[skohan]

Why would you? There are a tiny share of small screen size phones out there, and often you need a substantially different design for a small screen. Basically you are doubling the layout effort on your designers and app developers (or let's say 1.3 times modifier at least), and those designs have to be maintained as well.

The alternative is to really have a "one size fits all" design, but this will likely mean making compromises on larger screens.

Mobile development is expensive, and there's already enough to deal with to support backwards compatibility, and localization. It's just not economical to support small phones which almost nobody is using.

[shadowfaxRodeo]

Everybody fits into a 1%.

Why design for vision, hearing, motor, cognitive impairments, older browsers, feature phones, 2g connections, motion sensitivity, unusual input devices, smart watches, tvs, game consoles, low-powered devices, languages other than English?

I don't mean to sound harsh, but I'm very tired of hearing this argument. It's not that hard to accomodate people, especially on Apple devices, they give you all the tools to do this.

Don't be shocked if X group is a small fraction of your users if your design has made it clear they're not welcome.

[skohan]

Maybe they aren't worth my time. What if I am running a bootstrapped startup, and supporting small screens is the difference between being able to out-compete my competitors on features or not? Just because these tools exist does not make it zero effort.

It's a very entitled view to assume that every product has a duty to accommodate you. Yes it feels bad to be left out of something, but that doesn't mean it's owed to you.

[shadowfaxRodeo]

I'm talking from the perspective of the developers. It's not that difficult to accomodate people. Following principles on progressive enhancement is actually easier than not doing it.

If you're looking for a way to out-compete your competitors, how about making an app that works for the people they've left out?

[skohan]

> If you're looking for a way to out-compete your competitors, how about making an app that works for the people they've left out?

You're free to run this experiment, but my guess is that it will not be a meaningful differentiating factor

[BuckRogers]

That experiment has been run and it’s a major success, it’s the iPhone.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3273107/10-apple-acces...

[Kye]

1%s talk to other 1%s

[Wowfunhappy]

Important note: the author is actually talking about the 2020 iPhone SE. There has got to be tons of those + iPhone 8/7/6S’s still in use.

[skohan]

Ok I missed that detail - I think it's reasonable to support iOS8 size screens given the market share. But the logic holds with iPhone 5 and below size screens for example.

[forgotmypw17]

why?

pride in worksmanship, perhaps...

because 1% is still quite a few users for whom the experience sucks...

or perhaps just plain old empathy...

because not every customer can just replace their device...

or... i dunno... just avoiding someone posting embarrassing screenshots of one's app looking like shit on hacker news?

[mattmanser]

And then you make it suck for everyone else.

Mobile first often made the experience suck for desktops.

Tiny screen first just makes the experience suck for everyone.

The author says: Also, I don’t care if the statistics for small devices is less than 1%, it’s just pure respect for those users.

But that's a false dichotomy.

[afavour]

> Tiny screen first just makes the experience suck for everyone.

No it doesn’t. iOS’s UI toolkit has numerous tools to allow a design to adapt to screen size. There’s no reason an adjustment for a smaller screen would have any effect on a larger one.

[skohan]

I'm quite sure all the screenshots in the article are the result of adaptive designs being broken due to edge cases. Constraint-based adaptive designs are great, but they have their limits. Unless you have a very simple design it is not going to work on every form factor.

[bradley_taunt]

> Mobile first often made the experience suck for desktops.

I’d have to argue that poor design work in general is the cause for this. “Mobile first” never meant to neglect the desktop experience - designers who do that are just poor designers to begin with.

[forgotmypw17]

>And then you make it suck for everyone else.

In Russian, there is a saying: To a poor dancer, their own butt gets in the way...

[kcmastrpc]

none of these reasons negate the cost of implementing layouts for _literally every device on the planet_. it's not practical, nor do the bean counters really care because the loss in revenue is very much less than the cost of implementation.

[konjin]

How does any of that make money?

[forgotmypw17]

I don't recall claiming that it does...

Although I would think that this type of experience would steer one away from using the software or recommending it, this eventually reducing the revenue.

But more importantly, it would weigh on my conscience as a developer and reduce the quality of my sleep, which to me is more important than money by a long shot.

[burntoutfire]

Wasn't that the original value proposution of the Apple products under Jobs? That the overall craftsmanship was high and they just didn't feel crappy like their competitors'?

[forgotmypw17]

it certainly seemed that way to me at the time... i miss ios 3.

[skohan]

When iOS3 was a thing, there was exactly one screen size to support at one resolution, and when you went to the home screen the app closed so you could count on a predictable state every time the app opened. We used to measure design elements in number of pixels back then. It was a much simpler time.

[paulcole]

> someone posting embarrassing screenshots of one's app looking like shit on hacker news

The horror!

My mom will for sure delete her local bank’s app if she sees the post showing that the padding is a few pixels off on a phone she doesn’t own.

[forgotmypw17]

I don't know about you, but I would be ashamed if something I wrote showed up in this article...

[oneeyedpigeon]

There are more readers of hacker news besides your mom.

[afavour]

> Basically you are doubling the layout effort on your designers and app developers (or let's say 1.3 times modifier at least), and those designs have to be maintained as well.

Judging by the screenshots in the article this really isn’t true. Devs just need to bother to test with these small devices, they’d see the padding and offset issues immediately and it would be an easy fix.

[kergonath]

Most of the time, just using the OS-provided controls would save these problems before they even happen.

[danielheath]

Y’all are getting multiple test devices?

[afavour]

You can’t use simulators?