The web is not poor man’s native (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#91

Post by Supermancho » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

theK wrote: post #35

Supermancho wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The web won. I don't think so. Either way the statements are rife with soft terminology, but I'll use raw traffic as my metric for dominance in the functional space. https://www.perficient.com/insights/research-hub/mobile-vs-d... . The majority of traffic is mobile and apps still rule that platform due to both a superior experience and better interfaces. The trend is clear and ongoing, so I'm not sure why people th…

If I’m reading this correctly this survey only focuses on web usage. They even go to the point where their no. 1 takeaway at the end is „design your mobile web site first“. So I guess the web really did win, even on mobile.

> So I guess the web really did win, even on mobile.

Your math is incorrect because you failed to take into account that 90% of mobile sessions are in apps, and only 10% browsing - on mobile devices. With this we can do some math:

For simplicity, assume 100 sessions encompasses all mobile web

65% is 65 mobile web traffic.

35% is 35 desktop web traffic.

65 * 9 = 585 : all app usage (90% of mobile usage is app over web, commonly known).

585 + 65 = 650 : all mobile usage (app 90% and web 10%).

35+650 = 685 : desktop web, mobile web, app usages.

35/685 = ~5% of usage desktop web (think 10% of 685 then divide by 2)

100/685 ~14.5% : is web usage, from combined app and web usage.

App is still the dominant player in day to day usage, regardless of the parting message "design your mobile web site first", which is a funnel for the app anyway.

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#92

Post by elforce002 » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

ryaniscool wrote: post #20

This article is all over the place. The debate is over. The web won. You can see that by the way popular websites will try and force you to install their apps. That’s because their web experience is perfectly competent to scratch the users itch. They are forced to artificially cripple their mobile web experience to drive app installs. There is a strong niche left to native. I’m thinking of things like creative tools.…

Based on what? Mobile has much more engagement (which is what companies want) and that level of loyalty that web is missing.

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#93

Post by elforce002 » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

api wrote: post #38

ryaniscool wrote: post #20

This article is all over the place. The debate is over. The web won. You can see that by the way popular websites will try and force you to install their apps. That’s because their web experience is perfectly competent to scratch the users itch. They are forced to artificially cripple their mobile web experience to drive app installs. There is a strong niche left to native. I’m thinking of things like creative tools.…

The web won in the space of casual interaction and SaaS interfaces. Native is still a lot better for "pro" tools of every kind.

Exactly my thoughts. Quick info: check website. Full interaction, etc... Go to app. No questions ask.

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#94

Post by EGreg » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 10:21 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #84

EGreg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I personally am against closed centralized platforms (app stores, Big Tech platforms) and centralized monetization (patreon, deplatforming). I think Web3,4,5 has a lot of promise to disrupt the gatekeepers, who currently can control our transactiosn and even influence our democracies. This will become even more significant as the next generation will be immersed for hours a day in VR, XR, metaverse with glasses…

> Well, I personally am against closed centralized platforms (app stores, Big Tech platforms) and centralized monetization (patreon, deplatforming). I agree. Many people on HN are against this as well, even if the entrepreneurs and VCs of the world might not see eye-to-eye. > I think Web3,4,5 has a lot of promise to disrupt the gatekeepers, who currently can control our transactiosn and even influence our democracies…

Lots of developers DO work with the next generation of stuff, from solidity to matrix.org to LBRY to Dat to IPFS etc. And our stuff too. I am not upset at all! In fact I know where you’re coming from because I have seen it so often on HN.

It just seems very strange to me that this is happening on a site that started with promoting a “hacker ethos” and “hacking on things” — which is totally associated with rebelling AGAINST large centralized institutions and their power imbalance. Whether it’s ham radio operators or DYI culture or the indie engineering… anyone remember the indieweb movement? How about the Decentralized Web with Tim Berners-Lee? He wrote this:

https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/24/internet-... (2014)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/12/tim-berne... (2019)

A month before, I wrote this in CoinTelegraph, and it is still true today: https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-a-web-that-lost-its-way-c...

What do you disagree with in Qbix? My cofounder and I met Tim’s SOLID team at MIT in 2014 (scroll down on https://wefunder.com/Qbix) and since then he left MIT and started Inrupt. His vision is not unlike Dorsey and Web5 — but Dorsey will work with way better technology rather than Tim’s HTTP and SPARQL:

It uses ION from Microsoft (championed by Daniel Buchner for years until M$ finally relented) that is based on the open Sidetree Protocol anchored by Bitcoin (or any other blockchain). And self-custodied private keys.

