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Why our website looks like an operating system

posthog.com

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Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#231

Post by sfn42 »

scrollaway wrote: post #213
alternatex wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the amount of JavaScript used in a website is not a contributing factor into how usable a person finds it /s. Honestly, you don't judge a back-end by how much code it's built with or what platform it's hosted on. I don't get the obsession people have with JavaScript used on websites. Websites with terrible UX often abuse JavaScript yes, but correlation != causation.

It’s because they can see it. They can go in the inspector and see “oh wow so many MBs of JS”, but they can’t see the backend. There is a good point to that: this data that is downloaded is an end user resource. Over a mobile network etc it’ll matter. But the days where it mattered at home/office are long, long gone, at least for the audience of the websites that adopt this strategy. The obsession I believe is a remn…

More like they can see it but also can't see it. There's megabytes of JS loaded just to show me a crappy glorified PDF that doesn't even work properly. A page I could have literally made using only HTML and CSS and it would be better, but somehow you've made it take 11mb of JavaScript code and it doesn't even work properly. That's the kind of website I scoff at.

I have no issues at all with this website. It's awesome. I mean it's a bit slow but that's probably because it's on the front page on HN right now - yet it still works pretty well. The design is delightful. Incredibly well done. One of the coolest websites I've seen. Who cares how much JS it takes, it's obviously worth it.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#232

Post by spinningslate »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #132
xp84 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EU law is just meritless pestering of people It is that. It has done literally nothing to improve anything whatsoever, in any country. And most of the "cookie management" scripts that people use, barely even work. Both the law and the way it's complied with in practice are a dumb solution to a problem that the EU should have forced browser vendors to solve. Only the user's browser can choose not to send back cookie…

The EU law is fine, the implementation used isn't. But never blame the EU laws for cookie banners; the law does not mandate banners at all, let alone the ones full of dark patterns to nag you into accepting anyway. That's all the industry. The industry could have come up with a standard, a browser add-on, respect a browser setting, etc but they chose the most annoying one to pester you, the user.

> The EU law is fine

Kind of. The intent is good and the wording disallows some of the dark patterns. The challenge is that it stands square in the path of the adtech surveillance behemoths. That we ended up with the cesspit of cookie banners is a result of (almost) immovable object meeting (almost) irresistable force. There was simply no way that Google, Facebook et al were ever going to comply with the intent of the law: it's their business not to.

The only way we might have got a better outcome was for the EU to quickly respond and say "nope, cookie banners aren't compliant with the law". That would have been incredibly difficult to do in practice. You can bet your Bay Area mortgage that Big Tech will have had legions of smart lawyers pouring over how to comply with the letter whilst completely ignoring the intent.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#234

Post by fsflover »

pembrook wrote: post #180
Retr0id wrote: post #33

> Legally-required cookie banner > PostHog.com doesn't use third-party cookies, only a single in-house cookie You're legally required to let me opt out of that cookie. Unless it's essential to the site functionality, in which case you don't need the banner at all.

Ahh yes. HN’s favorite debate. Where people who’ve never started a company or spoken to a lawyer about GDPR, the ePrivacy directive, the schrems rulings, etc but just emotionally love idea of what they think it represents (but actually doesn’t), debate with normal sane people. All I can say is, I’m getting really tired of this one guys.

Just like a debate on any other topic? E.g., GNU/Linux on desktop.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#235

Post by prmoustache »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #39
Twey wrote: post #3

I've always thought ‘multi-document interfaces’ as we used to call them are an anti-pattern. I have a perfectly good window manager; why does every app need its own incompatible, usually inferior window manager built in? (Mind you on mobile I very much don't have a perfectly good window manager, and indeed can't even open multiple instances of most apps…)

Compared to the experience of something like “Gimp”, I prefer something contained to a single window. Otherwise two or three such apps running at the same time becomes a game of “where’s my window”. I hate the idea of a toolbar being its own window to be managed.

That is because you are used to shitty window managers / desktop that don't remember position, do not support pinning and tagging windows, etc.

That is the issue, apps have to deal with the lowest common denominator in term of desktop management but there is absolutely no good reason to build a window manager inside a website.I think that with tabs people have generally forgotten they can open multiple browser windows.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#237

Post by greatgib »

I had to look at their website to find doc recently and I found that highly stupid and frustrating. It didn't pushed me to want to use their service.

Sure, the os-like interface is really very impressive and sleek. That impressed me. But it was awful to use when you just wanted a simple doc page.

Ar the same time, their doc sucks...

So my immediate reaction was to think that they probably spent a lot of time on developing this website instead of improving their product and it's documentation...

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#238

Post by jon-wood »

vander_elst wrote: post #225

Nice idea, awesome implementation, but please no. I now need to learn a new UI and UX, I have to to organize windows inside my windows. I want websites to be more like a block of text rather than a super fancy interface.

Very much this. I already have an operating system, and it's very good at managing windows, I spent quite a lot of time setting it up so that it would do so in exactly the manner I want it to.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#239

Post by SSLy »

badsectoracula wrote: post #126
Twey wrote: post #3

I've always thought ‘multi-document interfaces’ as we used to call them are an anti-pattern. I have a perfectly good window manager; why does every app need its own incompatible, usually inferior window manager built in? (Mind you on mobile I very much don't have a perfectly good window manager, and indeed can't even open multiple instances of most apps…)

> I have a perfectly good window manager; why does every app need its own incompatible, usually inferior window manager built in? Because some applications do need multiple windows in the same application context. A common example would be image editors. It is unfortunate that almost all generic MDI implementations (Win32 and Qt basically) are incredibly barebones. I want to have multiple windows visible when i'm usi…

What about Cocoa?
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