Re: Kick starting the Web App UX debate

I'm collecting and exploring all of the information/links/articles that you
all sent my way. Thanks for that by the way.

I'm trying to avoid 'reply emails' but Jo hit on some very hot topics that
I think must get aired a bit further

On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 10:01 AM, Jo Rabin <jo@linguafranca.org> wrote:

> >>        1. Striving for a clear definition of what is a 'web app' is
> >>        politically charged and frankly not useful. Just don't go
> >>        there...
>
> I'm going to disagree on this a) because even if simple questions don't
> have simple answers they deserve answers of some kind, and b) because
> exploring the answers tells us something about the subject we clearly don't
> know, and that we may benefit from knowing.
>

In the UX community we often go down this rathole of what 'design' is. What
we've found out is that the answer just doesn't matter (this is a bit of
a simplification of course but for all of the hairsplitting, this
discussion has produced very little of value)

I'd love to make progress on this definition of a web app but it's such a
moving target that I wonder if all of the blood we'll spill will really
matter. There are two main points I'd like to make here:

1) I agree with Jo that we have to say something but I'd like to build from
the bottom up.  As the web is built on a 'document architecture' so things
like flow and forced scrolling are, in many ways, built into the DOM and
how it works. One approach is to say what apps AREN'T, which is simply that
they are not documents. They want control, they don't want to be forced
into scrolling, and they want to know a bit out the rectangle they are
drawing in so they can make some choices.

2) What 'an app' will be is moving so fast. A big part of my writing is
about how lightweight and simple apps will be when we are surrounded by
smart devices. "An App" might be nothing more than an on/off switch, or a
background process that unlocks my door. Because we are playing with
such malleable, crazy directions, I don't want to try to build from the top
down.


> >>        4. Web apps need to exist outside of the browser user
> >>        experience (e.g. running an app from an NFC launch event) This
> >>        does not mean that the app exists outside the browser, just
> >>        outside the experience (i.e. you can loose the URL bar). This,
> >>        in effect, turns the browser into an underlying technology
> >>        that can offer web technologies that don't feel at all like
> >>        web pages.
> >
> > I certainly can imagine the appeal of the former; I don't have a model
> > of what this would mean for the said app with regard to e.g. other
> > browsers tabs. That sounds worth digging further into.
>
> I wonder it might help not to consider the browser as the unitary
> apotheosis of Webiness, but rather as something that
> a) uses underlying Web transport mechanisms (like many native apps),
> b) uses Web rendering mechanisms (like some other native apps)
> c) provides for reuse of a rendering surface either
>         i) under the control of its current content (or app) which can
> pass control to another app (by allowing for dereferencing of a URI)
>         ii) or outside  the control of of that content (by use of
> bookmarks, back buttons, context menu, typing a url in the chrome, whatever)
> d) provides various kinds of management, coordination and organisational
> features (discovery, installation and launching)
>
> +1000

Scott