Re: What is an app Re: Kick starting the Web App UX debate

On Tue, 07 May 2013 04:52:24 +0200, Scott Jenson <scott@jenson.org> wrote:

> Wow, very well argued, thank you very much for that!
>
> I wonder if there is a continuum here, where on one end we have the  
> classic "web as document" flowed text which has all of the user-as-reader
> attributes you discussed.  On the other end is Angry Birds with all
> benefits as well as the downsides you discussed.

Certainly.

> I will argue something that might appear a bit cavalier but one of the
> reasons that apps are eating the web's lunch right now is the control and
> flexibility they have.

Indeed, the Web demonstrates pretty clearly that authors want control of  
presentation.

> Native apps are a lot like Spiderman, "With great power comes great
> responsibility."  I don't want to look like I'm against your point, I'm
> just saying that we need a more subtle way of discussing this. I frankly
> don't see any practical way where you can have two authors (web designer
> and reader) each have control over a complex layout. SOMETHING has to
> give.

I don't know that something *HAS* to give, if we get it right.

But it is pretty clear that authors will go for the presentation control  
over most other aspects.

On the other hand, where the Web eats everyone else's lunch is its ability  
to work *EVERYWHERE*. So there is a clear desire to have the flexibility.

> Of course, you *can* have this two author model for flowed text, the web
> has proven that.

Right. Postscript turned into PDF, probably for reasons other than  
adaptability. But PDF became pretty adaptable in order to remain  
competitive with the Web, because the model of "it looks exactly like  
this" was causing it to lose ground as a format for text-based documents.

I think the case that you can have an adaptable model at a deeper level is  
still unproven. People talk a lot about responsive design, and a lot of  
basic interactions manage it. But responsive flight simulators are still  
mostly just talk.

> I guess I'm willing to kill a sacred cow and say that this author/reader
> dual control of display really only goes so far, and is frankly,  
> impossible to pull off for complex layouts. Are we willing to let some
> of that go?

Personally, I just try to figure out how the technology needs to work. It  
turns out that some people are happy to let lots of it go, and others are  
absolutely not - which is reflected in different design philosophies and  
different products.

I don't think it is impossible to pull this off for complex layouts. I  
think that "complex" here is a term like smartphone - the precise thing it  
decribes changes over time, but it means "things we haven't yet figured  
out how to break down into parts we can work with".

So I assume there are a lot of things we currently don't generally know  
how to do. There are game developers who do make adaptive layouts, but the  
techniques they use are not widespread, so for the most part the kind of  
apps we are discussing here end up being built as non-adaptable. My goal  
is not to say that this is just a feature of the universe, but to look at  
what we can do to make it easy and efficient enough that the techniques  
for building adaptive, or responsive, apps are in every developers toolkit  
and get instinctively used to build things we currently don't know how to  
make adaptable.

In other words, there is a goal, but we should be working towards it in  
reality instead of assuming that anything which doesn't fit a utopian  
picture of the world will somehow disappear on its own. Meanwhile, we work  
with what we know and have.

> Excellent discussion, thank you,

indeed. Thank you.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
       chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Tuesday, 7 May 2013 10:17:06 UTC