

LinkedIn IPhone App's Infinite, Swipe-Able View Implementation - pathdependent
http://engineering.linkedin.com/linkedin-ipad-5-techniques-smooth-infinite-scrolling-html5

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baddox
I don't get the hype. Nearly every interaction with the LinkedIn iPad app
feels very clunky, not to mention completely non-native. The momentum and
"bounciness" of scrolling is as blatantly non-native as can be. They've done a
bunch of great work to get things as close as possible, but it's still a
clunky non-native experience.

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novum
I wonder the same about mobile web apps. Why try so hard to make the visual
design and user experience so similar to a native app...when you're not a
native app?

I'm sure LinkedIn spent an inordinate amount of time tweaking javascript to
approximate native scrolling behavior, but as you note, it's just nowhere near
the mark.

I commend LinkedIn for open-sourcing[0] pieces of their app, but when user
experience is a paramount concern, there is no substitute for native. Ditto
for Facebook's iPhone app. Most users may not be able to articulate why things
don't feel quite right, but you can bet they'll notice it.

[0] <https://github.com/linkedin/LIExposeController>

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gte910h
>Why try so hard to make the visual design and user experience so similar to a
native app...when you're not a native app?

For iOS, it's because the native apps feel good is why they're shooting for
that target. Things that sorta look like them, but behave worse feel bad.

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generateui
What's the deal about the infinte scroll? Everytime I have to use it, it feels
very unpleasant. The problem is the scrollbar which suddenly does not
accurately hint the position of the document I'm in.

A solution might be to change the scrollbar hinting from absolute to relative.
A simple ∞ added below the "scroll down button" on the scrollbar might just
fix this.

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lucian1900
What I'd like is a scrollbar absolute to the entire dataset, and some hint on
how much of it is loaded.

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generateui
That's where inifinite scroll _is_ a good idea. Infinite scroll is usually
correctly applied to datasets where it is unknown how many items the dataset
consists of. E.g. google images, tweets, et cetera.

We already have what you want, it's called a scrollbar ;).

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lucian1900
Where the dataset size is known, but just very large, a scroll bar and lazy
loading of items is what I want.

For datasets with unknown size, just make sure scrolling is only ever needed
for looking at previous pages.

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TamDenholm
This attention to detail and desire to get an excellent experience is what
makes an app go from good to great. I really like the LinkedIn app and since
LinkedIn curate an excellent news feed I use the app for reading news and I
love it.

Looking forward to reading the other articles in the series.

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pathdependent
I liked the article for technical reasons, but it also got me thinking: given
the relatively large percentage of views coming from IPads, at what point does
it become a requirement for a developer to own one?

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CaveTech
I assume you'd only own one if you had to work on one. Even then, it would be
up to the employer to purchase it.

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emehrkay
Great writeup. I am currently writing an "infinite scroll" (all directions)
web app and it is good to know that someone has documented these issues.

Thanks linkedin team

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cmer
Anybody knows if there's a jquery plugin or similar that implements the
concepts from this article? I'm in the same situation and would rather not
reimplement the wheel.

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revorad
Is there a way to find out how much memory an app like this is using? How does
it compare to Safari's memory usage?

