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

danq.me

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

#421

Post by MiddleEndian »

Most of the time, I want neither. No I don't want the ticketmaster app (or DICE). I may need to visit a website to buy a ticket, but after that just email me a QR code or something. Even worse, I found myself at Royale in Boston and they wanted me to install yet another app to check my coat. I hid my coat under a chair instead and have not returned to the venue since then.

The example from the article:

> This summer, the kids’ performing arts school are singing and dancing in a show at Disneyland. We’re all very excited, but my excitement, at least, was muted a little when I was told to install the “Travelbound” app in order to get access to the itinerary, travel arrangements, and accommodation details.

I don't need an app for this or website for this. Just email me the information and let me put it in my calendar and then leave me alone.

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

#422

Post by DANmode »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #323
nitwit005 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds less like wanting apps, than simply having no idea what's going on.

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.

Apple especially has made this intentionally painful.

It used to be worse.

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

#423

Post by drnick1 »

billyp-rva wrote: post #18

> I can’t understand how we got to this place with “app culture”! The short version: ad blockers work on browsers but not apps[0]. [0] https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle

> The short version: ad blockers work on browsers but not apps[0].

It depends where the ads come from. I block ads at the DNS level for example, and there is little apps can do (I also filter public DNS servers by IP to prevent bypass). Not that would use apps that show me ads, or really any commercial apps. If something cannot be done in a browser, I'll simply pass.

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

#425

Post by murderfs »

Telaneo wrote: post #398
murderfs wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how this functions in practice: if business A sells a widget to reseller B who sells it to reseller C who sells it to the customer, there's multiple layers of markup. How can the original manufacturer be expected to refund the purchase price? Reading the law, it does not say that the consumer is entitled to a refund.

> if business A sells a widget to reseller B who sells it to reseller C who sells it to the customer, there's multiple layers of markup. How can the original manufacturer be expected to refund the purchase price? Simple. They operate within the law and provide the customer with a refund, or they get fined. From the consumer's point of view, this is irrelevant. Business can fix this B2B issue between themselves howeve…

> Refunding is one possible remediation, see section 32 (cancellation) and section 26 (The consumer's rights in the event of defects). That option cancels the purchase contract, meaning you as the consumer give the item back, while the seller gives you the money you paid for the item.

Only if the manufacturer fails to fix it per section 31: "If the defect is not rectified and no redelivery takes place pursuant to sections 29 and 30"

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

#426

Post by LAC-Tech »

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…

My PWA skills are rusty, but IIRC it's one click on Android to install web page as an "app" (ie it appears on the home screen like anything else), and it was about 3 in Safari - perhaps a onerous for B2C, but surely not for internal users.

So you can easily make an "App" for normies, from a web page.

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

#427

Post by brazukadev »

c0nsumer wrote: post #220
verelo wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So i've done similar things in the past - and my justification for 'app' over website has been offline. Does the PWA state of things resolve that in the modern days? If it did, yeah I'd agree, no need for an app at all. In my case the app was being used in rural Ontario. I cant even make a phone call here without wifi.

This actually handles that, at least for my use case. Specifically, on first load of the page (in a browser, or the stripped-down browser that runs the app-like PWA install) a service worker gets installed, that caches the entire site/app/map locally, and runs it from there. Then every 24 hours, or on new page load, it checks the live site for content changes and pulls down the changes if they exist. If there's no ne…

That was an amazing reading. I just implemented something similar a couple days ago. And now I'm building an android app based on this PWA (no tool for that, claude fable can code a good custom webview wrapper).

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

#428

Post by LAC-Tech »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #386
realusername wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But on the same page

> On iOS 16.4 and later, PWAs can be installed from the Share menu in Safari, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Orion.

So you can't have an install prompt, but it's still pretty easy. If people can learn hamburger menus they can learn this.

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

#429

Post by Chu4eeno »

bluebarbet wrote: post #248
inigyou wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a very general European mindset thing. They have a very different approach to privacy there - they basically expect everyone's identity to be public, and then protect those identities from abuse, rather than the more US approach of letting you hide your identity so it can't be abused. You see supermarkets with the owner's full name plastered across the storefront underneath the franchise logo. "This store i…

There's something to this but it's still a slightly dodgy generalization. A random counter-example from France. If you have a one-person small business (i.e. with a registered business number and the right to invoice), all personal information beyond the name is private by default, it cannot be looked up. The Nordic countries are perhaps closer to the image you're painting. Personal tax information is famously public…

> The Nordic countries are perhaps closer to the image you're painting. Personal tax information is famously public in Sweden, for example.

It used to be much more open, with phonebooks and open tax records, but the last decades I think every Scandinavian country have started prioritizing especially online privacy. E. g. the Norwegian Datatilsynet used to be legendarily tough on things like public CCTV, and now they go after even random chrome extensions.

It's infamously difficult to dox someone from Scandinavia compared to e. g. the US with tons of databrokers.

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

#430

Post by esaym »

johnecheck wrote: post #408
adamwk wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t really make sense. Apps were pretty popular immediately after decades of web usage. There are many reasons to prefer an app. Even on desktop; if I’m using a service enough throughout the day, I want a native app, not a website.

There are many reasons to prefer an app, most of which are ways OS makers have crippled web apps for reasons that TOTALLY HAVE NOTHING TO DO with the fact that they get a 30% cut if the user chooses the native app.

Yes, this
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