March 17th, 2020 at 7:26 PM
I'm honestly horrified by the idea of having to use a mobile theme.
I know it really can't be avoided in most cases if you use your phone literally at all (and by extension if you use a phone app that uses WebView or something) but jeez, it feels like such bloat sometimes.
Yes, it's supposed to make it easier to navigate by making buttons and links bigger. No, I don't care. Have some dexterity and you can navigate fine.
Especially with Android, if it's not 100% sure what you're tapping on, it'll zoom in for you to try again with more accuracy. I think iOS also does this, don't quote me on it, my iPad Mini is a little f*** right now, but then again I also know that it's just more responsive in general and somehow just knows what you were tapping on, even if it's in a group of like 10 other buttons less than an inch apart.
When I use a website (or the app for a website, i.e. my banking app,) I want it to stay as consistent as possible across devices and platforms. I don't want to remember five different places where a button might be because one day the app might not work so I need to use the (mobile) webpage, then when I get home I use my laptop, and then maybe they also have a desktop client (Electron or something,) you get the idea. It's way too much effort than I can be f*** with, and that's why I don't even have many apps on my phone, just Signal, Authenticator, maybe three games which I never play, and a bunch of utilities. If I need to use FB, email, or other social media, I use the browser (also because FB and other social media apps are notorious for invading everything on your phone for data mining, but that's another story.)
Unfortunately, there's almost no consistency in my experience when it comes to mobile themes or mobile use in general.
That's why I don't even use the banking app for my phone. Hell, I'd love to, they've got that feature where you can deposit a cheque by taking a photo of it and it would have saved me countless hours from my last job where they were always too lazy to just set up my d*** direct deposit.
But shit, not only was the whole UI inconsistent, it was missing all kinds of features. Couldn't see transaction history, couldn't see past bank statements, couldn't do certain types of money transfers, all it could really do was check balances, take the photo of the cheque, log in/log out, and use the app as a bank card (the joys of NFC and security vulnerabilities!)
The mobile site wasn't much better, but at least it would render 'normally' if I just requested the desktop version. Some sites don't do that and still have a mobile+desktop version with a different stylesheet or whatever that pisses me off. I know FB is like this to a degree, but at least the FB mobile theme (non-app) is decently consistent, because they're a company that knows what they're doing, and you can still access more or less all the same stuff, minus maybe some rarely-used privacy/security/anti-ads settings that you only really need to touch up every few months or so.
With enough bad experiences like these, I've vowed to just stick to using the browser instead of apps, and if possible, requesting the desktop version as much as possible, unless it's something I'm already really familiar with and mobile-theme isn't too bad in terms of consistency/accessibility (i.e. this site).
I reckon writing a mobile theme would be an absolute nightmare too.
I can't imagine having to use two devices to do something. I quite like live previews in my editors, and with two monitors being able to have one dedicated to preview and one dedicated to code/files/ftp/ssh, etc. that's a good workflow for me. If I had to swap back and forth between my phone on my desk as well as my computer where I had my editor open, I'd lose my mind within the first five minutes.
Yes, I know you can do mobile previews in some editors, or you can try to emulate it with your browser or whatever, but I doubt there's a way to accurately render everything properly 100% on a desktop, since every phone is still gonna render their own version slightly differently. Gotta love the 0% standardization in the world of browsers, and somehow even less in the world of Android.
There's a reason why some apps support or don't support certain phones on the Play Store. Even if you have the right version of Android or whatever, it'll stop you from downloading it if you have a certain phone model, because for some reason every single device has their own Android ROM with different functions built-in and the phone the dev was using to test wasn't the same as the phone that others are using. Complete disaster, I pray that I never need to write a mobile app in my life, unless it's for iOS and I get paid a ton of money to do it.
I know it really can't be avoided in most cases if you use your phone literally at all (and by extension if you use a phone app that uses WebView or something) but jeez, it feels like such bloat sometimes.
Yes, it's supposed to make it easier to navigate by making buttons and links bigger. No, I don't care. Have some dexterity and you can navigate fine.
Especially with Android, if it's not 100% sure what you're tapping on, it'll zoom in for you to try again with more accuracy. I think iOS also does this, don't quote me on it, my iPad Mini is a little f*** right now, but then again I also know that it's just more responsive in general and somehow just knows what you were tapping on, even if it's in a group of like 10 other buttons less than an inch apart.
When I use a website (or the app for a website, i.e. my banking app,) I want it to stay as consistent as possible across devices and platforms. I don't want to remember five different places where a button might be because one day the app might not work so I need to use the (mobile) webpage, then when I get home I use my laptop, and then maybe they also have a desktop client (Electron or something,) you get the idea. It's way too much effort than I can be f*** with, and that's why I don't even have many apps on my phone, just Signal, Authenticator, maybe three games which I never play, and a bunch of utilities. If I need to use FB, email, or other social media, I use the browser (also because FB and other social media apps are notorious for invading everything on your phone for data mining, but that's another story.)
Unfortunately, there's almost no consistency in my experience when it comes to mobile themes or mobile use in general.
That's why I don't even use the banking app for my phone. Hell, I'd love to, they've got that feature where you can deposit a cheque by taking a photo of it and it would have saved me countless hours from my last job where they were always too lazy to just set up my d*** direct deposit.
But shit, not only was the whole UI inconsistent, it was missing all kinds of features. Couldn't see transaction history, couldn't see past bank statements, couldn't do certain types of money transfers, all it could really do was check balances, take the photo of the cheque, log in/log out, and use the app as a bank card (the joys of NFC and security vulnerabilities!)
The mobile site wasn't much better, but at least it would render 'normally' if I just requested the desktop version. Some sites don't do that and still have a mobile+desktop version with a different stylesheet or whatever that pisses me off. I know FB is like this to a degree, but at least the FB mobile theme (non-app) is decently consistent, because they're a company that knows what they're doing, and you can still access more or less all the same stuff, minus maybe some rarely-used privacy/security/anti-ads settings that you only really need to touch up every few months or so.
With enough bad experiences like these, I've vowed to just stick to using the browser instead of apps, and if possible, requesting the desktop version as much as possible, unless it's something I'm already really familiar with and mobile-theme isn't too bad in terms of consistency/accessibility (i.e. this site).
I reckon writing a mobile theme would be an absolute nightmare too.
I can't imagine having to use two devices to do something. I quite like live previews in my editors, and with two monitors being able to have one dedicated to preview and one dedicated to code/files/ftp/ssh, etc. that's a good workflow for me. If I had to swap back and forth between my phone on my desk as well as my computer where I had my editor open, I'd lose my mind within the first five minutes.
Yes, I know you can do mobile previews in some editors, or you can try to emulate it with your browser or whatever, but I doubt there's a way to accurately render everything properly 100% on a desktop, since every phone is still gonna render their own version slightly differently. Gotta love the 0% standardization in the world of browsers, and somehow even less in the world of Android.
There's a reason why some apps support or don't support certain phones on the Play Store. Even if you have the right version of Android or whatever, it'll stop you from downloading it if you have a certain phone model, because for some reason every single device has their own Android ROM with different functions built-in and the phone the dev was using to test wasn't the same as the phone that others are using. Complete disaster, I pray that I never need to write a mobile app in my life, unless it's for iOS and I get paid a ton of money to do it.
