31–40 of 225 posts
I find this an unnecessary flame. That’s why Apple introduced Smart App Banners for iOS and they work just fine. The problem is just with those redirect you to a separate app download page. http://david-smith.org/blog/2012/09/20/implementing-smart-ap...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand the frustration w/the manner in which some mobile apps are advertised, but wrt this statement in particular ... They clearly have absolutely no interest in serving me content or helping me do what I want to do ... coming from the site owner side of things, I'll offer a friendly counter argument (which has been rephrased in light of down votes): site owners are interested in serving you content, or helpin…
Oh definitely. The mobile app is almost always a better experience than using the site. But that's not the point. The point is that I'm on my phone with limited time on a slow internet connection, I have requested content from a site and that site has chosen to not show me the content that was expected, but instead display an advertisement. This is unacceptable to me, and rather than deal with it I usually just leave…
They clearly have absolutely no interest in serving me content or helping me do what I want to do
... too literally. I believe the trouble of developing and offering a mobile app supplements their motivation to serve content, in a better way.
But your point was well stated, and it's clear you're not against a better mobile experience, but rather the manner in which it's advertised. In which case I agree ... shoving a full screen ad down a user's throat is frustrating.
I find this an unnecessary flame. That’s why Apple introduced Smart App Banners for iOS and they work just fine. The problem is just with those redirect you to a separate app download page. http://david-smith.org/blog/2012/09/20/implementing-smart-ap...
I blogged about that a while back. It's particularly bad on iOS since it seems more sites have iPhone apps. And many of them don't even just put a small link. Many, like Techcrunch, put a full page modal ad. Then there's sites who don't even ask you and redirect to an AppStore link. Stupid.
I don't think the easy answer is "all such things suck". You spend the time and money developing an app, and you want your visitors to know about the app. The prime candidates are those who visit your site on that device. So, the targeting is right, but the execution is what typically sucks. From my own personal experience, if I'm visiting a specific article on the site, my immediate interest is getting the informati…
These popovers/nags/redirects are typically annoying because the apps do little to nothing to add to the content or user experience. Just because the company spent time and money developing them doesn't make them useful. Why burden users with the company's poor decision?
Every time I see an "Ask HN: what app do you use for HN?" I wonder why people don't just use the browser. What is the allure?
The culprit often is "Tapatalk", a forum app that pops up a notification on every iOS device for a lot of forums.
Tapatalk is still completely opt-in though. Those forums have to include Tapatalk software within their own.
I can't wait to get over this hard-on for native apps.
ABC, you too, for god's sake, I clicked on a random news story, I don't need your app.
I think there is a fascinating split personality to the internet these days. On the one hand, there is a big drive to move traditional desktop application functionality into the web browser (e.g. google and microsoft's office web apps, photo editing, and even some computation in the case of Wolfram Alpha.) On the other hand, there is a big drive to push traditional internet content into standalone apps, as this autho…
That's why native apps are still important. Once the above is figured out, I highly doubt companies will want to pay to develop on 2-3 different codebases in different programming languages than their website, to support native apps.
But iOS/Android make their money from native apps so I doubt they're particularly motivated to make mobile HTML5 apps the standard.