Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If you want to create a button from scratch, you must first create the universe

madcampos.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 144 posts

Re: If you want to create a button from scratch, you must first create the universe

#61

Post by cube00 »

I used to think I had to use a component library, but for some cases it seems all I really needed was CSS to give my webapp that material feeling everyone seems to feel more comfortable with.

I now have a more critical eye and look into potential UI components code to decide if it really does need the custom code or if styling alone can get the job done.

Shoelace upending everything to Web Awesome has given me an incentive to revisit this rather then blindly find/replacing all the sl- prefixes to wa- given how much larger it makes my bundle.

Re: If you want to create a button from scratch, you must first create the universe

#62

Post by sheept »

dlcarrier wrote: post #11

I sometimes wonder how much slower technological progression would have been, if we hadn't taken whatever widget engine any given OS gave us, and instead constantly debated over and recreated every feature in the OS, like we do with web interfaces. The crazies part is that when we actually research it, a default button is about 20% faster than the the flat nonsense we've settled on ( https://www.theregister.com/offbe…

Isn't that alternate reality the current reality?

For whatever reason, developers and some users expect an app to look the same across all platforms, while also looking distinct from other apps—otherwise, the app looks indistinguishable from a low effort one. This involves creating a design system and departing from each operating system's native widgets.

Re: If you want to create a button from scratch, you must first create the universe

#64

Post by SvenL »

thyristan wrote: post #34
repeekad wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is Google would love to make more web standards native (including selectors which have improved on chrome but are basically broken on safari) but Apple holds back progress in a (borderline?) anticompetitive way

I'm not sure if it's Google's fault alone. My impression is, all browsers are holding back on everything HTML-native and JavaScript-free. There have been literal decades of no progress, and only tiny steps forward as of late. We've had things like https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qtwidgets-module.html since the late last millenium. Back in the day, there was Delphi, now there is Lazarus, with even nicer Data-Bound widgets. Loo…

I guess the main issue is that HTML was supposed to be a language to describe documents. We abuse it to design interactive applications. I would rather like to not have one technology to support to different use cases. It’s a shame we are riding that abomination for developing apps.

Re: If you want to create a button from scratch, you must first create the universe

#65

Post by sheept »

thyristan wrote: post #34
repeekad wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is Google would love to make more web standards native (including selectors which have improved on chrome but are basically broken on safari) but Apple holds back progress in a (borderline?) anticompetitive way

I'm not sure if it's Google's fault alone. My impression is, all browsers are holding back on everything HTML-native and JavaScript-free. There have been literal decades of no progress, and only tiny steps forward as of late. We've had things like https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qtwidgets-module.html since the late last millenium. Back in the day, there was Delphi, now there is Lazarus, with even nicer Data-Bound widgets. Loo…

My guess is that it takes time to research what universal behavior users expect from a component based on examples in existing software. It's universal, so it has to work with everyone: mouse, keyboard, touch; large monitors and tiny phones; screen readers; and users with motor difficulties. And existing components may not have even thought of all of these cases.

For example, they've recently introduced the Interest Invoker API for tooltips on hover. Tooltips are ubiquitous, but they still haven't settled on what the trigger is for non-mouse users. Long press for touch is far less discoverable than mouse hover, for example.

Maybe it's a good thing they didn't rush this design three decades ago, when virtually all users were on desktop.

Re: If you want to create a button from scratch, you must first create the universe

#66

Post by jeroenhd »

mireq2 wrote: post #4

Great satire but let's create that same for combobox with server side filtering. Now you have problem because it's not possible with native HTML elements. Many re-implementations are result of missing native elements.

If you use a custom select, update your , you should be good, shouldn't you?

There are UI components that are not available in native browser controls (infuriatingly: some are only available in some browsers on some platforms), but even then you're better off writing a shim to replicate normal browser behaviour than ruining the experience for everyone because Firefox on Android doesn't have a colour picker.

Re: If you want to create a button from scratch, you must first create the universe

#67

Post by jeroenhd »

nxc18 wrote: post #21

Very slightly off topic but also on, I’ve noticed a tendency for well-meaning accessibility folks to drive to bad outcomes to meet some standard. Color is one where the standard is usually right, but there’s pretty strong evidence that the standard is bad in some cases. See APCA v WCAG. https://git.apcacontrast.com/documentation/WhyAPCA.html If you click any link on this page (to the author’s site) and you dare to us…

> and you dare to use an alternative browser on iOS

The website works just fine for me on Firefox+iOS, it seems like whatever matching the author is doing just doesn't include detection for Orion.

Re: If you want to create a button from scratch, you must first create the universe

#68

Post by Shorel »

noduerme wrote: post #19
dlcarrier wrote: post #11

I sometimes wonder how much slower technological progression would have been, if we hadn't taken whatever widget engine any given OS gave us, and instead constantly debated over and recreated every feature in the OS, like we do with web interfaces. The crazies part is that when we actually research it, a default button is about 20% faster than the the flat nonsense we've settled on ( https://www.theregister.com/offbe…

This is really an Apple thing, rigidly enforcing whatever their current OS aesthetic looks like. But Apple (or Xerox) invented the UI paradigms we're still living with. Look at the progress of Flash/AIR AS3 as an embedded runtime prior to its annihilation. By 2010 or so, it had the capability to leverage the GPU on pretty much any device, directly uploading bitmaps and shaders. It had garbage collection as good as or…

Better garbage collection than current runtimes? Now this is surely rose tinted glasses, probably based on nostalgia. It had horrific performance all around. Even the now obsolete Opera browser Kestrel runtime had better JS performance, and it is obsolete because Chrome crushed it in benchmarks consistently for several years. No, there's no way Flash had the performance characteristics you mention, even less in a critical component like the garbage collector.

Re: If you want to create a button from scratch, you must first create the universe

#69

Post by Shorel »

aaronrobinson wrote: post #63

I tried to pass the page through Claude/ChatGPT to ask questions about the article. The AI hostility is real! This is the first time I’ve seen an instruction to AI in a web page that asks AI not to summarise.

Good. This is the resistance.

Re: If you want to create a button from scratch, you must first create the universe

#70

Post by z3t4 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #32
noduerme wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really an Apple thing, rigidly enforcing whatever their current OS aesthetic looks like. But Apple (or Xerox) invented the UI paradigms we're still living with. Look at the progress of Flash/AIR AS3 as an embedded runtime prior to its annihilation. By 2010 or so, it had the capability to leverage the GPU on pretty much any device, directly uploading bitmaps and shaders. It had garbage collection as good as or…

> This is really an Apple thing, rigidly enforcing whatever their current OS aesthetic looks like. It's not just that I think, using their native components also ensures accessibility and consistent UX throughout different apps, which is a huge benefit to e.g. screen reader users. Everyone else - especially web interface builders, especially if they eschew just using native elements - reinvents the wheel and consider…

most web elements are actually native components. The advantage to letting the device/OS decide how the components work is that say a handheld device will handle the drop-down select-box in their own way, allowing for new devices to improve the user experience.
Post reply on HN