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Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

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Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#31

Post by zippergz »

vbezhenar wrote: post #26

What I don't like is WebView distributed as a "native app". It's not native app and it's not something I want to install, don't cheat me. Webpages should stay in browser. I expect native app to be written with Objective C (OS X/iOS user here), having very low memory usage, fast startup and offline usage. Also I expect as much integration with the system, as possible, native controls (not that buggy emulation without…

This is what I hate about Slack. It feels like a webapp inside of a very thin wrapper.

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#32

Post by jfb »

vbezhenar wrote: post #26

What I don't like is WebView distributed as a "native app". It's not native app and it's not something I want to install, don't cheat me. Webpages should stay in browser. I expect native app to be written with Objective C (OS X/iOS user here), having very low memory usage, fast startup and offline usage. Also I expect as much integration with the system, as possible, native controls (not that buggy emulation without…

I use the Fluid SSB [1] for the latter. It sandboxes websites that I need to use but are not willing to allow access to my primary browser history/cookie store. It's a little clunky, but it gets the job mostly done.

[1] http://fluidapp.com

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#33

Post by dcdevito »

vbezhenar wrote: post #26

What I don't like is WebView distributed as a "native app". It's not native app and it's not something I want to install, don't cheat me. Webpages should stay in browser. I expect native app to be written with Objective C (OS X/iOS user here), having very low memory usage, fast startup and offline usage. Also I expect as much integration with the system, as possible, native controls (not that buggy emulation without…

Chrome packaged apps do what your last paragraph is calling for

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#34

Post by grimgrin »

zippergz wrote: post #31
vbezhenar wrote: post #26

What I don't like is WebView distributed as a "native app". It's not native app and it's not something I want to install, don't cheat me. Webpages should stay in browser. I expect native app to be written with Objective C (OS X/iOS user here), having very low memory usage, fast startup and offline usage. Also I expect as much integration with the system, as possible, native controls (not that buggy emulation without…

This is what I hate about Slack. It feels like a webapp inside of a very thin wrapper.

Slack feels like it should be in the browser for me, as a pinned tab. So at my job that's how I use it.

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#35

Post by BinaryIdiot »

gluxon wrote: post #20
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #17

I love it when companies make software that I use on my mobile phone and it syncs with a desktop application as well. As a web developer I appreciate web applications but the experience is almost always better in a native application (at least I've found very few exceptions). So I'm happy companies like this still provide desktop applications. It would be great if it were more of a trend but I'm not sure that it is y…

> If there were better frameworks to use that would allow code reuse across all platforms it would certainly make this easier. I feel that this is exactly what web applications try to solve in the first place.

> I feel that this is exactly what web applications try to solve in the first place.

Yeah I think so too but I don't think it really did. Native apps are almost always so much better. The biggest issue is discovery and installation of native applications that make the web more approachable.

I'd love to see some better development frameworks that let me use native UI components to build an application that can share business login across iOS, Android, Windows, Mac OS X and even Linux. It's kind of a hard problem though.

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#36

Post by 1123581321 »

zippergz wrote: post #31
vbezhenar wrote: post #26

What I don't like is WebView distributed as a "native app". It's not native app and it's not something I want to install, don't cheat me. Webpages should stay in browser. I expect native app to be written with Objective C (OS X/iOS user here), having very low memory usage, fast startup and offline usage. Also I expect as much integration with the system, as possible, native controls (not that buggy emulation without…

This is what I hate about Slack. It feels like a webapp inside of a very thin wrapper.

The recent update is the first one that starts to feel like software to me because the download interface is much less "webby" (and faster for grabbing multiple files from someone.)

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#37

Post by stephenr »

zippergz wrote: post #31
vbezhenar wrote: post #26

What I don't like is WebView distributed as a "native app". It's not native app and it's not something I want to install, don't cheat me. Webpages should stay in browser. I expect native app to be written with Objective C (OS X/iOS user here), having very low memory usage, fast startup and offline usage. Also I expect as much integration with the system, as possible, native controls (not that buggy emulation without…

This is what I hate about Slack. It feels like a webapp inside of a very thin wrapper.

This type of app really bites us (users) in the ass when we try things real Mac apps have done literally for decades - drag and drop. Drag a file expecting it to be accepted as an upload, but oh wait no, the web view navigated to view that file. And I have no back button so I have to quit the app.

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#38

Post by netheril96 »

saurik wrote: post #18
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that the exact opposite metric would be useful but I agree their metric doesn't sound useful either.

I think the normal summary would be "the new version of our tool has streamlined numerous features, allowing you to spend less time using our app; testing already reports people spend 30% less time"; the implication, though, left out of the summary, is "and accomplish the same things" (which is why it is only summarized as the exact opposite, but the metric, I agree, is not the exact opposite).

For entertainment apps such as social networking, games and music, there are no specific goals to achieve, and more time spent the better. I don't know whether that applies to the app in this article, though.

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#39

Post by hobarrera »

On the other end, as a user, I greatly prefer desktop apps, because I don't "lose" them as much. It's easy to lose a chat tab between lots of browser windows+tabs. A single IM window is harder to lose.

And then there's the integration: both look&feel and functionality can make a huge difference.

Re: Why we maintain desktop apps for OS X, Windows, and a web application

#40

Post by hobarrera »

grimgrin wrote: post #34
zippergz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I hate about Slack. It feels like a webapp inside of a very thin wrapper.

Slack feels like it should be in the browser for me, as a pinned tab. So at my job that's how I use it.

The problem with these tabs is that closing that window, the tab is gone forever (on both chromium and firefox).

It's also easy to lose track of which window they were in quite fast. A separate app is faster to find on almost any WM/OS.

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