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

Mozilla Acquires Pocket

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 456 posts

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#321

Post by toyg »

kibwen wrote: post #302
M_- wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not convinced that Electron today is any more popular than XUL was back then comex already named two highly popular ones (slack in particular can't be overlooked) but there are more. https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome-electron https://electron.atom.io/apps/ Outside of Slack, WhatsApp and Discord (see a pattern? pretty much all new chat apps are using it), I'm not sure if there's any other truly popular (am…

> Outside of Slack Slack has a standalone app? I've only ever used the web version. What more does it do? > Discord Likewise, I never even realized Discord had a non-browser implementation. > WhatsApp I never even realized that WhatsApp had a non-mobile implementation. > they definitely need native access to local APIs Which ones? > And now they are arguably failing to push it to themselves Er, the whole point of Moz…

> Slack has a standalone app? [...] I never even realized Discord [...] I never even realized that WhatsApp [...]

But that's exactly how Electron and friends got popular: they allow for web-first development. Desktop support is a bonus for people who need it.

When Mozilla started working on XUL, the future of the web looked a lot like XML and fat clients. Applications would be built by desktop developers targeting the desktop in a way that would allow for the web to integrate in the background. They wanted to bring the web to the desktop, woo-hoo!

As it turns out, the opposite workflow won: applications are now built by web developers targeting the web, in a way that allows for desktops to come onboard where required. In this scenario, XUL is just too complicated for people who simply need "a web view with a couple of extra APIs". This is still "bringing the web to the desktop", the fundamental role of the runtime is exactly the same; but the paradigm is opposite to what Mozilla had envisioned.

> They're rewriting their UI using CSS/HTML/JS because this is feasible today

XULRunner/Gecko was already built on CSS and JS, but it lived in a desktop paradigm of pseudo-native widgets - because HTML interfaces were terrible back then. It wasn't even a performance issue, but rather that everything was a page refresh because nobody knew any better. AJAX had not been formalized, and XMLHttpRequest was used (guess what) to pull actual XML. HTML4 was considered a hack that was supposed to eventually go away. It wasn't a "this is not possible today" problem, but rather "why would anyone want that?". Already there were lots of arguments on whether JS was "good enough" for desktop development, whether CSS was too verbose, and so on...

> why would Mozilla want to retain XUL

XUL is battle-tested to a different level, having survived almost 20 years, and it's a better option for pure-desktop development than web views. If Mozilla had paid more attention to its evolution, rather than going on quixotic adventures like FFOS, maybe they could have competed with Electron-style apps. Alas, now it's probably too late.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#322

Post by dredmorbius »

FatalBaboon wrote: post #215
anexprogrammer wrote: post #48

Mozilla is growing, experimenting more, and can acquire startups. Mozilla doesn't have the resources to continue with Thunderbird. I am increasingly baffled by their decisions and how they relate to the strategic plans [0] they've been producing for a while. Despite the worthy words in their plan they seem to have no sense of direction. That saddens me. That said I'm happier having Pocket as an open source part of Mo…

I cannot understand the need for a thing like Pocket. Much less why Mozilla prefers to keep it close, and even less for money. I mean, what is wrong with bookmarks and sharing links? Firefox can even send tabs to other computers I got linked via ff sync. Iterate on a bad idea, give it a social spin, and voilà! You have a sellable startup. Except you should not buy that.

Bookmarks-management sucks.

Pocket provides multi-platform access. And multi-browser access -- doesn't matter if I'm on Firefox, Chrome, Safari, IE, whatevs, I can pull up Pocket.

Pocket strips all of today's utterly fucked, utterly useless, utterly counterproductive Web design. I cannot emphasize too much: Web design isn't the solution, Web design is the problem.

Offline reading. Pocket articles (via app) can be read when disconnected.

Tags. You can create, and cross-reference, tags between articles.

Scale. I've got ~3k - 4k articles on Pocket. Possibly more. (I'll get to that.) They're related to ongoing research, and the ability to find, classify, and relocate large amounts of material is useful.

Whilst Pocket doesn't have a ratings or workflow-related management, I've somewhat created these. A set of tags that relates to quality (rated 0 - 5, low to high, where 0 indicates negative information, 5 indicates a foundational document -- most content is a 2 or 3, and that's rating high. Books and scientific papers generally earn a '4': definitive or clarifying, though generally not foundational.

For workflow, I'm largely working with "readme" (a reminder to go back and read closely), and a set of tags related to specific writing projects. I need to come up with a more useful system.

Pocket also ... sort of and/or sometimes ... allows for full-text search within documents. This may have been a promotional-only feature.

Given that the Web as a whole is approaching uselessness under scope of search, the ability to look through a set of documents I've already at least partially vetted is tremendously useful.