I met the lead developer of SOLID - Dmitri Zagidulin — and briefly recruited him to work with us part-time and document our own decentralized identity solution, that was based on pseudonymous identies similar to xAuth from Meebo (years ago). Dmitri left Qbix due to disagreements between us not supporting web standards fully enough in our early iterations, as I believed adoption leads to standards (eg oAuth and HTTP itself) rather than the other way around. Dmitri was instrumental in helping working groups come together to form DID, which is the top spec for decentralized identity. Whereas stuff like OpenID has been largely a shit-show, DID has had adoption by various “methods” including ION btw.

@marknadal wrote about it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16355311

Back in 2018, a mere four years ago, people cared deeply: https://www.decentralizedweb.net/

There is also Fediverse, Diaspora, Matrix, Tor. But far more interesting to me is Dat/Hypercore (beaker browser uses it), PouchDB, IPFS and MaidSAFE. They are truly decentralized.

Look, a lot of people are working hard to decentralize things for society. It’s much harder than yet another venture-funded closed capitalist silo that extracts rents forever. And you can be proud to call yourself a Web2 maximalist, but in every generation the old folks are shaking their fist at the young generation with the new technology and don’t understand why anyone needs the latest stuff. What was so bad about the old cars, anyway? They never broke down, unlike the new crap! Right?

You sound like this guy to the people working on the latest in group signatures, BLS signatures, zero-knowledge proofs, verified credentials and self-sovereign identity:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fs-YpQj88ew

Back then everyone also had no idea why the Internet was any good. Ballmer yelled “search is not a business!” Dave Letterman simply asked: Does Radio ring a bell?

What problem did the Web solve back then? People didn’t know but made fun of all the and tags and the tacky personal home pages. Same here. It’s early days, yet.

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#95

Post by depressedpanda » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 10:37 PM UTC

spideymans wrote: post #78

depressedpanda wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet alas, mobile users still spend the vast majority of their time in native apps. What’s going wrong here? Easy: - Apple only allows one browser -- their own -- on iOS - Apple uses this control to cripple PWAs on iOS - Apple's iPhone market share is significant enough that if Safari/iOS doesn't support something, businesses won't spend time on using it E.g.: chat/communication apps cannot be written as PWAs, since…

This doesn't explain why PWAs are still a rarity on Android though. You'd think that the ability to target both desktop (web) and Android (web/PWA) would've attracted more developer interest. I can't really comment on other companies, but my company is currently moving our product from MVP to a more mature project. When comparing various options (PWAs/web, Flutter, React, Native), PWAs/web was immediately discarded a…

> When comparing various options (PWAs/web, Flutter, React, Native), PWAs/web was immediately discarded as an option because we didn't believe we could deliver the level of UX excellence we're targeting. Nor did we believe that PWAs would be any easier to develop and maintain than two native apps.

Interesting. What did you find lacking regarding UX for PWAs?

To me it's often glaringly obvious how many native apps are written for iOS first, then ported to Android. In these apps I think the UX is much worse than if they had just given me a decent web app to interact with.

Regarding why a PWA would be easier to maintain than two native apps, you mention it yourself in the next paragraph: it's much easier to find a decent web dev. Their knowledge also directly translates to being able to build/maintain marketing and store websites for you.

Other benefits I've noticed is that with a web app

- there's no 3rd party gatekeeper between you and your end users.

- The app updates itself when used, meaning users will almost always be running the latest version of your app

- There's no app store review for you to wait on before being able to publish bug fixes or new features

- You can sell stuff inside your app without a gatekeeper taking a 30% cut

- Speed of development: as only two web devs responsible for web app, marketing website, and product checkout we could still keep the web app in sync with the mobile iOS and Android apps produced by a team of three devs.

In what ways do you think the tooling is lacking? I think the tooling and flexibility is actually quite good :-) I've often amazed people by setting up an ngrok tunnel, giving them a live preview of whatever feature I'm working on at the moment. While this can mostly be dismissed as just a cool thing you can do, it was invaluable when the UX-designer and I worked on a feature during lockdown.

All that said, I don't know what kind of app you're building, and there are of course types of apps that are best done natively. In my opinion, however, they are very few: 9 out 10 apps on my phone would work just as well being PWAs.

