I totally agree with this point of view. Apps take up too much memory on mobile phones. I hope that browsing websites on mobile phones can be more convenient.
Do not download the app, use the website
341–350 of 760 posts
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of native apps are just wrappers around a JS context with a few bridges into native APIs and they are pure data grabs. Reddit always asks you to use its native app, for example. Why the fuck would I care so much about Reddit that I want it outside of my browser? Same goes for any other website.
Reddit is one of the cases where a native app makes sense. Some of the 3rd party Reddit apps were great. But I'll eat my hat before I'll install Reddit's own app. Reddit killing off 3rd party apps is why I post here and not there.
Some of the third party apps were quite good, certainly better than the reddit mobile site, but that's mostly because the reddit mobile site is just so deliberately awful.
There aren't really any major technical reasons why the mobile site couldn't be as good.
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel the same way about reddit. Modals are bigger than the page with unclickable buttons. Profile/settings icon/button is rendered half way or fully out of the page. Chat feature is completely unusable
I really think Reddit did it as a rebrand. It's somehow 20 years old and still gets teenagers. Social media almost always skews older as it ages, beyond the natural pace of time. AOL became mostly seniors as did Facebook and Yahoo. Reddit has not only shaken off most of the aging legacy users but had also captured a new generation of effectively children. I personally don't like what they've done but it's worked. The…
Unfortunately they have a major problem that is going to hit them soon: they rely on volunteer moderators to run the site for them, and the young people aren't doing it.
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#344> If you've ever opened Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or practically any popular service on your phone's web browser, you've likely encountered it. Another website that asks to Get The App is https://imgur.com/ , every time you open a link to just view that image you instantly got asked to Get The App. It's really annoying!
Imgur is particularly infuriating because it was initially touted as an alternative to the shitty image-sharing sites of the day (photobucket and the like) - one that would let you just link to an image without any bullshit. Now it's completely unusable.
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "download app" notifications on reddit are like some kind of art project to maximimally annoy you. Probably the worst offender is facebook where they have what can only be called an intentionally broken mobile website - the idea of losing the person's name if you edit a comment, the page deciding to reload you back to the main page if you switch tabs to research something or the post box clearing out if you switc…
Reddit used to have a really excellent mobile experience at i.reddit.com. It was a minimalist fast-loading mobile-first formatted version of the website. Unfortunately they shut it down not too long ago.
That was the day I stopped reading reddit.
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#346I cannot agree more and this has always been a pet peeve of mine. Most native apps are some half gig large where even the heaviest website is a few mb. They dont let you highlight text and have other bizarre design choices. Even worse, they request importing contacts list which isnt even an option on the web. Native apps could be butter but more often than not they are like margarine. Smooth, oily, and not good for y…
A lot of native apps are just wrappers around a JS context with a few bridges into native APIs and they are pure data grabs. Reddit always asks you to use its native app, for example. Why the fuck would I care so much about Reddit that I want it outside of my browser? Same goes for any other website.
Speaking of apps that are just wrappers around websites – it’s possible to do that in just 50 kb: https://f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.maps
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#347App stores put a lot more crap in to make sure apps are not just pulling contacts anymore.
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#348I don't offer a native app for my business. We have a PWA. It works great on mobile. Yet users keep asking for an app. They're so conditioned to look in the app store now. I keep having to tell them to just pin the website to their desktop. Just a couple taps. All good. I don't need or want their data. It's a liability. They pay a monthly subscription. I want their money. Not their data.
Why not create a simple app with a webview so your users are happy? I can't imagine that would take more than a couple hours of work. Google can be burdensome but that's only if you require things like payment and data collection in the app which a webview doesn't need. Otherwise, it's probably less than an hour of work per year to maintain.
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reddit is one of the cases where a native app makes sense. Some of the 3rd party Reddit apps were great. But I'll eat my hat before I'll install Reddit's own app. Reddit killing off 3rd party apps is why I post here and not there.
I too switched from Reddit to HN during the API protests of '23. But I always browsed through old.reddit anyway, I never used the third party apps. I'm aware of names like RIF and that everyone said they were great, but what was great about them?
I imagine it depends on how you use it. I came to Reddit late and never got into the old interface. I commented a lot on technical subreddits and didn't do much with the doomscrolling ones.
I used Boost. Its ads were not intrusive (and I despise ads) and the UI was written with a small touchscreen in mind. If not for my distaste for phone keyboards, I'd say it was a better experience than the website on a desktop.
Would it be possible for a mobile browser to have a better experience? I don't know. I value my sanity too much to do web development. But Reddit was absolutely determined to make its mobile site unusable and the official Reddit app had a bad reputation (and I wouldn't give those bastards the satisfaction after being nagged so much to install it), so a 3rd party app was the only reasonable solution.
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#350"Websites can try to estimate your location, but it's far less precise and requires explicit permission each time."
The better solution is do not use a phone. Using a phone requires using a mobile browser. One of the worst "apps" of them all. If it is Firefox, then one needs to block a ton of telemetry. It is constantly trying to determine if it can reach the internet and then trying to access "location.services.mozilla.org" amongst numerous other domains. Mozilla partners with Google. They share data.