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Introducing Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram Windows Apps

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Re: Introducing Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram Windows Apps

#31

Post by jeff_tyrrill »

50901 wrote: post #28
gkoberger wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I like being able to Cmd+tab to commonly-used chat apps. Really hard to have a conversation (while doing other stuff) when you have to Cmd+tab to Chrome, and then find the tab.

So you need an app because OS X's window manager is terrible.

The window manager is not semantically aware that a particular tab in a particular window in a particular browser is the canonical navigation target for switching to a particular app.

A first class platform-native app provides this.

Re: Introducing Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram Windows Apps

#32

Post by kawera »

gcr wrote: post #22
gkoberger wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I like being able to Cmd+tab to commonly-used chat apps. Really hard to have a conversation (while doing other stuff) when you have to Cmd+tab to Chrome, and then find the tab.

I would personally love it if Chrome tabs showed up in Spotlight. Then, ⌘+Space "slack" would either open up the app or the tab, no sweat. :-)

There is a plugin for Alfred where you can search/switch to a tab on all open browsers. Works on FF/Chrome/Chromium/Safari.

Re: Introducing Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram Windows Apps

#33

Post by knight17 »

gkoberger wrote: post #9
takno wrote: post #3

What does a Facebook app offer over just giving the website notification permissions in Chrome or Firefox?

Personally, I like being able to Cmd+tab to commonly-used chat apps. Really hard to have a conversation (while doing other stuff) when you have to Cmd+tab to Chrome, and then find the tab.

We can move tabs to new window. In that the task switcher will be able to go to the window directly.

Re: Introducing Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram Windows Apps

#35

Post by anonymoushn »

JBReefer wrote: post #14
MiddleEndian wrote: post #8

Remember when all the major IM platforms supported xmpp and you could just use pidgin/adium/trillian/your client of choice for everything at once? That was a fantastic time...

I remember it as a bunch of applications that supported half of the standards, were buggy, and had clunky fits-none-well UX

My current situation where I need a bunch of different apps to IM different people is a big improvement compared to those dark times.

Re: Introducing Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram Windows Apps

#36

Post by dindresto »

davewongillies wrote: post #30
hengheng wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time for the next Trilian/Adium/Pidgin.

Franz is the closest I've seen to that recently: http://www.meetfranz.com/ . It supports Slack, WhatsApp, WeChat, HipChat, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Google Hangouts, GroupMe, Skype amongst others.

What's the value of it though? It's just a bunch of webviews. I can accomplish the same with opening the web versions in my browser.

Re: Introducing Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram Windows Apps

#37

Post by tyrylu »

mwcampbell wrote: post #20

The real story here is that now we know what Osmeta, the stealth startup Facebook acquired a few years ago, has been up to. Look inside the installation directory for the Messenger app, and you'll find that it's using an iOS compatibility layer. Unfortunately, that's bad news in terms of accessibility for blind users, at least in its current form; this thing isn't firing any focus events. But I'm sure that can be fix…

Thank you for the explanation of the accessibility breakage. And i also hope that they will fix it.

Re: Introducing Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram Windows Apps

#38

Post by tluyben2 »

mwcampbell wrote: post #25
Gorbzel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It it doing binary compatibility with iOS apps or just some cross-compilation approach? Don't have access to a Windows machine and if this is the mentality behind getting apps on the platform, not sure there's any reason to change that.

The iOS APIs were reimplemented on Windows. The binaries are DLLs, with a few small EXEs as entry points, but the filenames make it obvious what's going on.

I did that for running iOS apps on Android; just recompile with another dll and the app works. It's not perfect but allows fast delivery for those clients who start with iOS and then don't really want to invest in Android (at that time) which, at least here, most of them.

Re: Introducing Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram Windows Apps

#39

Post by OJFord »

ghayes wrote: post #13
hjgrtrtr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just move the "tab" to it's own window :)

But then it's Cmd+`

Worse, it's Cmd+Tab to _a_ Chrome window (maybe you get lucky) and only then Cmd+` to cycle through Chrome windows.

Re: Introducing Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram Windows Apps

#40

Post by tdkl »

dindresto wrote: post #36
davewongillies wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Franz is the closest I've seen to that recently: http://www.meetfranz.com/ . It supports Slack, WhatsApp, WeChat, HipChat, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Google Hangouts, GroupMe, Skype amongst others.

What's the value of it though? It's just a bunch of webviews. I can accomplish the same with opening the web versions in my browser.

Not having to navigate to the browser, no fear of accidentally closing the browser, no tracking cookies set in the browser, native notifications.
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