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Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

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Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#311

Post by philjw »

Just set-up a linux machine with Pidgin Messenger and XMPP last week like in the old days.

It used to bundle MSN, ICQ, IRC and everything in one messenger - super resource efficient.

Unfortulately I cannot reach many contacts that way these days but it showed me how inefficient applications became by using more abstraction layers.

Same on my Mac - it uses almost 16GB of RAM in idle mode with some Tabs, VSCode and Figma open - How did we get here?

edit: Just saw another comment mentioning there is a WhatsApp plugin for Pidgin. Awesome!

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#312

Post by wongarsu »

simoncion wrote: post #306
wongarsu wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic case of shipping the org chart (in case anyone needs a reminder of Microsoft's org chart: https://www.globalnerdy.com/2011/07/03/org-charts-of-the-big... )

> in case anyone needs a reminder of Microsoft's org chart: ... To be a little glib: As someone who has worked for a few Big Software Companies, I guarantee that Microsoft's org chart has changed significantly at least once in the last fourteen years. Re-organizations aren't referred to as "shuffling the deck chairs [on the Titanic]" by the rank and file for no reason, yanno?

My impression from the outside is that the biggest change is that there are now a lot more and smaller circles pointing guns at each other

But maybe that impression is wrong and they now cooperate better. After all since some Windows 10 update the Windows Explorer can even create files and folders starting with a dot (which from a kernel, fs and cmd perspective was always valid)

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#313

Post by tcfhgj »

xzjis wrote: post #308
iamcalledrob wrote: post #126

As the person who designed and fought for this app, I am a bit sad about the change. The native app was by no means perfect, but it felt like a real productivity tool that was trying to be respectful of it's environment. I've come to the conclusion that native desktop apps are just not viable from large companies, even if there is headcount. The problem is coordination cost. If you want to launch new features and exp…

Is it really that useful to have feature parity across all platforms? In Telegram, for some features, it just says "please open this message on your smartphone", and that's fine. If I had the choice, I'd prefer fewer features and lower resource usage over having access to the very latest functionalities, and you can offer the web version as a supplement for whatever is missing.

fewer features and lower resource usage on phones? understandable

on the desktop client? nah

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#314

Post by simoncion »

wongarsu wrote: post #312
simoncion wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in case anyone needs a reminder of Microsoft's org chart: ... To be a little glib: As someone who has worked for a few Big Software Companies, I guarantee that Microsoft's org chart has changed significantly at least once in the last fourteen years. Re-organizations aren't referred to as "shuffling the deck chairs [on the Titanic]" by the rank and file for no reason, yanno?

My impression from the outside is that the biggest change is that there are now a lot more and smaller circles pointing guns at each other But maybe that impression is wrong and they now cooperate better. After all since some Windows 10 update the Windows Explorer can even create files and folders starting with a dot (which from a kernel, fs and cmd perspective was always valid)

> But maybe that impression is wrong and they now cooperate better.

Based on my experience with Blasted Corporate Hellscapes, I find it very unlikely that they cooperate better. Middle-ish management lives to stab each other in the back, belly, and face.

> ...Windows Explorer can even create files and folders starting with a dot...

That's progress! Does Windows Explorer still shit the bed when you ask it to interact with a file whose name contains the '|' character? That's always been valid in NTFS, and I think is valid in at least a subset of the Windows programming interfaces.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#315

Post by mghackerlady »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #126

As the person who designed and fought for this app, I am a bit sad about the change. The native app was by no means perfect, but it felt like a real productivity tool that was trying to be respectful of it's environment. I've come to the conclusion that native desktop apps are just not viable from large companies, even if there is headcount. The problem is coordination cost. If you want to launch new features and exp…

I truly believe in 10 years webapps will be the next COBOL

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#316

Post by simoncion »

sirwhinesalot wrote: post #310
simoncion wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like to joke that we already had dark mode on Window 95. When I say it, it's not a joke! :D > But the new dark mode stuff in explorer doesn't use uxtheme anymore. I'm only familiar with Windows 10, and in that version Windows Explorer seemed to conform to the system color scheme just fine. Did Microsoft break that at some point in the past three, four months, [0] or did they royally fuck the dog in Windows 11? Fo…

Windows Explorer still respects the color-scheme preference but the problem is the way it does it. When you as a dev use a Windows provided control (be it a button, a toolbar, a context menu, etc.) the system grabs the theme information from something called uxtheme. This is how it worked in Windows XP and why you had like 3 different themes you could pick from and switch between at any time, and most apps would resp…

> Windows Explorer is given special treatment by Windows with undocumented APIs.

Microsoft: "We offer GREAT backwards compatibility! The best in the business!"

Also Microsoft: "Man, doing things the old way is so hard. What if we had a clean break with the past?!?!"

Microsoft, some time later: "Man, making a clean break from the past is so hard. Let's just ship what we've done so far and think about finishing up the rest later. What? Windows Explorer is broken, and you refuse to let us ship!? *Fine*, we'll hack something in and not tell anyone."

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#317

Post by mghackerlady »

sirwhinesalot wrote: post #304
simoncion wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I like to joke that we already had dark mode on Window 95. It didn't work super well with black colored icons but you could always just tone down how dark you made it. We also had pseudo-dark mode themes for Windows XP. But the new dark mode stuff in explorer doesn't use uxtheme anymore.

You also needed a dark mode less because the light mode hadn't been infected by the "let's make every color effectively #ffffff" trend of nowadays

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#318

Post by andsoitis »

cudgy wrote: post #256
andsoitis wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying shares in a company supports the company financially only in very limited contexts (e.g. IPO). Buying shares primarily benefits you as an investor. Buying shares in a company doesn’t benefit its operations, like making a product, directly. Hence, buying shares != support company’s products, however counterintuitive that feels.

“Buying shares primarily benefits you as an investor.” Maybe during a never-ending bull market … but all bull markets end … look at the “lost decade”

That's a different discussion.

Argument here is that buying shares (other than during specific events like an IPO) affects the shareholder, not the company's products.

So whether or not you buy shares has no relation to supporting the company's products. The latter happens when you buy or not buy their product.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#319

Post by mghackerlady »

simoncion wrote: post #299
sirwhinesalot wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Come to the KDE dark side... there's no mandatory cookies and recolorable widgets
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