[JoshMnem]

That's much worse than I thought. The Web is not a Google or Apple product, and your product's design shouldn't change based on which browser you use. That entirely misses the point of the open WWW. It's a terrible idea to build things in that way.

[yesimahuman]

That’s ridiculous. We have to make it look like _something_ the user would expect, and something good. Why not pick standard UI designs and patterns in use today? The alternative is that we build our own standards and force users to learn something new.

This is a feature of Ionic you’re free to disable but many users like very much. It is more widely used for apps running in the App Store that want to map to iOS and Android UI standards for each platform.

We also pride ourselves on making Ionic easily brandable so the platform standards provide a good base you can easily remix to make it look quite different.

[JoshMnem]

The Web is open and independent. Google's and Apple's visual branding are not the standards of the Web. There are countless non-Google, non-Apple designs on the Web and they are not forcing users to learn anything new.

Sorry to disagree, but Material Design itself lacks aesthetic restraint and has accessibility problems with the constant flashing and animation, but that's another conversation.

Edit: I'm talking about the browser, not apps (though I don't like MD there either). I mean that websites shouldn't change their design based on the company that makes the web browser.

[chii]

What if it hadn't been ionic, but was instead the browser itself that rendered the same website differently when in different OS? Oh wait...that's already the case...

[JoshMnem]

Google's browsers don't automatically load your websites with Google's visual branding and Apple's browsers don't load your websites with Apple's visual branding.

There's a battle between some of the large tech companies for appification of the Web at the moment, and that way of thinking is a trap.

[antonkm]

You do realize that Ionic is mainly used for App Store and Google Play right? You're free to not use it. It's a correct decision for Ionic to go with iOS and Android standards, from my point of view, and the implementation is superb as always with Ionic components.

[JoshMnem]

Yes, I know. The article says also the Web.

A company shouldn't design its website with Google or Apple's visual branding as if it were locked into a closed platform. It also appears to be a problem with things like Flutter, though I haven't looked closely.

[fifafu]

That’s stupid. Of course you can decide to force a specific theme via the config or even create a completely independent theme within Ionic - it has great tooling for that. However having an app behave like an iOS app when being opened in Safari on iOS absolutely makes sense. After all, Ionic is a mobile web framework and one of its goals is to look native on the specific platform.

I assume you have never tried it.

[Thorentis]

Yes, but in this case you aren't really developing for the web, you're developing a "native" looking app that happens to use a WebView to display it. Using native looking controls therefore makes sense for this use case. There is a reason why Apple and Google provide UI widgets for use in applications, so that user have a consistent experience across apps.

[kerryritter]

Sure, but this is a tool to build cross-platform mobile apps which look and feel native. Imo, proper UI defaults makes sense for such a purpose.

[JoshMnem]

The open Web is independent of the browsing device. If you play Google's game of using their visual branding, you're making it easier for them to hijack the WWW into a Google product.

Having that as a default means that many people will implement it.

[nine_k]

The web is open. You can design things the way you want, standing out or blending in, depending on what you want.

Some apps are web technologically, but are local tools by purpose; that's where blending it could be beneficial for the user.

[lowtolerance]

Pretending that you speak for “the open web” in an attempt to sell some obsolete web design dogma that open web advocates have spent the last dozen years or so fighting against is pretty solid evidence that you’ve also missed the point of the open web.