A better way to read HN on the iPad - Happy Thanksgiving From Onswipe
blog.onswipe.com
blog.onswipe.com
I don't understand what problem is trying to be solved. Browsing web pages on the ipad is a pleasant experience. I can scroll with my finger. With onswipe, I can no longer scroll with my finger. Why was that a problem? that's not a problem. It doesn't need solving. Please tell us explicitly the value you are trying to add, because I cannot see it.
While I am glad people are experimenting with new UI metaphors and reading experiences, every product I've seen from Onswipe has been, as you say, slow and choppy. And not just a little slow or a little choppy, I'm talking unusably so, often to the point where it crashes my browser.
I get the impression they aren't testing this stuff at all on the first generation iPad.
So, I usually switch to browsing such sites inside the excellent iCab Mobile browser, with its User-Agent changed to indicate desktop Safari. Usually works – though there is a report in sibling thread that OnSwipe, in its quest to infuriate, sometimes uses some other iPad-detection mechanism.
Why show articles in a grid instead of a list? A list makes the hierarchy clear, and is easy to parse.
Why have articles text on multiple columns instead of one? Multiple columns are a left-over from print newspaper who had to use them for practical reasons. I personally find them less readable than a single column (except maybe for very short articles).
Why prevent me from zooming in or out to adjust the font size? This is actually one of the coolest thing about browsing the web on the iPad, and you break it.
I think it's a shame, because I really like some of the other features, like the preloading of the content, and stripping away the ads and distractions.
You can have a single, thin (the ideal size is about 10-12 words) column sitting in the center of the page. You don't need to stick another column next to it just to fill the space (which, unlike a print newspaper, we have plenty of).
We've thought about font resizing, but do you think that's needed when everything is "in focus". ie- no need to zoom in away from ads or to see the rest of the article.
A few other things that are needed (and work in the non-Onswipe version of pages):
1. Rotating the iPad to landscapes houldn't trigger a choppy relayout that takes five seconds. It should show the exact same content as in portrait mode, zoomed to fill the width of the screen. Users can then decide whether to zoom out and show more content, or stay zoomed in to take advantage of the increased horizontal resolution.
2. The back button should work. Pro tip: If I tap the back button 20 times, and nothing happens until the 20th time, the back button is broken.
I'm glad that OnSwipe is experimenting with different ways to view articles on the iPad, but when I find anything that disables pinch to zoom–one of my favorite features on the iPad–I get frustrated and leave.
As far as certain expectations, I admit to that: I expect to read small blogs without my browser crashing and without jerky scrolling. If you think those expectations are only of the tech crowd, you are delusional.
If 95% of the readers on Wordpress.com opt to keep it that is most likely due to the fact that you don't provide an opt out. All you provide is the ability to temporarily turn it off for that one session, and that is at the bottom of the page, so if you can reach that without a crashing there is not much point to turn it off. Also, if you are in landscape mode the opt out is often not clickable because your software scrolls back to move it off the page, and clicks are not recognizes during that auto scrolling. Put an to out at the top, with an option to permanently opt out, and let's see if that claimed 95% holds up.
Months ago, you said several times that you would be fixing these problems with the Wordpress.com version of OnSwipe. We are still waiting.
This should be the mobile web developers creed, their Hippocratic Oath.
I've totally stopped opening links from extremetech on my ipad due to the unusability of the interface.
Take that to heart. Please.
Stop arguing with your users. You're not going to convince us with numbers that we're wrong. We've used your app. It does in fact suck.
Right, over the top expectations like caring more about the content of the site then choppy, unsatisfying animations. No wonder all these crappy iPad sites have been popping up if this is the attitude devs take. As an iPad owner, I hate them. Your desktop site rendered better and faster on an iPad then your iPad optimized version ever did.
Failing that, the minimum barely acceptable option would be to remember when I turn it off on each website.
Onswipe is so bad. It makes me want to throw my iPad against the wall. Even the "Show original article " link takes 30 taps to work. Arrrgh. Slowest, nastiest, crashing thing I have to encounter. It hurts that magazines like slate use it because it means I can't read the article.
One interesting thing is that swipe will increase pageviews but lowers the experience because people like me will repeatedly load the page after it crashes and hit the "view original version".
Just writing this post has got me in hives. Please just destroy this software, it would make the world a better place.
I like HN on an iPad as it is. It DOESN'T serve me some choppy, overly animated version of the site. HN loads on an iPad 1 in a split second. I have the Safari Reader feature if I don't like the article layout. I'll never use this. Furthermore, it's projects like this that give web apps a bad name in general.
Tl;dr Dislike.
I'm interested in what technology you used to scrape the articles from Hacker News? There is no official api so it would be interesting to hear the process you used, Thanks!
Let me pre-empty where I know there's going to be some dislike as a lot of the HN crowd just wants the normal non-swipeable web. Most of that frustration comes from a > year old version powering Wordpress.com (which we're upgrading). Would love to hear feedback on this specific version of our platform. Most articles in this version should render well, except those that aren't really news or blog content (ie- direct link to webpages).
Specifics:
1) There were a couple flashes of differently styled content, one on the blog post, then one with a column of text and an image, and then the page.
2) It was slow as hell (several seconds per flash), and I wanted out by the time I saw the first flash of content. Which brings us to the
3) Back button. On an ipad 1, I can't mash the back button fast enough, so I get caught in a redirect hell and have to close out the tab and go back to hacker news some other way.
4) Going to the direct link crashes Safari.
I was going to take a video, but I've got kids screaming for breakfast.
If you guys aren't stress-testing this on a 1st gen iPad with a goodly number of apps resident in the background, I'd really recommend adding this to your test matrix...
Is crashing out after a couple swipes on a first generation iPad accepted and not a problem in your eyes? Because EVERYONE with a first gen iPad is having that exact problem, and you've chosen to completely ignore them.
Crashing is ALWAYS a bad experience, regardless of what preceded it. It's not subjective, or ambiguous, or possibly the users fault. It's 100% the fault of your memory intensive page, something that you refuse to take responsibility for or acknowledge is a problem.
From that, I can only assume this crap is geared towards iPad 2 owners only, giving me a bunch of extra reasons to hate it. Not only are you going to code a convoluted solution to something that isn't a problem for 2% of the web, you're also going to cut that in half to 1% by ignoring original iPads.
So frustrating.
There are lots of creative and attractive themes out there. Unfortunately, OnSwipe replaces that creativity with a renderer that makes every page look the same (i.e. boring).
One of the biggest advantages of the iPad is its full-featured web support on a mobile platform; OnSwipe wipes out this advantage. It removes built-in iPad features (e.g. scrolling, page zoom, etc.) making reading pages awkward and unnatural. And it introduces a cheesy, unnecessary bouncing effect.
For this and other reasons I find OnSwipe to be useless and a bane to my web browsing experience.
Thanks!
Is there a way for content owners to know how things will look on an iPad without one?
I don't want a new UI, just people to fix their sites for the above.