• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Dion Almaer

Software, Development, Products

  • @dalmaer
  • LinkedIn
  • Medium
  • RSS
  • Show Search
Hide Search

iframes + responsive design == awesome apis

April 18, 2016 Leave a Comment

http://npr.github.io/responsiveiframe/

When you work on something, you often talk about what is broken and what could be better. We are reeeeeally good at doing that in the Web community, partly due to the fact that we see how the sausage is made thanks to the transparency of the standards work, and the evolution of popular frameworks on Github.

I mentioned how one of the great features of the Web is progressive rendering, and the huge win users get by being able to see and consume without having to wait for an end point.

Another feature that I feel like we take for granted is the <iframe>, in fact we often malign it. We think about iframe busting. We think about the poor running content (often ads) that are running in there. We see weak user experiences and we blame that poor <iframe> and forget about the good that it offers as a tool in the toolbox.

We took the poor frame, enhanced it to be an iframe, and then went even further with seamless iframes in the hope that it would give us something of a component model for the web. We can do better, but it sure is helpful.

Glueing with iframes

I was using a website the other week, and it was a typical enterprise glue effort that took youtube video, and a Q&A up-voter application and put it together to do the job. All of this was done without the need for YouTube or the Q&A system to know about each other.

Isn’t this API design at its best? As “software eats the world” we think about the complex services that we are able to place behind an API. Rich payment systems? Stripe has you covered.

The foundation should probably contain endpoints, but it is nice to go up the stack to deliver UI functionality to boot.

Connie Chan is an old co-worker and friend, and as a partner at a16z she spends a lot of time working in China, and deeply understanding it. She has some great writing on the context there, and how the US media often doesn’t get the translation quite right.

With the buzz around chat bots these days, she noted what they look like on WeChat:

6/ THIS is what a WeChat transaction actually looks like (ordering McDonalds); not a chat but an app-within-an-app. pic.twitter.com/bEKCBnpuHW

— Connie Chan (@conniechan) April 1, 2016

It doesn’t make sense to be limited to text interfaces, and why would we be? As soon as anything non-trivial is needed we can take over the UI to put a user in a nice flow. What better way to do this at scale than via a WebView via native, or an iframe on the web?

Responsive

When you are ready to show a user a richer UI, you need to consider the variety of screen sizes and capabilities. The web has had to handle a huge variety of form factors from its inception, and with @media queries it has gone from strength to strength.

With the advent of responsive design, you are able to build one UI API that can handle a huge variety of host interfaces. This is great, as the host can control the size of the iframe and responsive takes care of the rest.

We have voice, chat, VR, AR, and a host of new technology coming our way. The future isn’t set for those platforms, but if the web can be a part of it, you can build experiences that can fit right in.

In the past all software grew until it became an email client. I think that we are seeing that apps are growing until they become user agents.

Invest in a great web experience and you can help users no matter where they are coming from, and where you are being hosted.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Twitter

My Tweets

Recent Posts

  • Generative AI: It’s Time to Get Into First Gear
  • Developer Docs + GenAI = ❤️
  • We keep confusing efficacy for effectiveness
  • The holy grail of a Web SDK
  • The rise of the extensible app platforms

Follow

  • LinkedIn
  • Medium
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Tags

3d Touch 2016 Active Recall Adaptive Design Agile Amazon Echo Android Android Development Apple Application Apps Artificial Intelligence Autocorrect blog Bots Brain Calendar Career Advice Cloud Computing Coding Cognitive Bias Commerce Communication Companies Conference Consciousness Cooking Cricket Cross Platform Deadline Delivery Design Desktop Developer Advocacy Developer Experience Developer Platform Developer Productivity Developer Relations Developers Developer Tools Development Distributed Teams Documentation DX Ecosystem Education Energy Engineering Engineering Mangement Entrepreneurship Exercise Family Fitness Founders Future GenAI Gender Equality Google Google Developer Google IO Habits Health HR JavaScript Jobs Jquery Kids Stories Kotlin Language Leadership Learning Lottery Machine Learning Management Messaging Metrics Micro Learning Microservices Microsoft Mobile Mobile App Development Mobile Apps Mobile Web Moving On NPM Open Source Organization Organization Design Pair Programming Paren Parenting Path Performance Platform Platform Thinking Politics Product Design Product Development Productivity Product Management Product Metrics Programming Progress Progressive Enhancement Progressive Web App Project Management Psychology Push Notifications pwa QA Rails React Reactive Remix Remote Working Resilience Ruby on Rails Screentime Self Improvement Service Worker Sharing Economy Shipping Shopify Short Story Silicon Valley Slack Software Software Development Spaced Repetition Speaking Startup Steve Jobs Study Teaching Team Building Tech Tech Ecosystems Technical Writing Technology Tools Transportation TV Series Twitter Typescript Uber UI Unknown User Experience User Testing UX vitals Voice Walmart Web Web Components Web Development Web Extensions Web Frameworks Web Performance Web Platform WWDC Yarn

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Archives

  • January 2023
  • September 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • November 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • October 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • October 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • May 2018
  • February 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012

Search

Subscribe

RSS feed RSS - Posts

The right thing to do, is the right thing to do.

The right thing to do, is the right thing to do.

Dion Almaer

Copyright © 2023 · Log in