I am the author and I love the UK, am sad about you leaving, and I am as angry about similar practices in EU countries. My gripe is with the pushing of foreign controlled apps, not the immigration rules.
I even got flak in this discussion for referring to the UK government multiple times as "EU government" because I can not let go :(.
(author here): Is this in agreement with the article? It reads like you want it to be a gotcha?
A government requiring emails and then giving complete control of the email infrastructure to two US companies (Google for Gmail and Microsoft for Outlook) would be exactly what I was trying to write about.
I hope you take my feedback with an open mind as I don't mean anything personal. Your article is an example of people who look at things through their own lens rather than the general one.
I'm certain 95% of the population would be using Apple or Android, and the instructions on the Gov UK site are made for the majority, not for the edge cases.
My comment falls exactly within that, for most people, they define email as Gmail or Outlook. There are people who use Proton, iCloud, or personal domain emails, but the instructions will always mention what the average person would know and identify.
I can understand the feedback and I agree if you are building a product, you want to make it easy to use and intuitive for the majority. In my opinion, as a government you have an obligation to create processes differently though. You should provide and focus on a flow that is 100% in your/the citizens control with the messaging to match.
So in your email example, I think the governments messaging must be neutrally on email (and arguably the government should provide free Email accounts to citizens), but they could add convenience buttons to open GMail or similar.
But I recognize my opinion is probably an outlier, especially on hackernews. I can see your point as well and taken with an open mind :).
(article author here): The big green "Start Now" button on https://www.gov.uk/eta/apply takes me to the same double push-for-the-app flow in the article (on desktop firefox). But otherwise true, should probably have searched for "UK ETA", but coming from the announcement, that is very clear you need the app, searching for "UK ETA App" felt natural.
There is a link that says “I cannot use the app” and at the bottom of the page there is “Apply online instead” which takes you here, and you just press next:
(article author here): It's over the top from my annoyed reaction when I encountered the clickthrough. I am mostly annoyed at how much EU governments keep pushing native apps for government services, thus making them dependent on Google/Apple. The fallback exists here, but it is very much not what you are encouraged to use.
I agree though that the title is too much and less funny in retrospect, I wish I chose a more tame one. Humorous annoyance on personal blog posts translates badly to submissions here.
It doesn’t really seem like humorous hyperbole, though. It’s currently just factually incorrect. And it’s in your power to fix it, especially if you agree now in retrospect!
Not sure I can change the submission anymore. I am happy with the title as it is for my own blog, it just created some irritation here.
I am not a native speaker, so my interpretation might be wrong, but I tried to evoke the semi-serious but good-natured "You went to the bakery? You better brought me a snack as well!" meaning with "better have", not the "must have" meaning.
The UK left the EU a while ago. UK citizens traveling to the EU will require an ETIAS authorization which also comes with an app at the end of the year, but that's not live yet. The website that's been prepared so far does mention the ability to file online, though.
(article author here): Fair comment, but at least for me the https://www.gov.uk/eta flow still just leads into the double upsell of the mobile app. My problem is more with governments (all of them, this is just one instance) increasingly pushing people to use native Apps and with that to the mercy of Google/Apple.
The article is definitely a bit over the top, it is just my personal blog and me trying to write a bit more funny to counter the bland LLMs. Your opinion can vary on if I have succeeded or overshot on that.
> My problem is more with governments ... pushing people to ... Google/Apple.
It's worse than that. Many municipalities and schools etc only post public notices to Facebook/Twitter or some similarly hostile environment.
> The article is definitely a bit over the top, it is just my personal blog and me trying to write a bit more funny to counter the bland LLMs.
But. Your headline contradicts your story. The only excuse for that (and it is weak) is when writers don't get to write their own headlines (this is common) and the editors who do write the headlines are corrupted for clicks or drama (but I repeat myself).
I wrote about my thinking here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47168225). I do not have a story and I am not a writer that has editors so I have no excuse but my personal taste ;). You will disagree with that, but just wanted to mention it so it does not seem like I am ignoring it.
I'll push back on one point: when I said "contradicts your story", I meant that the headline and the story (article content) are in conflict. So you do have a story/article, and yes your headline is squishy enough to argue misinterpretation, but it's clearly not honest.
So the tension is that the boring but honest headline of "Applying for a UK visa without a smartphone requires a few extra clicks that are easy to overlook" doesn't serve the (apparently higher) purpose of drawing people in.
I was expecting outrage in your article, but I only found inconvenience. That's manipulative in my opinion, and I would avoid reading future articles on your site based on that experience. Do as thou wilt, obviously, but that's my take!
Your topic (smartphone/appstore requirements) is a real issue! I'm glad to hear that the UK hasn't gone all-in, yet.
2. Now click the big green button marked "Start now" in the "Apply online" section
3. Then click the link at the bottom of the page marked "I cannot apply on the UK ETA app"
4. Then click again "Continue application online"
And now you can start.
Realistically this is probably 2 clicks too many and, whilst on the face of it it's not that much effort, it might be enough to bamboozle the tech phobic/less capable - of which there are still many (and not just older generations, either), or your grasp of English isn't great. There's just a bit too much going on - too much content - with some of these pages, and I don't really see a good reason to bury the links all the way at the bottom the way they are at present.
But it will be simpler on a phone, as you don't need to do the same manual entering of data, and don't need to get a photo of your passport and a photo of yourself onto your computer.
> I don't really see a good reason to bury the links all the way at the bottom the way they are at present.
I'd not be surprised if the number of issues when using the app is significantly lower than doing it online. Particularly if lots of people are using phones to visit these sites anyway.
Yeah, I should have probably explained most a bit more in detail.
I don't think highlight text when long pressing on UI elements is expected behavior for an app though. It would be for a website but can feel out of place in an installed app.
I think any content the user might care to select should be selectable, even if native apps often neglect this feature.
But I agree that UI elements (eg. buttons) should not be selectable. Even in regular websites, it's best to set the whole gamut of appropriate CSS properties so they behave like native UI widgets. I also make sure to set `cursor: pointer` on anything clickable.
Web apps that just set an onclick handler on a div and call it done are a pet peeve of mine.
In general, these might not be the best solutions - they are just the ones I found. I am always happy to learn and want to keep that post as a living list of fixed for myself in the future (so if anyone knows a better way, please let me know!). I am also not a native iOS user, so I might miss adherence to the iOS UX standards.
The reason for 1 was actually my mother who tried the PW, had her phone set to a different language and always triggered the translation overlay ;).
It's not really that the solutions are bad but that a lot of these "problems" are fundamental parts of the UI, and shouldn't be taken away without a compelling reason.
You may well have compelling reasons, I assume each of these is a response to an issue you encountered. But since the article doesn't present them, it leaves the audience scratching their heads and comes off as needlessly disempowering your users. These definitely aren't things you should be doing by default in every PWA, as "checklist" would imply.
If I installed a PWA and I couldn't pull to refresh or select text, I would probably uninstall it.
The points you made about specific issues were good though, like notches, favicons, and mimetypes.
That's fair, the thought behind the checklist name was more for me to go through to double check if I need these... And only apply them if I feel it makes sense. But that's obviously lost if you read the list as not-me.
I'll take that feedback with me for future note-to-self style blogs :).
I think Chrome does an excellent job actually. For example the error if you try to resolve a URL that does not exist has: An error in plain english ("<domains>’s server IP address could not be found."), suggestions to help the user: "Try: ..." and an error slug to help search for more info: "ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED".
I even got flak in this discussion for referring to the UK government multiple times as "EU government" because I can not let go :(.
reply