| From my perspective, at the very least, the link was a means of showing a couple of screenshots. Is it a full-blown application? Sure, I guess. But I could care less about that. The actual content is a couple of screenshots - not exactly something that requires JS. Also, I'm not speaking about designers at all. I am not a website designer, and never claimed to be one. I'm speaking as someone who uses a web browser. As I said earlier: To me, readability > aesthetics. Especially as I'm often on-the-go. Things that look better but are lower contrast are often unreadable when you've got any amount of glare on the screen. I use one web browser for the majority of my browsing. So yes, there is consistency. I'm not talking about across applications, I'm talking about within an application. It may not be about purple scrollbars for your text documents, but that's what it will largely end up being used for. And yes, native applications have a greater power to style things. But there is a distinction. Native applications inherently require greater trust. I'm not going to install any random application that comes my way. Also, there are applications I stay away from precisely because of that - precisely because they have weird styling, and weird UIs. Case in point: Github's desktop application. Great program - or would be if I could get over the UI. But as is, I don't tend to use it. That being said, it's a bit of a moot point regardless. It's just yet another thing I'll add to the list of bookmarklets to disable things to make websites readable. Along with many of the other things you mention as people being able to style as features. |
Taking away freedoms from developers should only ever be done for security reasons. Not because you're scared they'll "misuse it and make ugly apps". Who cares about "ugly apps"? They are weeded out over time by natural selection.