Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

danq.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 571 posts

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#381

Post by EGreg »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #312

Nobody here is talking about the fact that a significant number of users want apps, too. I'm responsible for an internal tool at the company I work for, hosted as a website, that handles a bunch of miscellaneous tasks that other employees need. Think reimbursements, documentation and reporting, gathering and presenting business data. That sort of thing. When I took it over, it was desktop only ( a lot of formatted pa…

On iOS, I think the only two reasons to have an app are: notifications and access to contacts.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#382

Post by wbobeirne »

staticshock wrote: post #227

Low-tech users don't give a damn if something has the guts of an "app" or not, they care about having a thing on the home screen they can click . Businesses have the incentive to give their users that low friction experience (at the point of need) using already familiar rails (i.e. "install app from app store"). The makers of both iOS and Android treat the ability to "bookmark" a web URL onto your home screen as a po…

> The makers of both iOS and Android treat the ability to "bookmark" a web URL onto your home screen as a power user feature that requires navigating through complex, technical-sounding menus.

Not the case on many Android browsers, you can present the user with a button to do this for them by listening for the `beforeinstallprompt` event. There are some requirements to meet for that, but it's a pretty user-friendly way to push your PWA to the home screen: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#383

Post by groby_b »

hadlock wrote: post #357
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #312

Nobody here is talking about the fact that a significant number of users want apps, too. I'm responsible for an internal tool at the company I work for, hosted as a website, that handles a bunch of miscellaneous tasks that other employees need. Think reimbursements, documentation and reporting, gathering and presenting business data. That sort of thing. When I took it over, it was desktop only ( a lot of formatted pa…

If the app store allowed you to install bookmarks, I doubt most people would notice.

It does. It's called a PWA.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#384

Post by c0nsumer »

verelo wrote: post #374
c0nsumer wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gosh, having tried to use the Home Depot app (to find products in store) while IN their stores... It's so bad. I can't even imagine what you dealt with in trying to handle those things. (And so, so many little bugs in my map thing from upthread were these odd timing quirks when a user didn't have good service and one check would run and leave something else hanging resulting in a blank map. )

Yeah, home depot is a tricky case. They have a huge array of products, and in my experience when you cant find something you need to search beyond the store you're in....so the database you need access to isn't exactly small. Makes a practical offline experience tricky. Home depots website sucks anyway, slow, clunky, terrible touch space, and the search is awful. Aside, they should ad cell repeaters inside to fix all…

If I have good service their mobile app is actually pretty quick, but I don't want to join their wifi so... Yeah. :\

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#385

Post by verelo »

c0nsumer wrote: post #384
verelo wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, home depot is a tricky case. They have a huge array of products, and in my experience when you cant find something you need to search beyond the store you're in....so the database you need access to isn't exactly small. Makes a practical offline experience tricky. Home depots website sucks anyway, slow, clunky, terrible touch space, and the search is awful. Aside, they should ad cell repeaters inside to fix all…

If I have good service their mobile app is actually pretty quick, but I don't want to join their wifi so... Yeah. :\

Maybe in the US, in Canada i find their online services are pretty average. A lot of the time i search for something and i get a US link, much to my disapointment.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#386

Post by Ajedi32 »

realusername wrote: post #356
adamddev1 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish PWAs were more well-known among average users. If people knew and expected they could install certain websites as apps, that would simplify things so much and really balance the power of the app stores.

It's not well known because it's annoying to install ... and it's annoying to install because the stores are huge cash printing machines so that's not going to change.

It's not that hard to install. The website can just have a button you click to trigger an install prompt: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...

But of course...

> This is not supported on iOS.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#387

Post by nchmy »

nolok wrote: post #287
nchmy wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What generation are you?

Mid 80s, grew up watching dad playing around with his atari st and was lucky enough to be able to toy around on his 386 and then 486, feeling like a god because I managed to get those config.sys and co to start games he couldn't. For me mobile website was something "tacked on" the real website and I have never been able to shake that feeling away somehow.

hmm, im the same age and feel no qualms about mobile web - it almost always literally just different CSS on the same desktop site. That's the benefit of the web vs native.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#388

Post by Ajedi32 »

RetroTechie wrote: post #345
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, they probably would have been perfectly happy with a bookmark on their home screen, but have you ever tried walking someone who doesn't know how to enter a url into their browser through the process of making a home page bookmark on their phone? Ultimately I ended up making a PWA that does nothing except act as a bookmark. Which was way more of a PITA than it should have been.

Sounds like what could be a useful built-in OS feature. Along the lines of: "Aim camera at QR code to put "open-link" icon on your home screen" Does something like that not exist?

Devs can pretty easily implement this on their site using the BeforeInstallPromptEvent.prompt method.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...

Though of course...

> This is not supported on iOS.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#389

Post by TheSkyHasEyes »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #312

Nobody here is talking about the fact that a significant number of users want apps, too. I'm responsible for an internal tool at the company I work for, hosted as a website, that handles a bunch of miscellaneous tasks that other employees need. Think reimbursements, documentation and reporting, gathering and presenting business data. That sort of thing. When I took it over, it was desktop only ( a lot of formatted pa…

FTA

> I can’t understand how we got to this place with “app culture”

> Nobody here is talking about the fact that a significant number of users want apps, too.

End users, for the most part don't know what they want. They take when makes sense to them. To end users apps are easy. To us, a URL is easy.

> But the tech illiterati exist, and they love apps.

Yup!! And we get sucked into this vortex at times. Good post btw.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#390

Post by Schiendelman »

benoau wrote: post #351
Schiendelman wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why it matters that they have 500 reviewers, or had six years ago. Is this a "that number seems small" argument?

It matters in the context of trusting their review process, and certainly "seems small" considering these 500 people oversee 2 million apps while scams and fraud have been prolific for years. I think if they didn't have immunity for all the scams and fraud - and that's being challenged by both the EU regulators and in US courts - they'd probably have a lot more than 500 people. Multiples of it.

How many exactly would they have and why?

BTW, good recent comment on the difference between Apple and Google reviews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48911599

Post reply on HN