Does the iPhone not open Google Plus posts in the Google Plus app? Or do you not have it installed? The reason your experience is awful is because Google doesn't care to make the G+ mobile web experience perfect since their app is the way to go.
On Android, when I click one of these links it opens the app and the reading experience is very pleasant. Maybe I've just been spoiled, but I find the experience to be pretty good.
Edit: Also, I think it's kind of silly that you wish people would stop publicly posting on Google Plus due to your phone experience being subpar. I think the problem lies much more with you and your phone than it does with Google Plus as a writing platform.
Should you need a third party app installed for a good reading experience? I don't use Google+ and don't want the app on iOS, even if it was launched when I click a Google+ link (which, fwiw, you are correct: it currently does not).
(On the other hand, Tumblr looks great on mobile, and it doesn't need an app. Facebook, too, is at least readable on their mobile site.)
Does anyone actually use Tumblr for original content, or for that matter, text? 99% or more of the Tumblrs I've seen are just people recirculating other Tumblr photos.
The current Facebook mobile site is almost 1:1 with their app (on Android, anyway). I wouldn't surprised to know the app is one giant WebView with a few system hooks sprinkled in.
I never understood why websites created apps of their websites. The browser is ubiquitous. Use it. I don't want to install seven different apps for my seven favourite sites. I don't see why this is acceptable on a mobile platform any more than it would be on a desktop platform.
Let me get this straight: You think it's more reasonable for Apple to have to build in special support so requests for webpages on plus.google.com go to the G+ app instead of Safari than for Google to just make their site work on mobile platforms like everybody else on the planet?
Well, not exactly. But that is the way that Android works, and it's pretty fantastic. When an app takes an action, it launches an Intent that notifies the OS of the details of that action. The appropriate application is launched (or the user is presented with options, in the case where there are two or more applications that know how to handle that Intent. In this case, it's both the Browser and Google+).
I was mostly asking if iOS had similar functionality, but it appears not.
Yes, but to then go on and say Google shouldn't worry about whether their site is even legible because, hey, it's the user's fault for choosing a phone that isn't based on intents? That's just silly.
I didn't mean to say that they shouldn't worry about it. I more meant that it's probably lower priority, and for an understandable reason. I'm sure they want to fix the web page and I'm sure they will - but the iPhone Safari market share is probably very, very small when looking at the Google+ user stats.
Also, I thought it relevant to mention here that you can indeed read the post very clearly on the iPhone - but a seeming lack of this feature (Intents) in iOS makes this awkward.
I've never developed for iOS, but on my iPhone when I go to okcupid.com it somehow 'redirects' to the okcupid app on my phone. So it seems there is some capability for this built in that website developers can take advantage of.
There is: Apps can register to handle certain URL schemes, so all you need to do is put in a redirect to (for example) "okcupid://profile/109" and, since Safari doesn't handle URLs with the okcupid scheme, the OKCupid app will be asked to open the URL instead. But again, this would require the plus.google.com team to actually implement it.
It looks like they basically ask whether you want to use the site or the app the first time you visit on a device, and if you choose the app, it sends you to the App Store and sets a localstorage setting that triggers a redirect on subsequent visits. (Edit: OK, it's a little bit more sophisticated than that. But I think that's not too far off.)
Mobile Safari does support apps registering custom URL handlers, so google could rewrite the links as gplus:// and they could open in the G+ app. Unfortunately I don't think this behaves nicely if you don't have the content handling app installed since it just errors.
That's correct. If you don't have the app in question installed, you get a nasty "Page could not be found" error. There are hacky and unstable JS tricks you can pull with setTimeout to send the user to the app store if they don't have the app installed, but I haven't heard of any reliable way to deal with this (pretty glaring) failure case.
Even just the ability to suppress the error message would be more or less fine.
How about loading the gplus:// link in a hidden iframe. Then continue to load the page in the browser. If they have the app installed, it will redirect, otherwise the page will just load in the browser.
So just load up the page (on iOS user-agents) with a big red button up top which allows the user to self-redirect, or default a preference on the G+ profile (if they're logged in).
Reasonable or not, that is the expectation Apple has encouraged iPhone users to hold - every website should have its own app in a way reminiscent of AOL keywords.
