Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly • Hacker News Board

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#51

Post by jacquesm » Sun, May 03, 2015, 10:49 AM UTC

dustinleblanc wrote: post #47

jacquesm wrote: post #19

The whole 'not mobile friendly' meme really needs to die. The sites are never at fault, a mobile browser is entirely capable of rendering sites however they see fit and to ignore or incorporate any or all elements of the style sheets and mark-up that a site supplies. The pixel-perfect coupling that people expect between what a site should look like according to the designers and how that site is rendered by the brows…

Its up to the person who wrote the site stylesheet to make it behave in this instance. It's not Safari, or Chrome, or FF, or Dolphin that made me declare that my text should be this big or that my div should be that wide no matter the context. I am capable of writing css that adapts; if I choose not to, my site is less readable. Writing a web browser that makes those decisions for me would make my job of designing th…

Essentially you are saying that older websites should not be expected to be readable on more modern devices because the burden of change lies with the provider of the style sheet to be compatible with devices that don't exist yet. That's not the intention of the web, it's not a display protocol, it's an information transfer protocol.

if it were a display protocol then we could have kept things a lot simpler, specify display width, height and DPI in the request, get back a compressed image and a bunch of 'hot zones' or 'fields' in response. Such protocols existed and they did not make the cut, the one that did explicitly left the rendering decisions to the client receiving the data.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#52

Post by thaumasiotes » Sun, May 03, 2015, 10:50 AM UTC

thameera wrote: post #33

thaumasiotes wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could enlarge the text?

Except most browsers don't reflow the text correctly so you have to horizontally scroll.

So, the browser's failure to behave the way every browser for decades upon decades has been supposed to behave is actually a problem with the website? Show me a browser from before 2005 that won't reflow text.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#53

Post by jacquesm » Sun, May 03, 2015, 10:51 AM UTC

nfm wrote: post #49

jacquesm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Font sizes are hints that can (and should, when appropriate) be overruled locally. Shifting the layout burden to content supplied (and or javascript) was/is a huge mistake, the browser on the device should do the layout using whatever style hints it feels are appropriate.

Do you think that's a problem that can be solved generically by the browser? It seems infeasible to me.

Yes, I think it could be, but it would require less focus on eye candy and more focus on functionality and utility.

Works well, looks identical on all devices, is future proof: pick any two.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#54

Post by jacquesm » Sun, May 03, 2015, 10:52 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #46

jacquesm wrote: post #19

The whole 'not mobile friendly' meme really needs to die. The sites are never at fault, a mobile browser is entirely capable of rendering sites however they see fit and to ignore or incorporate any or all elements of the style sheets and mark-up that a site supplies. The pixel-perfect coupling that people expect between what a site should look like according to the designers and how that site is rendered by the brows…

The up/downvote buttons on HN are an example of 'not mobile friendly'. They work fine with a pointer, but not with a touchscreen - you often see someone apologise for downmodding when they meant to upmod, because of this problem. Pointer-driven UI and touchscreen UI have different local maxima. One of the reasons Ubuntu's Unity looks like it does is because they intend for it to look and work well on both UI types.

A browser could detect that a component on the page has a link attached to it, could reason out that that component is too small for the default display resolution / DPI combination of the device and could decide to scale up the element in response.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#55

Post by enraged_camel » Sun, May 03, 2015, 11:05 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #37

enraged_camel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but how hard is it to write some basic CSS? I mean we are talking about making the text bigger when viewed on mobile devices, right?

Three browsers across a very large variety of screen sizes, resolutions, colour depths and so on. Clearly writing some 'basic CSS' is not hard but writing future proof CSS that will remain compatible with all the devices that do not exist yet is next to impossible. Therefore backwards compatibility is expected of new devices rather than that we expect existing websites to be forward compatible with devices that do no…

>>Clearly writing some 'basic CSS' is not hard but writing future proof CSS that will remain compatible with all the devices that do not exist yet is next to impossible.

Considering that the problem exists in the present and is very real, I'm not sure why not being able to write future-proof CSS is a big issue. How often do commonly-used CSS properties (e.g. font-size) become outdated? When was the last time you had to re-write the stylesheets on one of your websites?

>>And that's ignoring for the moment the burden of testing a website on all possible devices

I think the HN userbase is not only capable but also would be willing to perform this testing. Deploy the website on a separate directory (e.g. news.combinator.com/newdesign/etc.) and direct users who opt into the beta there.

Heck, I bet there's quite a few people here who would love to take it on as a volunteer project.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#56

Post by seba_dos1 » Sun, May 03, 2015, 11:09 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #37

enraged_camel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but how hard is it to write some basic CSS? I mean we are talking about making the text bigger when viewed on mobile devices, right?

