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Why our website looks like an operating system

posthog.com

451–460 of 504 posts

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#451
post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without a doubt. Interesting idea and nice looking UI. But like you said it's creating a browser within a browser, without all the native browser support. I found the navigation to be scattered and disorienting. In general clicking links opens new windows. In one case it navigated away from the current "page" and what I believe to be the back button (looks more like undo) didn't do anything. Why am I guessing what co…

> I found the navigation to be scattered and disorienting. I find to be significantly less scattered and disorienting than the vast majority of "modern" websites.

The problem of how you organize content in desktop user interfaces is far from solved. Often I have 6 virtual desktops, and maybe 5 Firefox windows and maybe a Chrome and an Edge (testing and the occasional app that doesn’t work with Firefox, a problem made worse by my employer forcing us to use the ESR) and those all have tabs. Not to mention various IDEs and distraction generators like Slack and Outlook that have enough urgent and important content that I can’t just get rid of them.

Adding a new kind of window or tab has the potential of organizing some little bit of this universe at the expense of there being more things to look at globally, I badly want to be able to hit a button and see not just the windows I have open but all the tabs and that counts browser tabs but also IDE tabs and ideally these sort of sub windows inside of browser UIs.

Reminds me of the startup I worked at where somebody got up at each standup meeting and said “we can’t find anything in the N different places (Slack, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Docs, …) places stuff could be so we need to add N+1 places.” For a while I pushed back against this obvious fallacy but nobody else did and management would approve another monthly subscription…. Until at some point the investors pushed back in the disorganization and added the distraction of OKRs and people thought “maybe we need a subscription to some service that reminds us to cancel subscriptions we don’t use”. One ring that would rule them all never seriously considered, I guess people didn’t actually expect “enterprise search” to actually work.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#452
post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I found the navigation to be scattered and disorienting. I find to be significantly less scattered and disorienting than the vast majority of "modern" websites.

The problem of how you organize content in desktop user interfaces is far from solved. Often I have 6 virtual desktops, and maybe 5 Firefox windows and maybe a Chrome and an Edge (testing and the occasional app that doesn’t work with Firefox, a problem made worse by my employer forcing us to use the ESR) and those all have tabs. Not to mention various IDEs and distraction generators like Slack and Outlook that have e…

> The problem of how you organize content in desktop user interfaces is far from solved.

Strong disagree. Mature conventions have been established for decades, and while there are always edge cases and new incremental features that need to be worked into desktop UIs, the core desktop UI paradigm has been stable since at least the mid-'90s, and modern deviations away from it have almost invariably reduced usability and discoverability.

The modern trend of trying to shoehorn web or mobile UI design tropes into desktop applications has resulted in little but regression.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#453
I keep debating doing something similar for a web-based BBS, in the classic BBS sense in terms of messages, files, doors/games, etc. I remember some of the thick clients like WorldGroup/Wildcat offered in later versions, and I'm mixed.

I wouldn't use it for a general website, but something more akin to an app space, I can see it kind of working.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#454
post #130
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do click yes. It still wastes my time since especially on mobile they obscure at least 1/3 of the viewport. They're just like the other popups that are now on most every site: The "Sign up for our newsletter" or "Get 10% off by signing up for emails", the paywall, the "It looks like you're using an adblocker." There's a reason people have always hated popup ads even though "just close them" has always been an optio…

You should understand that the law doesn't mandate the cookie popup to be annoying. It's a deliberate choice of websites, they want you to hate the banner and the law.

I've implemented them. The sites hate them as well. They do it because there are whole law firms now who just troll for clients with ads that say "Did you shop at ? Your privacy may have been violated!" and file suits under CCPA, etc. The "violation" was some technicality of a cookie banner. Then the site operator has to pay attorneys and pay a settlement, which pays the plaintiff attorneys. At the end of the day, the "plaintiffs" were never "harmed" at all -- some boring usage data of an ecommerce website or something was put into a Google Analytics dashboard so that some marketer could maybe analyze conversion rates.

I have seen a ton of these ads in the past few years.

All these laws have done is created a ton of wealth for lawyers.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many billions of human hours of productivity have we collectively wasted with these cookie banners?

Always remember it is the web site owner who chose to waste your time. The more obnoxious the cookie banner, the quicker you can conclude "I didn't really need to visit your site anyway".

You and maybe others keep saying that. I assure you, we don't choose to use them.

If you want to operate an ad-supported site, you need that consent. Untargeted ads are pointless and they don't make money. If you disagree, can I interest you in some brake pads for a Toyota Corolla? How about a dental chew for elderly cats? No? ok.

If you operate an e-commerce site or a SaaS of some kind, you probably need to advertise it online. To have traffic land on your site from advertising, you need to have ad network 'pixels' on your site. That's what they require. If you won't comply, then you can't advertise and you probably can't get many customers.

Websites which need neither are called "hobby sites." I'm very happy for the personal blogs which use no analytics, have no need to remember anyone or collect any "data." The sites showing the cookie banners are not that. They need to make money in order to exist.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#456
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many billions of human hours of productivity have we collectively wasted with these cookie banners?

Under German law, the BGB ( Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch , German civil law book defining most private laws) provides very specific and concrete provisions for liabilities and duties in most business transactions and commercial exchanges of goods and services and even employment. It's not necessary to agree to formal contractual obligations in writing for most service agreements unless you want to add additional obligatio…

> there's no honest reason to require a consent form to let you read an article.

Respectfully, this is untrue. The article is there because of the ads that pay the bills. Without ads there is no article and no site. Without consent, under these laws, the ads can only be useless ads that no advertiser wants to pay for, which means they either can't sell the ad space at all, or have to sell it for $0.0001 CPM hoping that like, Coca Cola will want to just remind the readers that Coke exists and not care too much if anyone even clicks it.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#457
post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem of how you organize content in desktop user interfaces is far from solved. Often I have 6 virtual desktops, and maybe 5 Firefox windows and maybe a Chrome and an Edge (testing and the occasional app that doesn’t work with Firefox, a problem made worse by my employer forcing us to use the ESR) and those all have tabs. Not to mention various IDEs and distraction generators like Slack and Outlook that have e…

> The problem of how you organize content in desktop user interfaces is far from solved. Strong disagree. Mature conventions have been established for decades, and while there are always edge cases and new incremental features that need to be worked into desktop UIs, the core desktop UI paradigm has been stable since at least the mid-'90s, and modern deviations away from it have almost invariably reduced usability an…

Sure there are lots of mature conventions. Easily dozens. And now we can 1 more immature one.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#458

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 really admire Posthog as a company and how they run things there. Big fan. But let's be honest. This website redesign, even though cool and unique, wouldn't work if they were an unknown brand. I think they have done a great job building a solid brand over the years and now have the freedom to update their website however they want. If you are a no name startup, doing something like this will be a bad idea. My 2 cen…

I dont think it works for Posthog either

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#460

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…

Why don’t you read why they did that. Instead you responded with your own reasoning without countering or responding to there reasoning. I actually agree with you but the article has actual points that you didn’t bother to read or reference. Like this: Frankly for a site like this efficient use of space and multi tasking isn’t as important for a front page. A front page needs to be optimized to be in your face to und…

Multi-tasking? With About pages, Blog posts, pricing, etc.

I have no doubt there is a subset of features here that could be implemented as a single page app.

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