Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why our website looks like an operating system

posthog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 504 posts

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#311

Post by skydhash »

BrenBarn wrote: post #205
hliyan wrote: 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…

> the speed and ease with which I can find what I want (as a potential customer) using that top navigation menu is superior to anything I've seen done so far. The web catches up to the past again. :-) Despite all the modern attempts at simplified "delightful" interfaces, a well-structured menu bar is hard to beat.

Pet peeve of mine: Huge headers on webpages that is sticky for no reason (looking at you, ACM Digital Library)

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#313

Post by Twey »

badsectoracula wrote: post #293
Twey wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ‘application context’ isn't a concept that adds value, at least for the applications I've seen. For things where the application windows do need to be treated differently (e.g. patch bays that can be connected together, or widgets that can be fused into larger widgets [1]) I have more sympathy for applications that want to do their own window management. But for something like the browser just grouping Web pages…

Well, yeah, it doesn't fit all applications and web browsers are a case where MDI doesn't really work. The linked site is more of a gimmick, at least as far as the documents go. But my response was about calling MDI an anti-pattern in general. Just because it doesn't fit all cases, it doesn't mean it is an anti-pattern.

Oh no I get that the in-site MDI is a funny stylistic choice, and I've no problem with it. But the thing it's poking fun at is in-browser MDI, hence the comment.

I stand by the anti-pattern comment. I think there are very, very few cases where ‘MDI’ is appropriate, and I put it in quotes because the things being managed in that case are almost never ‘documents’ in any meaningful sense (rather they're some kind of graph node). Functionality apps build with MDI is basically always independent of the actual app and would be better implemented in the window manager — and more often than not there's actually no additional functionality over even the lowest common denominator of window managers.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#314

Post by AshamedCaptain »

xp84 wrote: post #67
ttiurani wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If they indeed only use the cookie for essential functionality, this kind of joke banner only makes their choice to respect visitors' privacy equally annoying. Even worse: because it makes it seem like the EU law is just meritless pestering of people, they are actually fighting for the right for worse sites to spy on their visitors. It's baffling.

> 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 entire point of the law was to make websites using extraneous cookies and trackcing annoying to use. It's not something that can be solved in the browser _at all_. What I guess no one expected is that most websites would just decide to go on and pester their users rather than stop the tracking -- and that users would still continue using those websites.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#315

Post by NicuCalcea »

keyle wrote: post #13

It's neat but it runs like a dog. I opened a couple of things and tried to move the window... I'd take a statically generated bunch of webpages over this. If you're going to make one of those multi window webpages looking thing, make it good. To note, in the past, this was a big no-no because SEO was important. You had to have good SEO for search engines to index your content efficiently and show up well ranked in se…

It took a good 20 seconds for it to fully load in Firefox on Android.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#318

Post by dheerajvs »

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…)

Would you extend that argument to tabbed interfaces as well? Why should browsers support tabs (and an inconsistent interface by each vendor), when you can just open a new window instead?

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#319

Post by fusslo »

tempodox wrote: post #317

I minimized ( _ ) the window on that page, and now I can’t find it any more. I expected some obvious place where you can un-minimize a window.

just tried it myself, The minimize animation went to the upper right, and I found the window again in the little icon that looks like a calendar. The same icon dances when you minimize a window, if you are looking at it. It also shows a count of the number of open windows.

I never woulda looked at that icon without observing the animation

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#320

Post by f1shy »

ironmagma wrote: post #167
hliyan wrote: 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…

This is definitely a surprising opinion to find on HN. Usually the prevailing thought is that anything that is even remotely heavy on JavaScript is bad design and therefore inherently unusable, unportable, etc. Whereas this is essentially JavaScript maximalism.

You are jumping from a discussion about UI design to one about technology and implementation.
Post reply on HN