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Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

polypane.app

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Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#31

Post by chrismorgan »

elondaits wrote: post #20

In case someone from Polypane drops by: Your pricing page breaks completely when accessing it from Argentina where prices are "larger" (ej. "ARS 1,037.20" for the Individual plan). Worse, I see no way to change the currency. You shouldn't assume that because I accessed from Argentina the price in Argentine Pesos is helpful for me (it isn't). You should provide a way to change the currency (normally people put it in t…

Presenting such converted prices (without saying “this is an approximation”) also requires that you lock in the price in that currency indefinitely (which is possible, but I’d be surprised), or else you’re lying to your customers about the price.

I can’t find any plausible correlation between the prices it’s presenting me (AUD745.40 billed annually for the business plan) and any base currency. The Individual-to-Business ratio suggests 9 and 39 units of currency per month, but which that would be, I don’t know. “Includes VAT” makes the whole thing a mess; European VAT is inapplicable in Australia, though if they do enough business here they should register for GST (and the procedure for skipping that taax is different, too: in Europe the buyer gives the seller their VAT ID and the seller removes the VAT charge, but in Australia the seller charges GST and business clients can claim it back from the Tax Office in their Business Activity Statement).

Making this worse, the page source has a JSON-LD block listing an aggregate price range of USD9–49, which I’m pretty sure is just flat-out wrong.

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#32

Post by kingcharles »

tentacleuno wrote: post #30
MrDresden wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I rarely speak the language of the country I may be in atm. I rarely use the currency of the country I may be in atm. Please, do not try to be smart about these things.

> Please, do not try to be smart about these things. There must be some sort of sales benefit to it, otherwise websites wouldn't be doing it. I'm guessing the main advantage is when it gets the currency right, it's easier to buy the product.

Not true. I've made i8n features like that in the past for companies where they thought it would be nice and did not put any research, before or after launch, into whether there was any benefit whatsoever.

"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." -- Dr. Ian Malcolm.

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#33

Post by tentacleuno »

cedricr wrote: post #5
beyondcompute wrote: post #3

Should consumers start pushing back against subscription-based pricing models more actively at this point?

It's an economic model that is certainly not for everybody, nor for everything, but for dev tools that help me earn money, I can't see the problem. And if I stop paying for it tomorrow, and don't have access to it anymore, you know what? My site will still be online.

> It's an economic model that is certainly not for everybody,

Not calling you out directly OP (in fact, I quite like your project), but the subscription model is pretty badly thought out most of the time IMO. Especially in a commercial setting. You really should not have to pay a company a monthly fee to operate cameras you bought, on your property. These trojan horse subscriptions are then normally paired with other anti-people abuses, e.g. not allowing the user to use basic functionalities without the subscription.

> My site will still be online.

Just curious: what would happen if your website went offline? If your application is phoning home to verify a license, and the website comes back with an unexpected / no response (maybe you let the hosting run out), would the software still be usable? I think there should be more provisions against this sort of thing in subscription-payed applications.

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#34

Post by tentacleuno »

beyondcompute wrote: post #3

Should consumers start pushing back against subscription-based pricing models more actively at this point?

As a whole, subscription-based models are pretty bad for society. Companies have figured out subscriptions are so much better because A) they're not paid all at once, making the device attractive, and B) you can constantly drip dry money out of the customer's bank account. It's a great business model for businesses, though.

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#35

Post by tentacleuno »

kingcharles wrote: post #32
tentacleuno wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please, do not try to be smart about these things. There must be some sort of sales benefit to it, otherwise websites wouldn't be doing it. I'm guessing the main advantage is when it gets the currency right, it's easier to buy the product.

Not true. I've made i8n features like that in the past for companies where they thought it would be nice and did not put any research, before or after launch, into whether there was any benefit whatsoever. "Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." -- Dr. Ian Malcolm.

> Not true. I've made i8n features like that in the past for companies where they thought it would be nice and did not put any research, before or after launch, into whether there was any benefit whatsoever.

That makes sense in a way. Managers tend to implement features nonsensically, as Hacker News constantly reminds me :-)

What would be the best compromise in your opinion, then: doing this magic automatically and giving the user an option, asking them up-front, etc. ...?

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#36

Post by molszanski »

marban wrote: post #18
harrybr wrote: post #17

Sizzy is a similar product that I've been using for a year or two. It's pretty good: https://sizzy.co/ Monthly licence fee: £5.36/month Annual: £39.07/yr Lifetime: £152.43

Also included in Setapp.

Also amazing

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#37

Post by theamk »

ricardobeat wrote: post #23

The SaaS pricing of these tools is getting out of hand. €108/year for this. Another hundred for retool, another hundred for Postman, mmhmm / camera apps, Notion, Gmail, Trello/Jira, Github/Gitlab, Slack, an image resizing service, some load testing tool, Figma.. now every developer has a $1000+ monthly burn rate (!). Can we go back to buying plain software licenses?

Why on earth would you pay monthly for image resizing tool? Also, not quite sure what load testing tool you mean, but there is a chance local version would be enough.

You can go to buying plain software licenses, but I most people don't bother.

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#40

Post by defanor »

That's yet another accessibility-related project with a website that is broken if accessibility features (e.g., slightly configured FF with minimal font sizes and colours set) or textual web browsers (e.g., lynx) are used. It seems that such projects tend to pick some very narrow view of what accessibility should be about, and only focus on that. I'd say it's ironic, to have inaccessible websites for accessibility-related projects, but at this point it just looks like a general rule.
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