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Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

windowslatest.com

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Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#291

Post by mrweasel »

dangus wrote: post #288
mrweasel wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I think you're mostly correct. The amount of people using WhatsApp on the desktop is probably rather limited, certainly in the scope of WhatsApp usage in general. Memory, while I feel that a gigabyte is way to much for what is essentially a chat app, it is virtual memory, so it's not as problematic as I'd like it to be. The issue, I think, is who the desktop users are. They sales people, they are people who…

I agree about this potential of most WhatsApp users residing in markets with less powerful median hardware. Still, I think the experience reported is very similar to running Chrome, and I think any laptop with 8GB of RAM can handle the application plus Excel and a web browser (or just run WhatsApp in the browser) just fine. A complete mini PC with 16GB RAM, 512GB storage, and a relatively modern processor goes for li…

It would be interesting in knowing how many feel like I do. Running an application in a browser window or tab is measure of last resort. People already have tens of tabs, if not hundreds, and multiple browser windows open, stuffing an application into one for those are terrible for the user experience. That's a worse solution than a web wrapper.

It's much easier to locate an application that has it's own process and presence in the operating system.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#292

Post by eviks »

dangus wrote: post #286
eviks wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did, via the task manager. You're the one saying high RAM utilization doesn't matter because 'wrong reasons in theory and in practice', so it's on you to check and confirm it so that you could be correct at least in practice in this specific case

Okay, it’s on me. Send me to jail.

Oh, man, how can you be wrong about everything? Here is the author noticing performance issues, he's even in a "but in theory it doesn't have to be slow" camp that's closer to yours:

> An app can use a lot of memory, and it does not necessarily mean it’s a performance nightmare, but the issue with the new WhatsApp is that it feels sluggish. You’re going to notice sluggish performance, long loading time, and other performance issues when browsing different conversations.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#293

Post by rubenvanwyk »

stilley2 wrote: post #287
redbell wrote: post #228

I feel this trend is going to stick for the upcoming years! It's not just Meta, every big player there is adopting this mentality. Take Microsoft for instance, they have been pushing heavily what they called the New Outlook , which is basically a web-based client mirroring Outlook on the web (OWA) , packed into an EXE file (not sure if it is Electronized or not)! Then, they renamed the real native Outlook app as Clas…

Speaking of new outlook, has anyone else had search just...not work? I'll search for emails sent from myself, to myself (of which I know there are hundreds) and get 7 results. Same in the web app, but outlook classic works fine. Mind boggling

Search on Outlook is horrendous. Our company bought Copilot just so people can start searching their e-mails.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#294

Post by rubenvanwyk »

redbell wrote: post #228

I feel this trend is going to stick for the upcoming years! It's not just Meta, every big player there is adopting this mentality. Take Microsoft for instance, they have been pushing heavily what they called the New Outlook , which is basically a web-based client mirroring Outlook on the web (OWA) , packed into an EXE file (not sure if it is Electronized or not)! Then, they renamed the real native Outlook app as Clas…

The old Outlook was way better. Every user in our org has been complaining about this.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#295

Post by denverllc »

ahoka wrote: post #145
calmingsolitude wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is because many of the "native" windows components like the start menu are written in react native.

Anyone remembers Active Desktop?

They main purpose of active desktop was to claim IE was an inextricable part of windows

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#296

Post by estimator7292 »

72deluxe wrote: post #207
jagged-chisel wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they want fungible engineers, yes. They don’t want to pay extra for an expert in wxWidgets and Horde3D. They don’t want to wait while that expert’s replacement comes up to speed on Horde3D. They don’t even want to wait for any existing engineers to learn these two technologies. They know web, they can manage web - web is “less risky.”

I too did not know anything about Horde3D when I found it and incorporated it.

You're deliberately missing the point

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#297

Post by jeroenhd »

ale42 wrote: post #278
jeroenhd wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secure, end-to-end, multi-device encryption isn't easy. Plenty of people try and fail to build secure messengers based on top of PGP and Signal's protocol. I don't use the Telegram web app, but their native apps work excellently. The insertion of ads has been a major disappointment but the chat UX itself is still great, even on native Linux.

But Telegram end-to-end encryption is optional as far as I know.

It is, and it's a good reason to avoid the platform, but they do support E2EE _and_ have a good, native desktop application.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#299

Post by simoncion »

sirwhinesalot wrote: post #238
jack_tripper wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft provided APIs are a disaster that keeps getting rewritten every half decade What a wrong and misleading statement. Not they aren't. Otherwise Winamp 2.95 from 2003 wouldn't flawlessly work on my Windows 11 install 23 years later. Same with my Unreal Tournament 99 installation that I just copied over via a CD left from my Windows 98 PC. As long as you haven't used any undocumented APIs or made your app hac…

It's not wrong nor misleading at all. Win32 doesn't even support dark mode properly because it's effectively "deprecated" like all the others in the graveyard. Who cares if they keep working if the only way to get dark mode is to custom render the whole UI yourself? Might as well do something non-native at that point. Microsoft does not provide a serious UI library for applications to use. It provides 10 half broken…

> Win32 doesn't even support dark mode properly because it's effectively "deprecated" like all the others in the graveyard.

Remember when you used to be able to make custom Windows color schemes? Where you could color each widget type independently? I miss that.

Assuming that your report is true, if Microsoft gave a shit, they'd come up with four color schemes (high-contrast light/dark mode and regular-contrast light/dark mode) for Win32 programs and sync them with the relevant "modern" settings. Alas.

What do you do if you're a Win32 program who refuses to use the system color scheme? Well, I guess you'll stand out no less than you would have been in the Windows 95/98/ME days... stubbornly refusing to conform to the user's commanded colors and all that.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#300

Post by Arathorn »

tcfhgj wrote: post #244
rwmj wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I use it, it has some huge box over a third of the page saying I must "verify sessions". It's incredibly slow to propagate messages. Initial set up is very confusing and offers far too many choices. I've never worked out how to find rooms. Regularly someone will give me a room name and I can't find it or join it. Their entire service went down (did someone say "decentralised"?) a few months ago.

> Every time I use it, it has some huge box over a third of the page saying I must "verify sessions". do you use element web on the phone? > It's incredibly slow to propagate messages. was > Initial set up is very confusing and offers far too many choices. thing of the past, currently there are two choices, in the future there will be only one > I've never worked out how to find rooms. Regularly someone will give me…

> afaik only matrix.org went down

correct; the rest of the network was unaffected - it was just one instance (albeit the biggest one). https://matrix.org/blog/2025/10/post-mortem.

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