seriously want to leave their ecosystem completely.
  • radicality 2y ago
    I also dislike the updated Photos app, I think it’s because of lots of small things that add up. What you dislike? Largest one for me is probably playback behavior in full screen is strange. You start playing a video, it goes full screen, then you tap on it and it resizes to slightky smaller size.
• wruza 2y ago
  Why does it stutter and flash black screen first time you open an “app” or even switch tabs in e.g. clock app? Does it use react as a renderer?
• redbell 2y ago
  From a design perspective, this is really impressive. However, I noticed a few basic functionalities seem to be missing—at least for me—like the ability to return to the home screen from an app. On a related note, Try Galaxy (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35886033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35886033) is another fascinating project. It offers a web-based One UI clone, and when installed as a PWA, the experience becomes even more seamless. Speaking of web-based UI clones, I can’t resist giving an honorable mention to Puter (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33838179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33838179) and DaedalOS (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38830132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38830132). I believe they are exceptional projects that deserve recognition.
  • Jotalea 2y ago
    I remember that Try Galaxy was previously called iTest.
• jballer 2y ago
  Does anyone else remember the online User’s Manual for early iPhones? It was web-based, but had a full JavaScript reimplementation of UINavigationController, UIScrollView, and UITableView. I always suspected it was part of some bigger project that never panned out (maybe just prototyping?).
• tgma 2y ago
  We have come full circle. Kids these days forget that the official application framework for iPhone OS in 2007 was a bunch of HTML/CSS/images that mimicked iPhone OS UI as a web application (basically poor man's PWA). The jailbreak community reverse-engineered iPhone headers and developed an unofficial toolchain based on llvm-gcc right away to build iPhone applications and they had an app store which still lives as Cydia (saurik et al) before Steve believed in that. Apple only threw the towel half a year later with an official beta SDK after the product-market-fit was so strong that they had no choice. Now we recreate the whole OS in browser.
• zghst 2y ago
  Impressive!