3 ms·

The notion that SPA automatically gives you better user experience is a fallacy. Better UI design gives you better user experience, and good UI design is possib

by romaniv 12y ago

The notion that SPA automatically gives you better user experience is a fallacy. Better UI design gives you better user experience, and good UI design is possible using the classic approach to web development. As an added bonus, you get searchability for free and you don't have to move away from your existing server-side stack.

csallen 12y ago
Single page applications allow for more flexible UI design, and that flexibility allows for lots of potential improvements. Forcibly re-drawing the canvas during transitions is quite limiting, and I don't know any visual or interaction designers who couldn't do a better job without that artificial constraint. Now, whether the benefits of getting rid of that constraint are worth the costs depends entirely on what you're building.
- romaniv 12y ago
  You do not have to re-draw the canvas during transitions. Believe it or not, it is possible to do AJAX declaratively and with progressive enhancement. My approach is to develop forms normally, then add a directive that intercepts them via AJAX, "cuts" certain pieces of the target page and "pastes" it into the current page. It is a very simple, generic and flexible approach. The markup looks like this: <form action="/something" submit-to="#x, #y"></form> <div id="x" /> <div id="y" /> Normally, the only thing I need to add to go from non-AJAX to AJAX is submit-to="[CSS Selector Here]". Possibly, some IDs. Everything else works automatically. The library adds a certain attribute to the "pasted" parts, so I can add visual transitions via CSS3. I can use form's action URL to rewrite current URL via push state.
findjashua 12y ago
I used to think the same way, but trying out a non-SPA site really feels jarring now. The intermittent blank screen and the 2 second wait period makes for a shit user experience. I'm much more used to the fluid desktop-grade UI. My only gripe with SPA was the initial load-time (looking at you Gmail), but with virtual-dom, being able to generate the html on the server gives you the best of both worlds.
- nostrademons 12y ago
  You don't have to go SPA to avoid the page reload. AJAX works just fine with regular webpages as well, judiciously applied on the most latency-sensitive actions. BTW, you're posting this on Hacker News, which is the ultimate in retro Web-1.0 technology. Heck, it even uses tables for layout.
  - findjashua 12y ago
    SPAs use Ajax to sync data with the server, but the templates/assets are on the client already. In a regular webpage, Ajax would have to pull the templates for the new components as well. I think this is what Gmail does, though it still takes forever for the initial load. Anyway, I can see this becoming a complicated mess very quickly, and find Ractive/React to be much simpler solutions. As for HN, I doubt anyone comes to HN for the design. PG and YC's brand helped create a solid community with good content and good discussions, which is what keeps bringing us back. But let's call a spade a spade - the UI design here is a joke, even more so considering that its target demographic is the tech community.

by romaniv 12y ago

csallen 12y ago

Single page applications allow for more flexible UI design, and that flexibility allows for lots of potential improvements. Forcibly re-drawing the canvas during transitions is quite limiting, and I don't know any visual or interaction designers who couldn't do a better job without that artificial constraint. Now, whether the benefits of getting rid of that constraint are worth the costs depends entirely on what you're building.

romaniv 12y ago
You do not have to re-draw the canvas during transitions. Believe it or not, it is possible to do AJAX declaratively and with progressive enhancement. My approach is to develop forms normally, then add a directive that intercepts them via AJAX, "cuts" certain pieces of the target page and "pastes" it into the current page. It is a very simple, generic and flexible approach. The markup looks like this: <form action="/something" submit-to="#x, #y"></form> <div id="x" /> <div id="y" /> Normally, the only thing I need to add to go from non-AJAX to AJAX is submit-to="[CSS Selector Here]". Possibly, some IDs. Everything else works automatically. The library adds a certain attribute to the "pasted" parts, so I can add visual transitions via CSS3. I can use form's action URL to rewrite current URL via push state.

findjashua 12y ago

I used to think the same way, but trying out a non-SPA site really feels jarring now. The intermittent blank screen and the 2 second wait period makes for a shit user experience. I'm much more used to the fluid desktop-grade UI. My only gripe with SPA was the initial load-time (looking at you Gmail), but with virtual-dom, being able to generate the html on the server gives you the best of both worlds.

nostrademons 12y ago
You don't have to go SPA to avoid the page reload. AJAX works just fine with regular webpages as well, judiciously applied on the most latency-sensitive actions. BTW, you're posting this on Hacker News, which is the ultimate in retro Web-1.0 technology. Heck, it even uses tables for layout.
- findjashua 12y ago
  SPAs use Ajax to sync data with the server, but the templates/assets are on the client already. In a regular webpage, Ajax would have to pull the templates for the new components as well. I think this is what Gmail does, though it still takes forever for the initial load. Anyway, I can see this becoming a complicated mess very quickly, and find Ractive/React to be much simpler solutions. As for HN, I doubt anyone comes to HN for the design. PG and YC's brand helped create a solid community with good content and good discussions, which is what keeps bringing us back. But let's call a spade a spade - the UI design here is a joke, even more so considering that its target demographic is the tech community.