Is Salesforce Lightning == Microsoft's Windows 8?

Question

Several of my clients have expressed concerns when we turned on the Lightning for them.

Most common gripes I hear is that Lightning UI is clunky and slow when compared to Visualforce.

Also the sales folks vent out that they do most of the work in desktop or laptops and they are not really happy with the SPA version (mobile centric) of their CRM.

Am I in a minority in believing that Salesforce's foray into Lightning is tantamount to the much disastrous foray of MS with Windows 8 (tile based access) ?

PS : I assume discussions can be posted in this forum. If not please delete/close this :)

Answer 1

There are a couple reasons that Lightning may be slower for some customers.

• Lightning uses client side controllers which are Javascript based.
• This takes the workload off Salesforce's Servers and moves that work to the cpu of a customer's computer.

There are benefits to Salesforce and Customers in doing this.

• Server cpu time is no longer spent running Visualforce controllers to serve and manage Visualforce pages.
• I believe this to be the reason we've seen significant increases over the past year (and in coming releases) on various limits. Salesforce now has the capacity to allow those limits to increase.

Just as with any new technology, it's going to take developers time to explore and learn all of what they can do with Lightning.

As the "Lightning Experience" matures, we're going to see more opportunities to change the look and feel to suit a customer's preferences, including tabs located across the top of the page. The SLDS page system is very flexible and compatible with most anything one could possibly want to do with a grid system (think in terms of the GS960 system on steroids). With Winter 17, we'll now have access to more parts of the page to allow us to do those things.

• Was Lightning ready for "prime time" when it was introduced in what I'll refer to as a "public beta"? Clearly, it wasn't.
• Was it what many wanted? It most definitely was as witnessed by the many who've embraced it.
• Is it for everyone? No, I don't think it is.
• Is it complete and fully developed as a platform? Obviously, there's more work to be done.
• Would it be as far along had Salesforce not gone public with it when they did? I doubt it. It's because it's been available to developers to work with, create components, test, provide feedback, break, provide feedback to Salesforce and allow them to improve upon it as needed, that it's reached the point where it is. Had they not done that, I don't believe it would be nearly as mature.
• Do I feel it's been somewhat "forced" upon us? I think there's been more pressure applied than perhaps was appropriate for the level of maturity of the platform. It's only just with SU'16 release that we've been able to customize the home screen to rid ourselves of the Opportunity Page. The reality is that a significant number of users aren't Sales Professionals, but instead are likely more concerned with other issues; something that wasn't being considered.
• Was that the equivalent of Microsoft's Windows8? I think it was more of a rush to public beta before the platform was completely developed. Look at where we're almost at now. A month from now, you'll be able to create something similar to the same UI as what you're used to viewing.

Progress continues and we're along for the ride. I suggest you embrace it and look at it as an opportunity to become an expert in a technology that represents the future of Salesforce UI development. There will be plenty of opportunities to take the technology far beyond what you're seeing now.

Answer 2

There are definitely things to like in Lightning, such as a more coherent listing of objects in the Setup (eliminating the split between Customize/Hunt in non-alphabetical listing, avoiding Contract when you mean Contact), listing of internal field names for built-in objects, the created by/last modified by information staying visible while editing records, etc.

The biggest problem I find when using the Lightning UI, and the reason I switch out of it for any serious word I do, is the amount of time for it to load combined with if re-loading for a new tab. I regularly open several tabs both during data verification as well as during admin tasks. It's so painful to do so with the Lightning UI that I usually switch back to Classic quickly. Having done that, I don't often go back to Lightning since I don't really want to sit there while an animation is playing during the load.

So in some sense, a comparison to Windows 8 seems apt. Windows 10 kept the "Apps" of Windows 8, but it also introduced the idea that they could be displayed in windows (!), and other developers developed the possibility to bring back the regular Start Menu, and I'm pretty with it (setting aside the privacy concerns for this discussion). I hope that Salesforce can get the new UI finished, more consistent, and find a solution for the multiple tabs problem.

Answer 3

On a developer side, Lightning in general felt to me like something that should probably have been attempted 5-6 years ago. Now it's too little too late.

We will still implement lightning components and such, but just because they are forced down our throats. Every chance we get we just make our custom front-end with angular or other js technologies: you get all the benefits without the hassles AND you can move yourself and your products outside Lightning boundaries (Heroku anyone?)