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Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

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Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#281

Post by novok »

bhawks wrote: post #59

When iPhone and Android hit the scene the 'rich' web experience was primarily flash, silverlight, and some java applets (taking their last breathe). Input APIs for touch, multitouch and gesture were a mess for many years in the browser. Media queries didn't become a w3c recommendation until 2012 so building a ux that looked pleasant really wasn't possible. The memory, cpu, GPU, storage and battery constraints were un…

Also I think the app "look up random info and articles" was never lost for the mobile web. I don't think there are many apps for that even now. Yes there is the wikipedia and other such apps, but they are a sliver of the web.

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#282

Post by mumblemumble »

playpause wrote: post #256
long_time_gone wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

==We assume that things we actively notice other people doing in public are representative of what everyone (or everyone in some category to which we've assigned that person) is doing. We don't notice all the people not engaging in that behavior because they're not noteworthy.== Doesn’t this comment include it’s own set of biases?

Such as?

I think that what they were getting at is that people noticing and commenting on things is more noticeable than people not doing so.

Which would imply that there's a tendency to notice the noticing more than the not noticing, and, as a consequence, over-estimate how often people do it.

It's a good point.

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#283

Post by ativzzz »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #180
simonh wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really dislike the 'consumption device' label, to me it seems lazily dismissive and missing the point. Smartphones, like phones, are primarily communication devices and communication is an active process. Texting/chat, email, audio calls, Twitter, Slack, Teams, Reddit, facebook, Discord, snapchat, etc, etc are all interactive communications media people use to create content for as well as 'consume'. Yes of course…

Go to any commuter train on a Monday morning and look what every last one of those people seated in the car are doing. They're consuming, not interacting. It is not lazy nor is it dismissive to suggest smartphones are largely devices that inspire consumption. It's just a proper observation.

> They're consuming, not interacting. It is not lazy nor is it dismissive to suggest smartphones are largely devices that inspire consumption.

This is also probably one of the reasons TikTok took off; it allows high quality content creation via smartphone that anyone can do.

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#285

Post by killjoywashere »

> I’ll offer my sense of the landscape in part 2, next week.

God. Fucking. Damn. It. Just wait and publish the whole thing. There's no Netflix for the web. I don't want to subscribe, I just want the next episode when it comes available. Not the next 100 episodes. One of the great things about the current video systems (HBO, Apple TV, etc) is that these shows accumulate a few seasons before they catch fire. And then you can watch an episode. And then maybe another episode. Or not. You don't have to wait for next Thursday's episode of Friends.

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#286

Post by schwartzworld »

amw-zero wrote: post #187
feanaro wrote: post #77

Native phone apps are more invasive and can therefore be used for more extensive tracking and spying, which is good for ad revenue. Remember how all the largest spying products like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter, etc aggressively push you to install their phone apps even though they are (or were) perfectly usable through their mobile websites.

People say this a lot, but really, what can a native app track that a web app can't? To track location, you need to give the app permission, just like the web. To receive push notifications, you need to give the app permission, just like the web. I think this claim is unfounded.

To give you an idea, web apps can't track location while running in the background no matter what permissions you give them. Native apps can track you while running in the background

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#287

Post by cylinder714 »

dTal wrote: post #215
binkHN wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even now, I still think "I'll wait and do this on a proper computer". I'm routinely in the same boat, though it's less about the computer and more about not fighting with a tiny monitor. Most things built for mobile are "light" versions, as easily exposing all the bells and whistles on a 6" monitor would be a UI nightmare.

You think it's the tiny monitor, but it's really the primitive UI designed for caveman-style point-and-grunt. I've been using a GPD Micro PC extensively over the past few months, which is equipped with a 6" screen, but also - critically - a touchpad and physical thumb keyboard. Guess what, I can do programming, CAD, image editing, the works - everything you can do on a larger machine. The Micro PC proves that we were…

The apotheosis of the netbook? How does it perform with external keyboard, mouse and monitor?

Edit: I've been a fan of the netbook concept since well before the term was coined, when the Toshiba Portegé first came out. But my experiences with them, like everyone else, were disappointing. I'd love it if these new units had good performance.

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#288

Post by rythie »

rythie wrote: post #272

I think the main reason is distribution. Desktop apps were/are difficult to distribute. To get an desktop app into organisation, you either needed to tell people to install something, and they need disk space, RAM, different versions of Windows, might not work on Mac, almost never on Linux. Then they need to update the app regularly somehow, still not solved for all apps. Bigger orgs have managed distribution, but th…

Additionally, in the 2000s we had IE-only webapps, meaning that when companies only cared about Windows clients, they still thought making webapp was a better way to reach their customers than a Win32 app.

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#289

Post by pier25 »

Something1234 wrote: post #160
pier25 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even today, in the year 2021, browsers do not have native support for gestures which are ubiquitous in the touch screen world. To pan/pinch/swipe you either need to implement it yourself or use a JS library like Hammer which adds unnecessary bloat.

Don't do this without a good reason. We finally got a lot of mobile sites rendering good and you want to take that away.

A good reason is simply that gestures are a staple of mobile UIs.

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#290

Post by nsonha »

Razengan wrote: post #241
nsonha wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone can make an app too. After they install some bloated IDE, learn some "tech", and pay the gatekeepers > Maybe buried deep in the 100th page But they can be found and share, as opposed to apps of a non existent category where average people publish what they are working on, their thoughts, or whatever. App Store and Google Play search would crumble at the scale of the number of websites in existence right now…

> After they install some bloated IDE, learn some "tech", and pay the gatekeepers Tell me how making and hosting a website is absolutely free.

You could not make this argument even 10 years ago, when you could absolutely make a sites on any of wordpress, tumblr, yahoo or blogspot completely free. These days there are even more choices ranging from WYCIWYG (Squarespace & the like) to absolutely free full CI/CD-ed platforms (heroku, Zeit, GitHub pages...). It's not like there is a duopoly on web hosting.
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