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Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#261

Post by MBCook »

PrimHelios wrote: post #248
MBCook wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's any irony here. You deployed something that worked horribly on iOS, you didn't offer a way to opt out, and when someone else put in a fix for your terrible UX that just happens to change everything else to the way your stuff currently works you use it to gloat and a guy who pointed out how terrible your UX was. Honestly this whole thing (AMP and your comment) come off arrogant as hell to me. I l…

> You deployed something that worked horribly on iOS Except that thing was a bug in Safari. They used perfectly valid plain HTML without any hacks or JS.

It wasn't a bug in Safari, that was simply the way the scrolling behavior was implemented in iframes.

It was still there choice to deploy using iframes knowing that that was the way it felt. They could've use JavaScript to load the contents into a div or simply pushed so far users to a page that had nothing but the AMP content on it.

They left it severely sub optimal and decided that was good enough… making google significantly more annoying to use on iOS than what it was before.

That was the choice they made and stuck too. No options to turn it off, no options to do it a different way; you just get stuck with it.

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#262

Post by cramforce »

freyr wrote: post #245
cramforce wrote: post #165

With respect to scrolling: We (AMP team) filed a bug with Apple about that (we didn't implement scrolling ourselves, just use a div with overflow). We asked to make the scroll inertia for that case the same as the normal scrolling. Apple's response was (surprisingly) to make the default scrolling like the overflow scrolling. So, with the next Safari release all pages will scroll like AMP pages. Hope Gruber is happy t…

Another bug I've noticed is that AMP breaks in-page searching with iOS Safari. If you perform an in-page search, the browser will not scroll to the found instances of the search term on an AMP page. I imagine it's related to the other scrolling issues. Please, please fix this. It's impossible to support something that's foisted on us and breaks basic web functionality. If I were cynical, I'd say bugs like this are de…

I believe we have a webkit patch pending for this. Definitely on our radar!

Edit: some detail. Safari sometimes doesn't scroll find results into view when they are in overflowed space. This issue actually affects a large percentage of web pages. Fixing it was very easy, was just an oversight in WebKit.

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#265

Post by MBCook »

alpha_squared wrote: post #247
MBCook wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's any irony here. You deployed something that worked horribly on iOS, you didn't offer a way to opt out, and when someone else put in a fix for your terrible UX that just happens to change everything else to the way your stuff currently works you use it to gloat and a guy who pointed out how terrible your UX was. Honestly this whole thing (AMP and your comment) come off arrogant as hell to me. I l…

Snark? I think we're reading two different comments. I think it's fair to share surprise at a response like that from Apple. I would be surprised, too. It almost feels like you're looking for reasons to be upset and finger-point. I hope that's not the case.

I took their original remark at the end as a snarky comment about Gruber. I didn't read it as being about the way Apple decided to fix things. If that was the intent it was unclear to me.

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#266

Post by cramforce »

MBCook wrote: post #261
PrimHelios wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You deployed something that worked horribly on iOS Except that thing was a bug in Safari. They used perfectly valid plain HTML without any hacks or JS.

It wasn't a bug in Safari, that was simply the way the scrolling behavior was implemented in iframes. It was still there choice to deploy using iframes knowing that that was the way it felt. They could've use JavaScript to load the contents into a div or simply pushed so far users to a page that had nothing but the AMP content on it. They left it severely sub optimal and decided that was good enough… making google si…

It isn't related to iframes directly. Iframes in mobile Safari are never scrollable. The div thing you suggest would have the same issue. If you are a web developer you likely have built a website that has this issue.

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#267

Post by MBCook »

Gigablah wrote: post #241
MBCook wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's any irony here. You deployed something that worked horribly on iOS, you didn't offer a way to opt out, and when someone else put in a fix for your terrible UX that just happens to change everything else to the way your stuff currently works you use it to gloat and a guy who pointed out how terrible your UX was. Honestly this whole thing (AMP and your comment) come off arrogant as hell to me. I l…

You call someone's work "terrible" (twice) to their face and now you're upset over a little bit of snark?

I didn't like what I saw as their snark. When they replied they didn't apologize for it or even mention it, they just explained that the scrolling behavior was changing again.

My second comment was because I thought the original behavior of implementing AMP the way it was and forcing it on users was arrogant and has seriously annoyed the hell out of me since it originally started appearing on iOS. I've literally considered switching search engines to get away from it because it makes using Google that much harder.

Yeah, I called it terrible to their face. Because it frustrates the hell out of me. I've tried finding ways to contact google, I've tweeted at them, I've posted in previous discussions. At no point did anyone ever seem to wake knowledge the problem other than seeing people (who I assume we're not googlers) basically say it's not their fault because that's the way Apple implemented iframes.

Combined that arrogance with what I see as rudeness... and yeah. I said terrible twice. I'm frustrated as hell at this and don't like that the solution will be "it's going to stay there but Apple is going to make it a little bit better for you".

When the scrolling gets fixed? I'm still gonna be annoyed as hell at AMP pages. They break the experience, but now just a little less. Hurray.

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#268

Post by MBCook »

Anderkent wrote: post #207
MBCook wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's any irony here. You deployed something that worked horribly on iOS, you didn't offer a way to opt out, and when someone else put in a fix for your terrible UX that just happens to change everything else to the way your stuff currently works you use it to gloat and a guy who pointed out how terrible your UX was. Honestly this whole thing (AMP and your comment) come off arrogant as hell to me. I l…

It's hardly AMP's fault that safari scrolling is inconsistent. Any complaints about that should be aimed at safari, not AMP.

The way Safari does things is not their fault.

That they chose to ship that way instead of using an alternate implementation that didn't run into the problem ( or was less frustrating or provided an opt out ) was THEIR decision. They're not 100% blameless in this.

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#269

Post by MBCook »

obstinate wrote: post #203
MBCook wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That requires releasing new versions of iOS. Google can work around that way faster than Apple can try to play catch-up. It's a losing battle.

It doesn't require it, except that Apple has failed to decouple Safari from iOS, and so it can't be updated like regular apps.

Apple has certain things that they can push any time, such as the lists that safari looks at to find out if websites are dangerous or some of the security stuff they have.

However they ship it, they'd still be in an arms race against google to keep AMP pages hidden from Safari users. That doesn't seem like a productive use of anyone's time.

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#270

Post by joshuamorton »

tyingq wrote: post #43
matthewmacleod wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In contrast, I think google is making every effort possible to direct people away from the web and into the Google ecosystem. Searching for maps? Google. Searching for flights? Google. Searching for information? Google. The list goes on, and the technical means for delivery is essentially irrelevant.

Rich snippets is the catch all for everything else. You can see a preview for what that means by checking out Wikipedia's traffic decline over the last 3 years or so.

To be fair, at least in wikipedia's case, that's potentially a good thing. Wikipedia isn't ad-supported, so having their data hosted elsewhere isn't actually a problem (as long as credit is given and so donations continue), because it becomes less expensive for them to host.
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