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#96

Post by rchaud » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 10:37 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #63

zhte415 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's simpler than that: An app icon on a user's screen is the equivalent of a desktop bookmark icon shortcut circa 1998, like 'browser toolbar helpers' would 'helpfully install' - things that would more often be seen as malware today. Notifications pushed to the user the equivalent of constant marketing from subscribed email lists. Constant ~~marketing~~ 'experience'. Pretty close to spam today; such email is…

I don't know that a desktop icon is really considered malware. People still have tons of desktop shortcuts if they use a PC, and don't select the option to not have it even when provided it.

I'd say it's considered 'bloatware'....additional software (usually trialware) the OEM bundles with the PC to subsidize the cost. But considering that ostensibly legit trialware like Norton scare users with its threatening popups, it may as well be malware to some.

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#97

Post by rchaud » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

spideymans wrote: post #90

finiteseries wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~90% of the average site’s mobile traffic, as a rule, comes from in-app browsers. Mobile users, as a rule, rarely open an internet browser, they are redirected there. It’s become a glorified zen-mode type feature for articles or indie web stores at this point for a substantial part of the population, especially young people, at least on iOS. This is a huge reason why “Open this in our app!1!” is a thing as well. The…

>This is a huge reason why “Open this in our app!1!” is a thing as well. The alternative isn’t browsing a mobile site through Safari, it’s using whatever social media app led you there in the first place. Yes. The popularity of Instagram and Pinterest for shopping is a direct reflection of how relatively hostile the web is from a UX perspective. I often find myself using Pinterest, rather than the web, to browse reta…

> The popularity of Instagram and Pinterest for shopping is a direct reflection of how relatively hostile the web is from a UX perspective.

You may be conflating two different things. IG and Pinterest are private firms with a financial interest in adding a big "SHOP" button to user-generated content. "The web" is not a monolith, so not all sites will be shopping-oriented. That means you may have to use a search engine if you want to find stuff to shop for. Pinterest can be one of those search engines.

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#98

Post by archagon » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 10:42 PM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #62

oblak wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Discord is guilty of this. You can't make calls on the mobile site because there's an app for that. Hit the "request desktop site" and boom, the button is not disabled for arbitrary reason.

Sometimes a mobile website will be deliberately stripped of a long-standing feature just to pressure users to install the native app. Years ago Facebook removed the instant-messaging feature from the mobile version of their website.

Pro tip: if you go to facebook.com and request the desktop site (on iOS, at least), you’ll still be looking at a mobile-proportioned site, but Messenger will suddenly work.

In other words, the mobile Messenger site already exists and has worked fine for years.

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#99

Post by bitwize » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 10:42 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #63

zhte415 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's simpler than that: An app icon on a user's screen is the equivalent of a desktop bookmark icon shortcut circa 1998, like 'browser toolbar helpers' would 'helpfully install' - things that would more often be seen as malware today. Notifications pushed to the user the equivalent of constant marketing from subscribed email lists. Constant ~~marketing~~ 'experience'. Pretty close to spam today; such email is…

I don't know that a desktop icon is really considered malware. People still have tons of desktop shortcuts if they use a PC, and don't select the option to not have it even when provided it.

Counterpoint: LOVE LETTER FOR YOU.txt.vbs

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#100

Post by randomtwiddler » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 10:43 PM UTC

Supermancho wrote: post #30

ryaniscool wrote: post #20

This article is all over the place. The debate is over. The web won. You can see that by the way popular websites will try and force you to install their apps. That’s because their web experience is perfectly competent to scratch the users itch. They are forced to artificially cripple their mobile web experience to drive app installs. There is a strong niche left to native. I’m thinking of things like creative tools.…

> The web won. I don't think so. Either way the statements are rife with soft terminology, but I'll use raw traffic as my metric for dominance in the functional space. https://www.perficient.com/insights/research-hub/mobile-vs-d... . The majority of traffic is mobile and apps still rule that platform due to both a superior experience and better interfaces. The trend is clear and ongoing, so I'm not sure why people th…

> The majority of traffic is mobile and apps still rule that platform due to both a superior experience and better interfaces.

There is no evidence of your second claim in the link. Only that mobile, as a platform, is more popular than desktop. Nothing about "native apps" being the preferred way to interact with the platform. This is an oft proffered point with no solid backing. Rather the opposite. Users rarely, if ever, install apps, but they go to websites.