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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

#431

Post by vasusen »

arghwhat wrote: post #357

Oh god. It has a pleasant color scheme, but this is an awful idea. By trying to recreate windows and bookmarks in the web app you're at best just implementing redundant features and getting in the way of the native browser features by trying to showcase yours, at worst breaking regular web usage entirely. Take their right click menu for items to select whether you want an in-app tab or real browser tab. Congrats, you…

I used to be in-charge of homepage getting over 1.5M views a day. I would really be curious how this converts. I am assuming Posthog has a lot of metrics.

If I were to bet, while this is fun, it will be a disaster for conversions once the launch hype goes away.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#432

Post by CyberDildonics »

arghwhat wrote: post #357

Oh god. It has a pleasant color scheme, but this is an awful idea. By trying to recreate windows and bookmarks in the web app you're at best just implementing redundant features and getting in the way of the native browser features by trying to showcase yours, at worst breaking regular web usage entirely. Take their right click menu for items to select whether you want an in-app tab or real browser tab. Congrats, you…

People have been doing this for years but it's always an experiment or a demonstration that it's possible. It's slow, it's bloated and it is the opposite of what people actually want, which is quick information.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#433

Post by 1dom »

This made me smile to myself a fair few times - this is really great. PostHog sounds like a sincerely well intentioned and fun place.

After spending a while on there, it did start to get a little sluggish with lots of windows open. A really fun desktop experience overall though.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#434

Post by AlienRobot »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #363
AlienRobot wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU law isn't fine. Many websites are free because they survive from ads. Ads make more money if you collect data. The EU law essentially cut the revenue of all these websites. Their choice is to not collect data (meaning less revenue) or show a popup (meaning more bounce rate, which means less revenue). People who think this is a good thing are being short-sighted. That's because this law mainly affects websites…

> First, this regulation hurts all the small websites that need to exist in order for we have to have a healthy "web." there is nothing healthy about force-feeding ads optimized via collected data.

You're going to get force-fed ads optimized via collected data either way. The only question is whether small websites will exist that rely on third-party ad networks or only Facebook and Youtube will exist because they have first-party ad delivery systems. I don't think the latter is healthier than the former. Do you?

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#435

Post by AlienRobot »

arghwhat wrote: post #351
AlienRobot wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU law isn't fine. Many websites are free because they survive from ads. Ads make more money if you collect data. The EU law essentially cut the revenue of all these websites. Their choice is to not collect data (meaning less revenue) or show a popup (meaning more bounce rate, which means less revenue). People who think this is a good thing are being short-sighted. That's because this law mainly affects websites…

> Many websites are free because they survive from ads. Ads make more money if you collect data. My business is to get money out of other people's wallets and bank accounts. I could get make much money if you just logged into your bank account and approved transactions whenever I told you to, or screamed less whenever I took the wallet out of your pocket on my own. That there's a way to earn more money does not justi…

Like I said, GDPR only stops the smallest websites from doing that, and in most cases they're barely a "business," they're just some website that gets paid only enough in ads to cover its hosting costs so that the webmaster doesn't have to pay money on top of time to publish information for free for everyone on the internet.

The largest websites will still "violate its users in secret." That's why I don't think GDPR is as useful as people purport it to be.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#436

Post by miiiiiike »

spartanatreyu wrote: post #97
miiiiiike wrote: post #38

I just click off whenever I see a site like that.

Ok, but if they have a bog-standard site like everyone else then they're not going to look any different than everyone else, which would cause users to leave. This, this is memorable.

It stopped being memorable when it became a trend. I see 1-2 portfolio sites like this every week.

It’s slow. It’s janky. It’s buggy (random x/y overflow issues on mobile, reader view came up blank a few times.) It takes an enormous effort to maintain and update. Too clever.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#437

Post by oliwarner »

dspillett wrote: post #296
oliwarner wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR requires informed consent before collecting data. It's a wonder we don't have to force everyone through an interstitial consent page.

> GDPR requires informed consent before collecting data. And this is a good thing, no? I certainly think so. > It's a wonder we don't have to force everyone through an interstitial consent page. If the information being tracked is truly essential to the site/app (session management and authorisation data for instance) then no consent is needed, for anything else ask before you store it, and most certainly ask before…

There's obviously a lot more real world than they can codify into laws and examples but I think if you can get consent, you should get consent. The ICO:

> Private-sector or third-sector organisations will often be able to consider the ‘legitimate interests’ basis in Article 6(1)(f) if they find it hard to meet the standard for consent and no other specific basis applies. This recognises that you may have good reason to process someone’s personal data without their consent – but you must avoid doing anything they would not expect, ensure there is no unwarranted impact on them, and that you are still fair, transparent and accountable.

Session tracking, storing account information, addresses, etc all seem obvious in any e-commerce system but you still have every opportunity to notify and consent that data collection.

I think you and I both think that data protection is a good thing, I'm just a little more wary of leaning on legitimate usage* as a way to skip formal consent.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#438

Post by nine_k »

kccqzy wrote: post #402
nine_k wrote: post #34

So, in short, this is because window management under macOS sucks big time (and under Windows, still leaves much to be desired), and because tabs in Chrome become indistinguishable if you open a couple dozen, since they are on top, instead of on the side (Firefox only recently gained an option to put tabs on the side). Watch legacy UI concepts that are so ingrained that people often don't notice how counterproductive…

This is because people are so used to tabs that they forgot they can open new browser windows. For a long time I configured my browser not to use tabs, because most of the time when I open two or more pages I want to see them simultaneously.

Yes, this is sort of weird, but understandable. The thought of separating contexts this way for some reason takes a bit of conscious effort.

I have 7-8 Firefox windows across 3 virtual desktops, all named using the Window Titler extension [1]. Every name starts with an emoji to make it easy to tell them apart just by color.

Truth be told, many windows may be confusing to navigate via alt-tab-like interface; I additionally run rofi [2] for quick switching by name / title.

[1]: https://github.com/tpamula/webextension-window-titler

[2]: https://github.com/davatorium/rofi

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#439

Post by cyral »

remix2000 wrote: post #409

What is this company actually selling anyway? Their about me page reads: We're here to help product engineers build successful products Literally every piece of SaaS that a product engineer needs. This includes tools for building products, talking to customers, and making sense of all your customer data. PostHog is a single platform for people who build things. This is literally just a verbose way to say "we're a com…

The homepage has a list of what they are selling right under the header text

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#440

Post by nayuki »

ochrist wrote: post #210

Why can't I use my keyboard (e.g. spacebar) to scroll on you website? Apparently I have to use a mouse all the time, and that's annoying. Most OS's have accessibility options (even a lot of websites do this).

I agree with this complaint. The first thing I noticed about the page - other than the excessive and unnecessary UI - is that even when focused on the page interior text, hitting Up/Down/Space/Shift+Space/PgUp/PgDn does not scroll the interior page content at all. This is how I read most articles, and it is massively disrespectful for their website to disable the keyboard-based movement that I'm used to by default.
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