Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#161

Post by djrogers » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

tinus_hn wrote: post #129

faitswulff wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would find this a more compelling argument if some of the apps in question weren’t from Apple themselves (Apple Shortcuts, Apple TV). If Apple can’t get it right, then how can we expect anyone else to?

The Apple TV example looks a bit disingenuous, the huge black space normally holds an image promoting one of the shows. That’s why it has so much space. I don’t know why in his situation the header is empty but that has nothing to do with layout on small screens. You could complain the promotional image is too large but it’s really obvious you can scroll down to reveal the rest of the content and I don’t think anyone…

> But on your device you can get to these icons as well, try to find out how!

Uhh, I scrolled just like the emoji keyboard (which every iPhone user has figure out) and it worked? There are also partial icons at the edge hinting of more to the right. This wasn’t/isn’t exactly hidden.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#162

Post by spideymans » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

jiggawatts wrote: post #80

chrismorgan wrote: post #56

The Google Maps thing isn’t entirely about screen size (though I would hope it wouldn’t be quite so bad on larger screens—but I’m only familiar with how it looks on a small-by-modern-standards Android phone, where it’s about the same as on the iPhone depicted in this article, or even a little less); it’s about the product’s overarching philosophy, which has changed over the past decade (in a direction I strongly disl…

While we're on the topic: YouTube, which is inherently a video content viewing service, goes out of its way to obscure the video content. The TV app, the mobile app, and the browser app all insist on overlaying the content with random garbage that no sane human being could possibly be more interested in that the content that they launched with the intention of watching! Heaven help you if you open a popular live feed…

>While we're on the topic: YouTube, which is inherently a video content viewing service, goes out of its way to obscure the video content. The TV app, the mobile app, and the browser app all insist on overlaying the content with random garbage that no sane human being could possibly be more interested in that the content that they launched with the intention of watching!

Too often I've been unable to decipher what's being shown in the last ~15 seconds of the video because of the end-of-video annotations and recommendations.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#163

Post by gcb0 » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

"oh buy i gladly pay the apple tax and subject myself to a single apple store with draconian rules for quality products in the entire ecosystem"

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#164

Post by crazygringo » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

This feels... silly.

Many of the examples have nothing to do with screen size (e.g. cutting off the bottom of letters or "so much white space"), or are intended ("Dang I can barely see the map" -- well yeah that's because the primary data is the list of results). Many other comments here are listing that many of the supposed issues are the same on large screens too.

I used the original SE and then upgraded to the SE2 and none of this has been any kind of problem.

In fact, almost all of these are great examples of responsive design. Even if you have to scroll a little or some ellipses are shown... they seem to all work.

If this is the worst the author can find of small screens not working... then they seem to have proved the opposite point, that small screens are actually working great.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#165

Post by whitebread » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

fouc wrote: post #4

weejewel wrote: post #2

If you think this is bad, try the first iPhone SE.

I'm still using the iPhone SE (2016) as my daily driver. I find overall it's fine, only occasionally does a button get cut off by the screen size with no recourse.

Same here, my iPhone SE (2016) is still going strong and I can't remember the last time I stumbled upon an app that gave me enough sizing issues to become frustrating. What I would've given for the 2020 SE to be the same size as the 2016, being able to do everything on my phone one-handed is such a nice perk.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#166

Post by baxtr » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 3:17 PM UTC

tinus_hn wrote: post #45

A big part of the problem is people just not following the guidelines. If you have a toolbar with buttons that have labels, it’s not going to fit. But if you’re following the guidelines, you don’t have labels and it fits. If you have a list with a refresh button on the bottom you have to scroll to see that button on a small screen. But if you use the standard pull to refresh control, you don’t even need the button. I…

That’s the core problem. Is there a specialized service you can submit your app to to test for guideline adherence?

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#167

Post by ruph123 » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 3:22 PM UTC

One thing that really annoyed me who always preferred the smaller iPhones like the SE: When Apple updated their Music app to make everything super big and bloated it basically got unusable. Especially for classical music where you could not see past the long name of the symphony to see which movement it was. And even while playing you had to wait for the running text to reach the important part.

And all this was just blown up, they did not have to cram in a lot of infos they just increased the size of every UI element, made fonts bigger and bolt. It was really poor design, it felt like a phone for the elderly. Also one feature was gone that the old Music app had which would've helped here: hold down on a song to get the overlay of the whole name...

In general classical music is really poorly supported by many music services and apps but this was such a huge annoyance that I had to switch to a third party app and delete that shitty Music app.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#168

Post by ryandrake » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #156

tinus_hn wrote: post #45

A big part of the problem is people just not following the guidelines. If you have a toolbar with buttons that have labels, it’s not going to fit. But if you’re following the guidelines, you don’t have labels and it fits. If you have a list with a refresh button on the bottom you have to scroll to see that button on a small screen. But if you use the standard pull to refresh control, you don’t even need the button. I…

Let’s not get me started on tiny tap areas. Virtually every graphic designer I have ever worked with is ignorant of Apples 44 by 44 point recommendation. They just want their designs to look good, but give no though to how they feel, especially when trying to use them one handed or with disabilities.

Yep, too many UX professionals spend 95% of their energy on the look and maybe 5% on the feel.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#169

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

tinus_hn wrote: post #141

hanniabu wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you use these smart hamburger menu overlay or scroll controls, they look bad on untested devices. Don’t use hamburger menus. What is a good alternative to a hamburger menu? I can't think of anything that wouldn't have the similar issues.

The alternative to hamburger menus is to design your app navigation so you don’t need them. Use the settings app for settings, so they don’t clutter your app. Have the user tap an ‘account’ control to do account related things like logout or change passwords. The problem is (oversimplified) these developers start with 20 things they want to show, and then they pick 4 things they can cram in the toolbar and the rest i…

[deleted]

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#170

Post by ryandrake » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

iamben wrote: post #125

enlyth wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people on HN think UIs should be autogenerated from backend code and that peak UI was Windows 95. Anyone worth their salt doing some real UI work knows how difficult it is to accommodate every arbitrary resolution and aspect ratio.

To reply to you both - I'm specifically talking about the web. I have no experience building apps, so can't comment there. But for the web, I'm absolutely happy to argue it's not that much more effort.

Whether it's the web or an "app," it should work sensibly at any reasonable resolution. It doesn't have to look good, or look like the pixel-perfect, happy-path Photoshop mocks the UX designer made, but it should function. Desktop developers have been doing at least an OK job of this for decades.

Yet here we are, where it's a struggle to find an app that even sensibly supports landscape mode, or supports a user-configured font size.