Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development • Hacker News Board

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#41

Post by brokenkebab » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

nnf wrote: post #25

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.

As long as there’s an easy way for the user to choose a different language and currency, it seems defaulting based on location would be correct for the highest percentage of users, unless you have some reason to believe it’s more likely that your audience is, say, English-speaking users who prefer to see prices in USD.

On language you may be right. On currency, it's complicated. In economically unstable countries people generally prefer to count in USD, or EUR, especially if it's something which has to be paid across borders.

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#42

Post by elondaits » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

MrDresden wrote: post #22

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…

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.

The language thing is terrible. I use the English version of Chrome on an English language MacOS, configured English as my preferred language with Spanish as the second option (which are sent to the site)… and of I travel to Germany many internationalized sites decide I want to read in German… or Portuguese in Brazil. Language options and localization are old as time but sites use defaults based on IP addresses.

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#43

Post by MrDresden » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

nnf wrote: post #25

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.

As long as there’s an easy way for the user to choose a different language and currency, it seems defaulting based on location would be correct for the highest percentage of users, unless you have some reason to believe it’s more likely that your audience is, say, English-speaking users who prefer to see prices in USD.

In the vast amount of cases there is never any (clear or otherwise) option to set the language of the site. This has held true for Google as well as small mom and pops web shops.

Larger entities like Google can just send you into redirection hell sometimes if you try to set a language (where you can even find the option).

Others decline to show you the content since it is not "available in your part of the world" even though what you were doing was simply setting the language of the webpage, not changing its location in the world (I have been temporarily in the Netherlands now for a few months and this keeps happening on .nl domains!).

If the page is a for a SaaS, the pricing structure should allow me to select from all of the options they have. I do not want to be forced to only have prices in DKK, SEK, EURO or US if it is just tied to the location that the page thinks I am coming from.

Here I'm obviously excluding cases where the store/saas/service is location specific (i.e shop.se for Sweden for instance).

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#44

Post by ImprobableTruth » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

nnf wrote: post #25

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.

As long as there’s an easy way for the user to choose a different language and currency, it seems defaulting based on location would be correct for the highest percentage of users, unless you have some reason to believe it’s more likely that your audience is, say, English-speaking users who prefer to see prices in USD.

There's the accept-language http header that any browser sends depending on your system language, no need to guess based on location.

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#45

Post by dotancohen » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

a2128 wrote: post #21

"No credit card needed" on a browser download was really weird to see

I paid for Opera. $20 20 years ago was not a trivial amount of money, especially for a student.

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#46

Post by laurent123456 » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

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.

Stripe recommends setting the currency based on the detected country, as that apparently increases conversion.

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#47

Post by cedricr » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

tentacleuno wrote: post #33

cedricr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not affiliated with the project; just discovered it by chance this morning and found it deserved to be better known. So, when I said 'My site will still be online", I meant as a web developper using Polypane, when and if I decide to stop paying the subscription, this will have no impact on the web site I've developped with it. Subscriptions might be a problem when you risk loosing access to your data (looking at you Adobe), but in this particular case I couldn't see the problem.

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#48

Post by wildrhythms » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

rado wrote: post #7

Keep in mind that mobile Safari behaves differently and a resized Chrome is not enough.

Yes, my issue with these types of 'services' always is that it only 'emulates' the screen resolution. They might as well just be iframes locked to specific resolutions; the result is that it's still my own browser doing the rendering. What I want is some kind of reverse-polyfill that accurately reflects the rendering capabilities.

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#49

Post by sergiomattei » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

As a counterpoint to most comments here, I've been using Polypane for a couple years now and it's been an invaluable tool in my arsenal.

I don't mind that it's not open source, it's made by an indie dev that's super responsive and really cares about helping people making better websites.

Keep it up, Kilian!

Re: Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development

#50

Post by joshmanders » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

sergiomattei wrote: post #49

As a counterpoint to most comments here, I've been using Polypane for a couple years now and it's been an invaluable tool in my arsenal. I don't mind that it's not open source, it's made by an indie dev that's super responsive and really cares about helping people making better websites. Keep it up, Kilian!

Co-sign this! Kilian is the man!