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Why our website looks like an operating system

posthog.com

261–270 of 504 posts

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#261
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I mean, we could go the route Safari has, and just blanket-disable 3rd party cookies by default. It's... quite effective (if a tad annoying for folks implementing single-sign-on)

I don't know, I don't think it helps all that much when you are up against Facebook's, and Google's wits on how to circumvent it. If they can open a port and side-step the security system of Android wholesale, they can probably find a "solution" to the not even that hard of a problem of doing tracking server-side.

There is a problem in convincing everyone on the internet to install a server-side tracking component.

Pretty much everyone was willing to give this away for free on the client side, in return for limited social integration, or (in Google's case) free analytics - server side is a significantly harder sell in many companies, and there is a much richer variety of backend languages/frameworks you have to integrate with.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#262
> That’s the idea behind the new PostHog.com. You can multitask, open a few articles simultaneously, and move them around as you please.

No, I can't, because the way I please is to use Swish (https://highlyopinionated.co/swish/) to move windows around with trackpad gestures. Can't do that on your website.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#264
post #149

Why this feels so incredibly appealing compared to prevailing designs is probably something for a psychologist / cognitive scientist / neurologist (?) to answer -- there is certainly something here that warrants better study than what we in the software industry do in rushed blog posts. But I can personally speak to at least one aspect, having worked for a company that does high end web sites and strategy for large S…

i can remember a discussion with Cory (who built this with Eli, the front end eng) on the topic of "why do all websites consist of a collection of long scroll-y pages / is that appropriate for our business?" and we concluded it wasn't optimal. at the time, we were trying to figure out how to add more products in without it becoming messy, and we concluded we're trying to do a lot more than just what would work well f…

This sounds like an expensive solution to a marketing problem re. the product. And if one digs even further, perhaps an issue with your product line - the benefits of it aren't immediately presentable in a simplified way to the extent it is differentiated relative to the competitors.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#265

It looks awesome but I clicked several bits and pieces and still have no idea what they do or what their product is.

Haha I love that. I literally wrote this post...

"This sounds like an expensive solution to a marketing problem re. the product. And if one digs even further, perhaps an issue with your product line - the benefits of it aren't immediately presentable in a simplified way to the extent it is differentiated relative to the competitors."

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#266

This must have taken them a really long time. That worries me, don't they have other things to do? If engineers have so much free time that they can work on nice & fun things like this that aren't totally necessary, they must have overhired (which is wasteful and a sign of impending layoffs) or they don't have enough actual work to do (which is a sign the company is stagnating). Or the time and money required to do t…

If I was an investor I would not be happy with my money being poured into this pointless project.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#268
I didn't like working with posthog when I had to because the level of analytics they do goes against my personal ethics viewpoint but I do have to say they do very good technical work. The landing page is a good reflection of the skill they have even in the product itself. Very neat landing page, and I chuckled at their "cookie banner".

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#269
post #149

Why this feels so incredibly appealing compared to prevailing designs is probably something for a psychologist / cognitive scientist / neurologist (?) to answer -- there is certainly something here that warrants better study than what we in the software industry do in rushed blog posts. But I can personally speak to at least one aspect, having worked for a company that does high end web sites and strategy for large S…

i can remember a discussion with Cory (who built this with Eli, the front end eng) on the topic of "why do all websites consist of a collection of long scroll-y pages / is that appropriate for our business?" and we concluded it wasn't optimal. at the time, we were trying to figure out how to add more products in without it becoming messy, and we concluded we're trying to do a lot more than just what would work well f…

> so we thought hey we'll do something that means people _will_ explore and learn what we do bette

Meh, currently doing just that. Trying to figure out what posthog is about, try to store some keywords in my brain if I ever need to return this product in future where it fits and just try to enjoy the site :) And I'm one of the folks that try to determine in seconds/minute whether this is worth digging in or not and whether I understand the offering.

Currently I enjoy the site alot. Not sure if that is the OS thing about it or just the way that information is presented and layout.

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