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Comment by jwr | Hacker News Reader

Oh yes. We should also mention the horrible broken piece of crap called "Onswipe", that produces a slow, broken, confusing interface that also happens to limit screen space dedicated to reading and breaks built-in Safari zooming.

For some reason people think that they need to have a "Special Tablet Version". You don't! Just have a normal web site, we'll be fine!

The onswipe situation got so bad that whenever I encounter a site using it I immediately click "back" and never come back again.

UPDATE: Oh, I should also mention that half the time when trying to click "back" I actually click the silly Onswipe button in the upper left corner of the screen that pretends to be the back button but actually does something else (takes you to the main blog page I think). Cursing ensues.

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As much as I like the team behind OnSwipe (Jason L Baptiste and Mark Bao in particular), I have to agree with you, unfortunately. Whenever I get this OnSwipe thing replacing a page that was perfectly good and readable, I almost always click back without reading (once the cpu-intensive javascript pauses long enough to allow me to do so).

What's really weird is that the result of OnSwipe being applied is actually a page that is significantly MORE broken. The reason I've developed a habit of clicking back is because I often can't read the article anyway, since the scrolling is usually broken in some annoying way (keeps jumping around, not smooth, etc). This is exceptionally bad considering that the underlying page would almost certainly work just fine.

You could browse on an iPad 1; then, rather than having to click back manually, OnSwipe will helpfully crash Safari so you don't need to bother doing anything yourself.

Amen, brother. How did the current version of OnSwipe pass basic compatibility testing?

Onswipe seduced me too at first but it really is impossible to update or troubleshoot ( God forbid tweak the design...) when it hardly ever works on any of my devices. I didn't realize others felt the same..this discussion has really articulated a lot of my frustration with feeling like there are 8 different internets depending on the device and how recently it was updated

Although I haven't tested this in any meaningful way, I'd be willing to bet OnSwipe simply relies to heavily on JavaScript. My iPad 1 struggles with any page loaded up with scripts, even ones that seem like they might not have any at all. For instance, news websites are often chock full of scripts for analytics, social media plugins, and advertisements.

OnSwipe probably works pretty well on desktop machines where it's developed, but today's tablets simply can't handle the processing and memory requirements necessary to make it an enjoyable experience.

Yup. I consider OnSwipe to be sort of a game. Can I recognize the page as an OnSwipe site and successfully click back out before it crashes Safari?

> As much as I like the team behind OnSwipe (Jason L Baptiste and Mark Bao in particular)

I don't. They refuse to respond to OnSwipe issues or complaints in any forum (especially anything referencing an original iPad), be it the various question and answer sites they post to, Hacker News or Twitter. I've complained everywhere and haven't received a single response.

IMO that makes for a pretty terrible team.

I, too, avoid all Onswipe sites. Lost a couple of good blogs that way.

The only thing that's less explicable than Onswipe is its adoption by Automattic for Wordpress.com blogs (WARNING: The following link crashed my iPad 1, what a surprise!)

http://blog.onswipe.com/#!/entry/onswipe-partners-with-autom...

Everyone makes mistakes, and anyone who invents furiously enough will one day design The Doom Device by accident, but who is dumb enough to voluntarily clasp the resulting doom device to their bosom and start putting copies of it in customers' breakfast cereal?

I've said it before, and I wish I was sure I was joking: A big part of the success of iOS apps is that they are generally guaranteed to have been launched more than three times by an actual developer using an actual iOS device.

100% agree: SWIPEWARE is the biggest abomination in usability ever invented (and deployed at massive scale)

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