There's a whole slew of things Pocket doesn't do, which I'll address in a top-level comment. I've shared these with the firm, though I've seen little or no progress on any of them in ages.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#323

Post by flukus »

toyg wrote: post #321
kibwen wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Outside of Slack Slack has a standalone app? I've only ever used the web version. What more does it do? > Discord Likewise, I never even realized Discord had a non-browser implementation. > WhatsApp I never even realized that WhatsApp had a non-mobile implementation. > they definitely need native access to local APIs Which ones? > And now they are arguably failing to push it to themselves Er, the whole point of Moz…

> Slack has a standalone app? [...] I never even realized Discord [...] I never even realized that WhatsApp [...] But that's exactly how Electron and friends got popular: they allow for web-first development. Desktop support is a bonus for people who need it. When Mozilla started working on XUL, the future of the web looked a lot like XML and fat clients. Applications would be built by desktop developers targeting th…

> As it turns out, the opposite workflow won

Maybe for you, definitely not for me. Most of the applications I use daily are desktop ones and I'll refuse to install an electron one unless I have to.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#324

Post by thewhitetulip »

m-p-3 wrote: post #209
wirddin wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem got solved when YouTube started allowing offline videos. Idk if it is available in your country, but in India you don't need to be a paying customer to save offline videos.

India usually get those offline features much more faster than other countries for some reason. I wish we had these options in Canada, because mobile bandwidth is stupidly expensive over here.

> India usually get those offline features

This is because Internet in India sucks

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#325

Post by dredmorbius »

gjjrfcbugxbhf wrote: post #146

Why would someone use pocket over zotero?

Fair question, and one I'm asking myself increasingly, though:

1. Zotero doesn't have a full-service (or any?) Android app. Which is my primary reading platform. So it's simply not an option.

2. More straightforward onramp. It's pretty easy to figure out what the fuck to do with Pocket, though after a bit, it gets utterly unusable with scale (I've got ~3-4k articles, possibly more, the fact that I can't even extract a !@#$%^&() count is a major PITA, and referencing them Simply Doesn't Work.

3. Simplified and uniform presentation. Web design isn't the solution. Web design is the problem. I prefer Pocket's styling to ANYTHING* any website can throw at me, with exceptions I can count on the fingers of one hand. Most of which I've made myself.

Frankly, I'm utterly frustrated with use of the Web as a research and archival tool, and none of the options I've seen yet are satisfactory.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#326

Post by kibwen »

M_- wrote: post #316
kibwen wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Outside of Slack Slack has a standalone app? I've only ever used the web version. What more does it do? > Discord Likewise, I never even realized Discord had a non-browser implementation. > WhatsApp I never even realized that WhatsApp had a non-mobile implementation. > they definitely need native access to local APIs Which ones? > And now they are arguably failing to push it to themselves Er, the whole point of Moz…

> Likewise, I never even realized Discord had a non-browser implementation. Can't give an answer on slack, as it's not something I use (and I wouldn't use any of the three services if I had a choice, but you don't get to make choices for entire communities as an individual and chat apps are about communities..), but I can say something about discord. Custom keybindings, ability to do things like push to talk while yo…

> still asking the question?

Yes, because the question isn't "how is this useful", it's "how is it in Mozilla's best interest to invest in this?" Mozilla came up with XUL because they wanted a cross-platform way to develop a large graphical application, and given that they're an open source organization they figured they might as well try to popularize the framework to hopefully get some volunteer contributions to the codebase. But XUL was never an end, only a means to an end, and the technology itself no longer has any strategic advantage.

As for "failing to execute" on taking over the world of desktop apps with XUL, I don't think Mozilla will lose any sleep over it. The secret sauce to Electron isn't Chromium, it's Node.js. We can say that Mozilla failed to execute the opportunity to popularize server-side Javascript first... but that's Rhino was for, and really, nobody in 2005 would have foreseen that developers would eventually want to write their backends in Javascript. :P

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#328

Post by baddox »

duckmuck wrote: post #311
dripton wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is beautiful, but I need more data. 1. Do project managers, product managers, etc. count, or only real managers with teams reporting to them? 2. Do urinals count, or only real sit-down toilets?

Urinals MUST count. Assuming that women's bathrooms have more sit-down toilets than men's, we are biased. It is unfair and sexist to allow female dominated companies more than their fair share of project managers! /s

Do women's bathrooms have more sit down toilets than men's?

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#329

Post by dredmorbius »

bravura wrote: post #46

Can Pocket please finally support Facebook links to non-Facebook context? And just strip the Facebook URL junk? Otherwise, you have to click on a FB link to get the unmangled URL, thus counting against your number of free views every month.

Incognito mode.

Or Archive.is

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#330

Post by dredmorbius »

gnicholas wrote: post #150

I use Pocket differently than most people here. I never save articles to Pocket — I just use their Recommended engine to find interesting articles to read. Some of these come from sources I regularly read (NYT), but others come from obscure sources or big sources that I tend not to read for whatever reason. In a small way, it helps me get news from outside my bubble, and sometimes I'll end up reading regularly from a…

The ability to blacklist sources would be fucking awesome.

I'm mostly limited to firewalling domains at my router. Doesn't stop them from turning up on, e.g., Web search.

Post reply on HN