31–40 of 127 posts
I just don't get it. What is so difficult about providing a one-time authentication through the user's phone? Just open Whatsapp on the smartphone, get a token, put your phone number and token and voilà! I mean, there have been web chats for decades now, so I don't understand why they invented such a messed up set of constraints. Besides, am I the only one who suspects that Whatsapp is boycotting Apple? They needed a…
I confess, I've never used it and don't want to pass judgment without actually checking it out but if what the article describes is true than, yeah, they screwed this one up big time.
Umm. Obviously the web client is supposed to be used on the desktop, not on a phone. They have apps for phones. Doesn't excuse the Chrome-only-ness, though.
Chrome is the new IE. The new web developers generation just replaced IE with Chrome.
The only thing I see that it can't is the desktop notification, which you still have some ability, in fact 'pinned' sites in IE let you have a number badge on the taskbar, which is quite good for a chat app, see Skype.
To be fair, the WeChat desktop client also requires that you scan a QR code from your smartphone to log in. I'm not defending WeChat, but it doesn't seem like the author knows WhatsApp is not alone there.
Exactly. This is outrageous. The only decent chat app these days is Telegram, really. Even they still want you to use your phone to log in (but only once). But I guess that's the way it is for now. Frankly, I hope those apps will all be gone and forgotten in favor of an actual open sourced, widely used protocol. Or maybe they'd incorporate one. But in any case, I think it's a shame that when email is decentralized, c…
I'd love a technical explanation of how this works. Are all the messages kept on the phone? How does it relate to the Whisper Systems end to end encryption on the Android to Android version of WhatsApp? Is there some relationship between the two - is this very bizarre web interface there because of constraints relating to privacy and encryption? i.e. WhatsApp don't have your messages. [Edit] Is it peer to peer in som…
To be fair, the WeChat desktop client also requires that you scan a QR code from your smartphone to log in. I'm not defending WeChat, but it doesn't seem like the author knows WhatsApp is not alone there.
author here. I didn't knew about WeChat since it is not popular here in Brazil. Using a QR to facilitate login is not a bad decision. Having this as the only method to authenticate makes it a bad client because it can't work as a standalone offering. I don't like when "web clients" are not full featured in the sense of allowing registration and login. Look at Evernotes, you can register and use thru the web client in…
I just don't get it. What is so difficult about providing a one-time authentication through the user's phone? Just open Whatsapp on the smartphone, get a token, put your phone number and token and voilà! I mean, there have been web chats for decades now, so I don't understand why they invented such a messed up set of constraints. Besides, am I the only one who suspects that Whatsapp is boycotting Apple? They needed a…
This presents obvious problems with having not just a web client, but any client other than the main device, since the main device is the only store of the existing conversations. New messages sent also need to be synchronized across devices, which I presume is why it's required to keep your phone connected to the Internet. Otherwise Whatsapp would need keep conversations on their servers until they could be synced, which is very much not their model.
Details on their architecture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c12cYAUTXXs
http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/2/26/the-whatsapp-archi...
The web app gets approval from Snowden ( http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/why-you-should-use-whatsa... ) Great marketing!