Author here - thanks a lot! :) I think many of the emerging performance bottlenecks in webdev are on the client rather than the server, so there's definitely a lot more research that needs to be done here. In particular, I feel like the whole "web worker" angle has been seriously overlooked, even though the tech is ~5 years old.

Author of MUI here - It's awesome to see Pokedex on HN! Pokedex uses the MUI CSS framework to great effect. We put a lot of work into making the library small and light and we'd love to see more developers take it for a spin so please try it out for your next project. https://www.muicss.com

Granted it's a very different beast, but this site puts the native Slack Android app to shame. Smooth like butter. I'm not bitter at all. Especially not bitter after I used the iOS Slack App. Okay, maybe a little.

I had the back button problem too. The solution is for the app to add routing, which is tracked in this issue: https://github.com/nolanlawson/pokedex.org/issues/2.

Thanks for the response! Firefox definitely has some speed issues (FirefoxOS included), but I haven't diagnosed it yet. Chrome on Android is the current "best" experience.

As for the back button, yeah, I need to add routing: https://github.com/nolanlawson/pokedex.org/issues/2

Very much so.

Author here. I'm no stranger to this situation; I wrote a native Android Pokédex app awhile ago that got DMCA'd: http://nolanlawson.com/2011/05/26/on-pokedroids-removal/

Last time I talked with the legal team of The Pokémon Company (subsidiary of Nintendo that owns the IP), I was informed that, while they allow web sites like Bulbapedia and Serebii, it gets hairier with native apps (e.g. because you implicitly assert ownership over the IP when you publish on the Play Store). This happened almost 5 years ago, though, and nowadays there are lots of Pokémon apps on the Play Store (https://play.google.com/store/search?q=pokedex&c=apps), so I can only assume that they've softened their views.

That said, it's their IP, and they're free to wield the DMCA hammer as they see fit. For me, though, the point of Pokedex.org is to show what you can do with 2015-era web tech, and that, on Android at least, the web has already (mostly) caught up with native. I mean, this app is arguably superior than my old Froyo-era native app, and it's all HTML/CSS/JS! So hopefully someone will be inspired by it to build a similar, offline-capable webapp. That was reason enough for me to build it.

Thanks! I'm glad there are some true Pokémaniacs out there keeping me honest. ;) In my defense, though, I put this site together in my spare time over the course of the past few weeks, and the data source I used (PokéAPI) is missing some crucial data that I still need to patch (e.g. the Gen VI species, the catch rates). But the point of the site is mostly to demonstrate what you can do with web tech, not to be the end-all be-all best Pokémon resource ever.

I'd like it to be, though! :) Hence why I open-sourced it, and why I'm encouraging anyone with the inclination to help improve it: https://github.com/nolanlawson/pokedex.org

I got the impression that they were doing this to show off the tech, and the Pokemon angle was just because they needed a well-known, medium-sized corpus of data to work with. They even said "it's the perfect target for an ambitious web application," implying that the topic was second to the tech.

There's not many topics that fit the bill, and this is way more intriguing than a list of US Presidents or UN Countries.

Disclaimer: I'm a coworker of the author.

1. this is easy, accessible, broadly compatible. I think it's the fastest way to get to the data (especially on mobile: no going to store, no waiting to download, touch-friendly interface)

2. "soft" technical limitation of the PokéApi. He says it can be worked around, time permitting. PRs encouraged!

As far as use cases go, I think it's common to want a Pokédex of some sort when playing the games. As the existence of this blog post illustrates, this particular one was a case study in web technology first with a fun theme rather than a grand attempt at market domination.

Found the true Pokemon fan in the thread. Technical details be damned, I want more Pokemon.

Looks like pokeapi does use Veekun's data: http://pokeapi.co/about/

Thanks! I totally failed to notice that, but I've filed an issue now: https://github.com/nolanlawson/pokedex.org/issues/9

Hm, that might be due to the autoloop <video>s I have in there (which are great for illustrating the animations, but may be a bit indulgent). Which browser are you on?