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Show HN: FlatUIKit - Flat UI components for iOS

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Re: Show HN: FlatUIKit - Flat UI components for iOS

#31

Post by shawnz »

anonyfuss wrote: post #4
jackflintermann wrote: post #2

Hey everybody, creator here. Let me know if you have any questions/comments/feature requests - I'm going to keep working on this.

This total disregard for platform conventions does your users a disservice by making moot the effort they've spent learning how the platform operates and what to expect from UI elements and interactions. On top of that, you have to reinvent all the native components you otherwise would get for free, and your app looks like an ugly odd duckling on the platform. Why do this? It demonstrates an insane level of condensio…

While this comment was pretty strongly worded, I think the ideas of "use native components whenever you can" and "don't reinvent what you don't have to" are usually good ones to follow. This project certainly has use in some circumstances (like the author's, for example) but I think it's important that any potential users also consider the above.

Re: Show HN: FlatUIKit - Flat UI components for iOS

#32

Post by jaegerpicker »

anonyfuss wrote: post #21
tptacek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Fuck that guy for publishing code for us to look at and maybe use.

What would you do if I published a broken password hashing scheme and encouraged others to use it?

That's one of the worst analogies that I've ever read. This is a piece of functional, well written code, that you may not like but it in no way is going to be harmful to the developers not the end users. If it's not good less people will use it because users will not like the UI.

Re: Show HN: FlatUIKit - Flat UI components for iOS

#35

Post by jackflintermann »

stevedekorte wrote: post #33
jackflintermann wrote: post #2

Hey everybody, creator here. Let me know if you have any questions/comments/feature requests - I'm going to keep working on this.

Could you make the widgets actually flat (no shadows, etc)?

Yeah, FUIButtons have a shadowHeight property which can simply be set to 0.

Re: Show HN: FlatUIKit - Flat UI components for iOS

#36

Post by conradev »

anonyfuss wrote: post #16
jazzychad wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disregard this feedback. Do you know how to use a blue pencil instead of the standard yellow? I thought so. These controls maintain the overall look and feel of the native components while just giving them a different skin. Sheesh, even Apple recognized that developers wanted to give their own look to controls by giving them Appearance hooks. You know what else you get by coding your own UI components that mimic nati…

Disregard this fellow's feedback, since he clearly has disregarded the platform users and the shared conventions of the platform community. These elements don't maintain the look and feel of the components at all. They're roughly in the same place, most of the time, and that's about all you can say for them: https://www.joingrouper.com/assets/new_landing/OnboardingScr... > Sheesh, even Apple recognized that developer…

> They're roughly in the same place, most of the time, and that's about all you can say for them

> a rework of the UI to look like Windows Phone

I am laughing at this comment in particular only because most of the project uses the APIs provided by Apple to change the appearance on existing controls, exceptions being the switch and the alert view.

The project only makes it easy to generate and integrate flat images into these controls. You make it sound like he is rewriting UIKit.

Re: Show HN: FlatUIKit - Flat UI components for iOS

#37

Post by aliston »

anonyfuss wrote: post #4
jackflintermann wrote: post #2

Hey everybody, creator here. Let me know if you have any questions/comments/feature requests - I'm going to keep working on this.

This total disregard for platform conventions does your users a disservice by making moot the effort they've spent learning how the platform operates and what to expect from UI elements and interactions. On top of that, you have to reinvent all the native components you otherwise would get for free, and your app looks like an ugly odd duckling on the platform. Why do this? It demonstrates an insane level of condensio…

Flat UI has become a common theme on a number of popular iOS apps. Spotify, Yelp, Truila, Google Maps etc. have all moved to flat UI recently... are all of those apps "disregarding platform conventions?" Of course not.

If anything, they have made flat UI a convention in itself, just like pull-down-to-refresh, large center tab buttons and slide-right navigation weren't originally/aren't native widgets, but have become commonplace.

The rumor is that iOS 7 is going to change to a flatter appearance anyway, so in a few weeks this all might be moot.

Re: Show HN: FlatUIKit - Flat UI components for iOS

#38

Post by lotso »

anonyfuss wrote: post #20
octernion wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the vitriol from this coming from? This isn't some massive new UI paradigm, it's effectively a theme! And a handsome one, at that.

> This isn't some massive new UI paradigm ... Flat UI isn't some massive new UI paradigm? I thought that's exactly what it is. > ... it's effectively a theme! One of the major components of the success and pleasantness of iOS -- and Mac OS X before it -- has been platform consistency. Apple has made a study of this, and that's part of what users are buying when they buy Apple's products. Dismantling that consistency…

Which of the top apps on the App Store don't theme iOS?

Re: Show HN: FlatUIKit - Flat UI components for iOS

#39

Post by conradev »

Great work! This is a really cool project. I actually did something like this in an app I am working on using the same approach. I knew it could be generalized to all UI components and not just buttons, but I did not take those further steps and implement it.

This is definitely a step above using drawRect: to draw custom views, when images are more efficient in this case thanks to UIControl.

Re: Show HN: FlatUIKit - Flat UI components for iOS

#40

Post by anonyfuss »

jaegerpicker wrote: post #32
anonyfuss wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you do if I published a broken password hashing scheme and encouraged others to use it?

That's one of the worst analogies that I've ever read. This is a piece of functional, well written code, that you may not like but it in no way is going to be harmful to the developers not the end users. If it's not good less people will use it because users will not like the UI.

> If it's not good less people will use it because users will not like the UI.

It's not quite that simple. If you want to use Netflix, you have to use their terrible webkit-based app. So we all do.

That doesn't mean that everyone would have a better user experience with apps sticking to common platform conventions.

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