Expectation for who? It has never occurred to me to install an app to view a single website. Maybe this is something you do, and therefore think that other people also do.
But you're mistaken. I browse the web using a web browser. Even on my iPhone.
Since I don't own an iPhone, your assumption is incorrect. My spouse and many other non-technical people I know do own iPhones. And it is very common for them to use apps rather than their browser to access web content.
I call shenanigans. Practically every "content" site out there has its own app, and loudly proclaims its existence whenever you visit its site with a compatible device. It's simply not possible that "it never occurred" to you. You can obviously choose not to install a Google+ app if you like. But I don't believe for a minute that you are surprised at the need for it.
That's how Android Intents work, Apps can register to handle domains.
In my opinion, it's a far more elegant solution than encouraging developers to register pseudo-protocols to use in URLs that also result in very awkward interactions if the app's mobile site tries to redirect to the app and it is not installed. (Then again, this gives users a "choice" (!) of whether to open links or Intents in the mobile app or native app.)
Does the iPhone not open Google Plus posts in the Google Plus app?
Nope
On Android, when I click one of these links it opens the app and the reading experience is very pleasant. Maybe I've just been spoiled, but I find the experience to be pretty good.
This doesn't happen for me. I have a Galaxy Nexus with ICS, and I have Google+ installed and linked to my account, and this doesn't work - it opens the post in the browser. Is there some magic fairy dust that needs to be sprinkled into my microusb port for posts to be redirected to the Google+ app?
What's much worse, though, is that Google+ posts actually reliably crash the ICS chrome browser - as in 100% of the time. Whenever anyone posts anything on Google+, I have to open it in Firefox to read it.
Clearly Google needs to work on this.
Edit: Also, I think it's kind of silly that you wish people would stop publicly posting on Google Plus due to your phone experience being subpar. I think the problem lies much more with you and your phone than it does with Google Plus as a writing platform.
This isn't really that different than putting the post behind a paywall or some other inconvenient barrier to your audience. It might be a nice writing platform, but I think it's a pretty lousy reading platform.
> I think the problem lies much more with you and your phone than it does with Google Plus as a writing platform.
The problem definitely lies with Google Plus as a web app. Whatever they're doing, it's just not a very good experience on a mobile device. Maybe on Android they redirect Google+ pages to their native app, but they don't even offer a way to do that for other platforms even if you have the native app installed (even a simple link on the page that opens it in the native app would be fine). It seems obvious that they're actively trying to promote their own platform over all other reading experiences, which is a radical departure from the ideals of the web that Google has historically cared about.
I don't think a conspiracy is obvious at all. I think this is just a common Google problem; when you hire A+ level talent they don't want to spend their time adjusting css for every platform. That's not an interesting problem to them; self-driving cars is interesting.
This is why I think every company should hire B and even a few C+ level talent. Someone has to do the boring details.
It's not a simple matter of CSS. I have no idea how, but Google+ on MobileSafari periodically dumps the entire tile cache and forces it to re-render (which is why the text goes all blurry). I've never seen that on any other website, ever.
I think this is just a common Google problem; when you hire A+
level talent they don't want to spend their time adjusting css
for every platform.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought that the criteria for defining A+ talent is people that (in short): Defines correct specs for a given project; does the jobs to the specs; Works fast; Makes the code as maintainable as the situation may require, according to change and growth prospects; Does not waste time in unnecessary or fancy stuff; Communicates well with the team;
In this case, Google plus as a blog, obviously all the platforms are targets. So the CSS should be adjusted for all the platforms, and that must be part of the specs. If you have A+ talent executing, either it will be done, or they haven't implemented that yet according to their priorities, or there is something more unknown to us.
I'd be surprised if you could easily go from an Mobile Safari (or another iPhone browser) to the Google+ app when you click on a Google+ post. The way that works on Android is via Intents and, AFAIK, iOS doesn't have anything like that.
On Android, when I click one of these links it opens the app and the reading experience is very pleasant. Maybe I've just been spoiled, but I find the experience to be pretty good.
Edit: Also, I think it's kind of silly that you wish people would stop publicly posting on Google Plus due to your phone experience being subpar. I think the problem lies much more with you and your phone than it does with Google Plus as a writing platform.