MadLittleMods
commented
2 years ago I tried this out the iOS flow in a fresh Xcode simulator instead of a browser emulation because I noticed we use more than just the user-agent to test whether a device is iOS.
It goes straight from "Continue" to https://app.element.io on mobile web. Mobile web browser support is unusable and listed as experimental in Element Web.
Bad first-time user experience (FTUE) when Element is not already installed:
| Step 1 | Step 2 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
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When Element is installed, the first time opening of a matrix.to link is not much better:
| Step 1 | Step 2 | Step 3 (click "Open" in the Safari app banner) | Step 4 (finally the app is open) |
|---|---|---|---|
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Now that you have allowed the "Open in Element app" by pressing "Open" the first time in the Safari banner, for subsequent matrix.to links you visit, the "Continue" button starts opening directly in the app now.
novocaine
Spawned from https://twitter.com/ChevyRay/status/1512211448277078019 (more nuggets deeper in thread)
Android and iOS have different landing pages and allows "Continue in your browser" for iOS.
You can test with just the device emulation mode in desktop Chrome to change the user-agent.
https://matrix.to/#/#Wgpu:matrix.org
On iOS, you can even "Continue in your browser" which isn't really supported in Element web. Mobile web is still listed as experimental and there are lots of bugs, https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/1633. While I love mobile web over apps any time when I just want to check something out, this can lead to bad experiences like https://twitter.com/ChevyRay/status/1512211448277078019
Potential solutions
Show the iOS app icons like we do for Android. This appears to be a thing as pictured in https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix.to/issues/255