Comment by jsdalton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsdalton | Hacker News Reader

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I think I wrote up something very similar the last time jQuery Mobile was posted here, but I'm afraid it hasn't improved much since then. This is exactly what happens when I touch a menu item using my iPhone:

1. The Safari address bar momentarily drops down from the top and then back up again.

2. A loading modal appears for a few seconds and then disappears.

3. The page I'm currently on jumps to the top.

4. The new page slides in from the right and the old one slides out to the left.

Steps 1, 2 and 3 are extremely jarring and, in my opinion, totally unnecessary. (I mean unnecessary from user perspective; I understand that the behavior is probably difficult for the framework developers to control cross platform.) I guess there's an argument for #2, but does the user really need such an obnoxious cue that content is being loaded?

Anyhow, I'm a huge fan of the idea behind this and I'm really rooting for this framework to succeed. But I could not at this point in good conscience implement it for any projects I'm working on, sadly.

The loading modal was a huge turnoff. Why would you ever show that to a user? After clicking a link, when is your browser not loading the next page?

I see that modal when browsing the docs (http://jquerymobile.com/demos/1.0/) in Chrome on a broadband connection ("I canna go any faster captain!"). The presence of that modal made me question other design decisions (yes, I get it, you have a sleek pop-up experience... now why are you showing it to me on every page load?).

> The loading modal was a huge turnoff. Why would you ever show that to a user?

IMO, with ajax page loads you need to show the user something that indicates their click was received. All browsers have a spinner or message somewhere to indicate "they're working" on pulling down the next page of content. If you take that visual clue away from users when loading content via ajax, what you'll end up with is frustrated users who click multiple times on the link since they think it's not working.

Whether the big obnoxious "loading" popup with ugly spinner is the right design choice is another matter, but fortunately the styling and location of that is easily changed.

I should have clarified -- it's not that a loading message is unnecessary, it's how it was implemented. The fact that a giant overlay modal appears on every page in their public docs calls into question other UI decisions. This isn't the padding on some button, it's an in your face element.

Sure, we can tweak it to have a small transparent spinner in the lower right... but what other changes are needed too? I want a framework where the authors already fixed these obvious things.

like i've said recently [1], jquery mobile is 90% complete. unfortunately, the last 10% accounts for nearly all the polish required to make a web app feel awesome. personally, i think that's important for 1.0.

i'm sure jquery's focus is on compatibility (not unlike the values of jquery core). unfortunately, this puts experience in the back seat. i do have faith this stuff will be resolved in time. granted, i've been saying that for over a year.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223602

> the last 10% accounts for nearly all the polish required to make a web app feel awesome. personally, i think that's important for 1.0.

I couldn't agree more. I'm less disappointed with the lack of progress here than I am with the fact they consider the current version worthy of being labeled 1.0. That signals to me that they don't consider an outstanding UX to be a core feature of the product.

I'd argue one of the biggest reasons that UX is lacking is that they are trying to support ALL the platforms (including blackberries, windows).

If they focused 100% on iphone / android, I'm sure they could achieve a better UX and performance.

Just look at zepto.js thats 100% focused on mobile safari vs jquery.

I use the previous version of JQM at http://bumb.ly and have for the most part been happy with it. The key for me was getting rid of the default page transition animation effect, and instead using "none" as the default transition effect.

Would these issues still be there if it were deployed with PhoneGap? Anyone has experience in this?

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