zlacker

>>iBelie+(OP)
My primary concern with this is that different applications are inherently optimized for the platform on which they were originally designed. There are some applications that have a very dense UI because there's simply alot of functionality that the program handles (think of a video editor, an IDE, etc). Trying to slim down those applications to make them reactive so that they will scale onto a phone or tablet just seems silly, and I fear that in the name of making "everything work everywhere", we're going to compromise a bunch of apps that worked beautifully on one platform in favor of making them work adequately on several platforms.

I mean, if someone said, "I've successfully ported Vim to Android!", my first thought would be, "Why in god's name would I want to run vim on my phone?"*

* Ruling out, of course, someone plugging their phone into external KVM.

>>Admira+K7
I'm actually becoming convinced that the right approach is pretty much the opposite and we should be making GUIs that are composable.

If you think about it, no one knows the user's use case better than they themselves do. So who is in a better position to determine what functionality is most important to have on their tiny phone screen? Which components need to be bigger and more prominent or smaller and less prominent according to their workflow? Etc.

In other words, the GUI isn't optimized for anything by the developer, but the user can make it optimal for themselves.

>>AnIdio+fM
But users don't want to be UI designers. I could see a case for an AI that watches the user use the app for a few weeks and automatically designs a UI for them based on their needs. But in general, users don't want to have to do work on top of the work they already do. It's the same reason that despite DVDs having multiple angles for years, and 360° video being easily renderable, almost nobody uses these features. I don't want to direct the movie while I'm watching it!

>>notonm+sN
Users of casual consumption applications don't, that's true. I can't see myself caring to be either. But if they use a tool consistently, they often are driven to customize it for their needs if they can.

The first class of application probably won't run in to any issues with just designing for a smartphone UI and not bothering with anything else.