Comment by divan
2 months ago
> browser apps do have their advantages:
These are more like byproduct of the fact that web apps are built on the stack not suited for modern UI apps. It's literally a text typesetting engine pretending to be a rendering engine for high-performance UI.
So, it can also be framed as:
- everything is selectable, even what shouldn't be - buttons, drawers, video players, etc - content is zoomable, which most of the time just breaks UX in hilariuous ways. Developers have to do extra-work to either disable zoom or make hacks/workarounds.
"Everything is selectable" and "everything is zoomable" makes total sense if it's a blog post. If it's a UI for the modern app, it does not.
Disabling zoom is so hostile, why not disable screen readers and put bollards on handicapped ramps while you are at it. It’s literally a middle finger to older people and people with vision issues. If you disable zoom I will not be using your website.
Luckly most popular operating systems have concept of global text size that can be adjusted, and non-web UI frameworks respect that.
> It's literally a text typesetting engine pretending to be a rendering engine for high-performance UI
This is an outdated view of the web. Catch up or be left behind.
This is factual view. No matter how many layers of abstraction you put on top, the foundation is always there. Luckily we have better and better support for wasm in browsers, so it's a matter of time when this outdated stack will be replaced with solutions designed from the ground up for the task.
Web just have defaults that are not suitable for apps. Disable text select is one line of css, not that hard.