Three browsers across a very large variety of screen sizes, resolutions, colour depths and so on. Clearly writing some 'basic CSS' is not hard but writing future proof CSS that will remain compatible with all the devices that do not exist yet is next to impossible. Therefore backwards compatibility is expected of new devices rather than that we expect existing websites to be forward compatible with devices that do no…

It was like that - mobile vendors tried to adapt their browsers to make the already existing websites look somehow good.

But then iPhone happened.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#57

Post by jacquesm » Sun, May 03, 2015, 11:11 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #55

jacquesm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three browsers across a very large variety of screen sizes, resolutions, colour depths and so on. Clearly writing some 'basic CSS' is not hard but writing future proof CSS that will remain compatible with all the devices that do not exist yet is next to impossible. Therefore backwards compatibility is expected of new devices rather than that we expect existing websites to be forward compatible with devices that do no…

>>Clearly writing some 'basic CSS' is not hard but writing future proof CSS that will remain compatible with all the devices that do not exist yet is next to impossible. Considering that the problem exists in the present and is very real, I'm not sure why not being able to write future-proof CSS is a big issue. How often do commonly-used CSS properties (e.g. font-size) become outdated? When was the last time you had…

It's not about capability it's about where the burden should lie. Future readers should be compatible with past documents, not the other way around.

Case in point: the geocities files that were backed-up and are on display from a variety of sources (including mine, but also the internet archive and archive team) are static, no longer in maintenance. The same goes for all of the internet archive. If you want to see that content at any point in the future you had better hope that the browsers are the ones to adapt to the past because the past is certainly not going to adapt to the browser and as the web ages there will only be more of the past and relatively speaking less of the present.

The web is aging rapidly and the current development of modern browsers on modern devices failing to render sites that are only a few years old properly is a worrisome one.

HN is in fact one of the least affected sites in this respect.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#58

Post by seba_dos1 » Sun, May 03, 2015, 11:13 AM UTC

This site is considered by Google as not mobile friendly: http://dosowisko.net/

Just bunch of easily reflowed text and a bit of ASCII art. Browser on my Nokia N900 shows it just fine, zooming is usable, everything seems "friendly". If Nokia could do it on Maemo long time ago, why Apple and Google can't do it now?

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#59

Post by dustinleblanc » Sun, May 03, 2015, 11:16 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #51

dustinleblanc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its up to the person who wrote the site stylesheet to make it behave in this instance. It's not Safari, or Chrome, or FF, or Dolphin that made me declare that my text should be this big or that my div should be that wide no matter the context. I am capable of writing css that adapts; if I choose not to, my site is less readable. Writing a web browser that makes those decisions for me would make my job of designing th…

Essentially you are saying that older websites should not be expected to be readable on more modern devices because the burden of change lies with the provider of the style sheet to be compatible with devices that don't exist yet. That's not the intention of the web, it's not a display protocol, it's an information transfer protocol . if it were a display protocol then we could have kept things a lot simpler, specify…

No those websites should be expected to be readable at all times, but it up to the provider of the content to make that happen. Old sites read fine, as long as their stylesheet didn't make decisions to try to look a certain way at a certain resolution. If you never made the decision to write your styles a certain way, you don't have to worry about wierd rendering issues. Unless we want to force folks to use Lynx, it is up to the content provider to say what their content looks like. A browser can not predict the particulars of my design well enough to make those decisions for me.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#60

Post by jacquesm » Sun, May 03, 2015, 11:33 AM UTC

dustinleblanc wrote: post #59

jacquesm wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially you are saying that older websites should not be expected to be readable on more modern devices because the burden of change lies with the provider of the style sheet to be compatible with devices that don't exist yet. That's not the intention of the web, it's not a display protocol, it's an information transfer protocol . if it were a display protocol then we could have kept things a lot simpler, specify…

No those websites should be expected to be readable at all times, but it up to the provider of the content to make that happen. Old sites read fine, as long as their stylesheet didn't make decisions to try to look a certain way at a certain resolution. If you never made the decision to write your styles a certain way, you don't have to worry about wierd rendering issues. Unless we want to force folks to use Lynx, it…

You utterly mis-understand the nature of the relationship between the server provided stream of information and the browser.

Websites are not pixel perfect renditions created by dictates issued from servers, they are streams of information decorated with meta-data that give hints on how the information could be rendered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext

> A browser can not predict the particulars of my design well enough to make those decisions for me.

On the contrary, you are not capable of predicting the context in which the information you supply will be used, so less design is better. If you want pixel perfect eye candy write an application but don't use the web, it's lossy by design, for all you know your information will be presented in an audible rather than a readable form, will be printed out on a printer that does not support colour and/or will be read with a device 10,000 years into the future.

Your design is not relevant, the information is what is relevant.