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Why our website looks like an operating system

posthog.com

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Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#331

Post by const_cast »

beeflet wrote: post #152
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not forced to use banners, they are forced to get explicit opt-in permission before tracking users, which can be done in non-obtrusive ways.

Okay, so regard the Do_Not_Track header as explicit opt-out permission

They would never do this willingly, because they don't want you to automatically opt out of tracking.

The annoyance of the cookie banners is the entire draw for companies. Its not a downside. They're user-hostile. You are their enemy. Their goal is to wear you down and trick you into opting-in, so they can both track with impunity and follow the law.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#333

Post by boomlinde »

ketzu wrote: post #243
xp84 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 EU should have forced browser vendors to solve. Only the user's browser can choose not to send back cookies This is only an option if you limit tracking to using cookies. But neither tracking technologies, nor the current EU law, are limited to tracking via cookies. It also kills functionality for many web applications without also accepting all tracking. Some browser-flavors went to extreme lengths to prevent…

The pessimist in me thinks a legally enforced header and corresponding browser setting (so that the user wouldn't have to make an explicit choice per website) would have met enough pushback from businesses for the EU to back down to something with the infinite stupidity of the current solution.

Maybe we could move towards that end in small steps. The EU should start by banning irrelevant non-sequiturs like "We value your privacy" and other misleading or at best distracting language. It can then abandon the notion that users are at all interested in fine-grained choice, and enforce that consent and non-consent to non-essential statekeeping are two clearly distinguished and immediately accessible buttons. No one wants to partially block tracking.

It seems as though the EU is operating under the notion that this is all a matter of consumer choice, as though any informed consumer would choose to have tabs kept on them by 50 trackers if not for the inconvenience of figuring out which button stops them.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#334

Post by AlienRobot »

theshrike79 wrote: post #163
Doxin wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let alone the ones full of dark patterns to nag you into accepting anyway. In fact the law pretty explicitly disallows dark patterns like that. Of course tech companies have a loosy-goosy relationship with the law at the best of times.

The #1 problem with the cookie law is that it's not enforced. Start fining sites with dark pattern banners and they'll start going away.

I feel like the #1 problem with the cookie law is that the vast majority of websites need to do something in order to comply while keeping their business model and the law hasn't provided a clear direction for how to comply with it.

If they had done that, nobody would be making cookie banners wrong.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#335

Post by RianAtheer »

f1shy wrote: post #320
ironmagma wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[dead]

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#336

Post by robertlagrant »

jve wrote: post #269
james_impliu wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i can remember a discussion with Cory (who built this with Eli, the front end eng) on the topic of "why do all websites consist of a collection of long scroll-y pages / is that appropriate for our business?" and we concluded it wasn't optimal. at the time, we were trying to figure out how to add more products in without it becoming messy, and we concluded we're trying to do a lot more than just what would work well f…

> so we thought hey we'll do something that means people _will_ explore and learn what we do bette Meh, currently doing just that. Trying to figure out what posthog is about, try to store some keywords in my brain if I ever need to return this product in future where it fits and just try to enjoy the site :) And I'm one of the folks that try to determine in seconds/minute whether this is worth digging in or not and w…

Yes - it's a very enjoyable experience!

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#337

Post by em-bee »

boredtofears wrote: post #80
em-bee wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because the OS window manager isn't superior. i have two dozen tmux windows in half a dozen sessions locally. i have shortcut keys to switch between sessions and between windows. i can do that while mixing the terminal with other gui apps. i have yet to find a window manager that lets me group so many terminals into sessions all on the same workspace.

I just logically group tabs into the same terminal window. All OS's have hotkeys for switching between tabs and windows.

sure that works, but then you are also using terminal functionality and not the window manager, which still shows the window manager as lacking in features, which was the argument i was responding to.

seriously, a window manager that can group windows and manage those groups would be awesome. workspaces help, but they are often just there, and can't be managed, reordered, named, etc..

actually, i think kde may have some of that functionality.

i still prefer tmux in any case because it is more scriptable, and it provides a detach function. although i recently started exploring wezterm, which can be configured to work like tmux and also has a way to detach and reattach sessions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44762241

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#338

Post by shakesbeard »

webprofusion wrote: post #45

It looks awesome but I clicked several bits and pieces and still have no idea what they do or what their product is.

Same. Clicked around. Was annoyed that a single click on an icon opened the window and not a double click. Used the navigation a bit and left.

No idea what they do.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#339

Post by boomlinde »

Springtime wrote: post #202
almosthere wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man it's 2025 and we still WANT to opt out of cookies visually? Why don't we just have browsers that just do that.

If one wants full control cookies could just be disabled by default at the browser level (which also blocks local storage). I do this and just whitelist sites that actually need it (very few). The issue is some sites won't display any content without cookies, even if it's unnecessary. The amount of React-using sites that will load the entire page only to a second later to fully blank out since the JS couldn't set loc…

A further problem is that some if not most sites (that employ any kind of tracking in the first place) do so through a variety of means in no way limited to cookies. Addressing the core problem without legislation that captures intent is not feasible without a new protocol and document data type.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#340

Post by jfengel »

lordgrenville wrote: post #249

More correctly, "our website looks like a desktop environment".

I spent a few minutes trying to figure out what looked like an operating system. The desktop isn't the OS. Windows and Mac only allow one desktop on their OS, but Linux makes the separation clear.
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