Hacker News Reader

I've never understood the appeal of Onswipe or iPad themes. The iPad has a gorgeous large screen and a browser that is fully featured and capable (minus Flash), so why do websites resort to dumbing down pages for it? The iPhone, I can see a market for, but not the iPad or similar form factored devices.

Why can't websites be websites and apps be apps?

View on HN

I agree with you in principle. It seems the majority of attempts at making an ipad theme take from the experience I have on my ipad rather than add to it. However, there are certain things that a site needs to do (differently) to function on an iOS device or indeed any touch-screen device. Primary among these is to remove any notion of or dependency on a hover-state from the UI since this is meaningless on a touch device. Many sites are unusable because of this. There are other minor niggles also such as styling 'pressed' button elements (which never return to their unpressed state)

If iOS 'themes' for sites focused on simple usability issues like that instead of trying to do the whole custom iOS 'experience' they would be far more usable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com