mobile

[stevenhao]

mobile

[stevenhao]

mostly done as of 740a903..f2fb3b9

[stevenhao]

just reverted a lot of those changes in 08195a1. Will be closing this ticket because it's outdated.

Summary of my reasoning:

trying to make a web app behave like a native app is hard for several reasons

• different browsers behave differently (safari, chrome, opera, in-app browser e.g. messenger, slack)
• different platforms (ios, android) behave differently
• different versions of the OS have different behavior
• overriding the native keyboard is just a bad idea since it's jarring and hard to make it a smooth UX

the main roadblocks are:

• overriding browser defaults is not always possible
  • for example, you can't easily disable pinch-zooming in newer versions of ios safari
  • can't override swipe-to-go-back gesture
  • this resulted in really jarring behavior when pinching, because the app would try and fail to prevent the default zoom behavior, while also implementing its own pinch handlers.
• something about passive listeners and varied compatibility

my learnings:

• if you want your app to feel like a mobile app, just make it a native app. hacking html will not work. even if it works temporarily, you'll have to keep maintaining it as new browser / OS versions get released
• if you're going to use html, try to override default behavior in as few places as possible, to make the UX intuitive