Why our website looks like an operating system • Hacker News Board

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#481

Post by hdjrudni » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 8:42 AM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #467

Gormo wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think you’re mostly right, particularly when it comes to the settings dialogs in Windows which have been a state of ferment since Windows 8 such that I expect many of them to be reworked in several faddish ‘mobile’ phases while some will still look like they did in the Windows 95 era. Comparing the various nag windows on MacOS and Windows, as much as they are annoying, the MacOS nags look like a 1999 rework of the…

> I try pretty hard to keep it organized but if I am listening to music in YouTube it should be trivial to find the browser tab involved to close it and it’s not.

If you use Chrome, there should be a music note icon in the top right, just to the left of your avatar, that shows when media is playing. You can control the media from there or click it to find the tab.

I don't think Vivaldi (what I use) has that exact feature, but the favicon switches to an animated speaker so its much easier to spot.

But I like to create shortcut-apps out of any apps (like YT Music) I use frequently, so they get their own OS-level window. It has other benefits too.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#482

Post by hdjrudni » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 8:49 AM UTC

nonethewiser wrote: post #460

ninetyninenine wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Is this a joke? Posthog sells an app, sure, but their product site shouldn't be an "app" it all. It's an SEO funnel. No one should spend any amount of time on there except to figure out what the heck Posthog is and how much it costs.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#483

Post by boomlinde » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 10:50 AM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #461

boomlinde wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I know it'll be considered a hot take, but I'd argue that people don't even know what "tracking" in the Internet context even means enough for their supposed "preferences" about it to be valid. 90% of non-tech-nerds have this simple of an opinion about it: 1. Retargeting ads are "creepy" because ... "they just are" 2. Retargeting ads either annoy me because I think they're dumb in that particular instance ("I already…

The law isn't there to make you less annoyed, but to protect society and the people. What gripes uninformed individuals may or may not have with the practice based on their surface level understanding are irrelevant to the effects it has on society. That someone uninformed about it can't point to any harms is not a useful observation.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#484

Post by gf000 » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 10:51 AM UTC

const_cast wrote: post #329

gf000 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're honor system, which is dumb when you could have browsers not send that data back without opt-in. Given that there is no objective way to differentiate between functional and tracking cookies, your "technical" solution would also boil down to honoring marking certain cookies as such by the website owner, effectively being the same as what we have today. (Though I do agree that the UX would be nicer this way)

We don't need the functional/tracking cookie split - the law already thought of this. If you're using functional cookies, you don't have to ask. If you're still asking, you're just wasting your time. The reason every website asks is because: 1. They're stupid and don't even bother to preliminarily research the laws they comply with. 2. They actually are tracking you. Ultimately if you're using something like Google A…

We are not in disagreement - my point is that is is a fundamentally civil/legal problem, not a technical one. There is no technical distinction between a functional and a tracking cookie.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#485

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 12:42 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #467

Gormo wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think you’re mostly right, particularly when it comes to the settings dialogs in Windows which have been a state of ferment since Windows 8 such that I expect many of them to be reworked in several faddish ‘mobile’ phases while some will still look like they did in the Windows 95 era. Comparing the various nag windows on MacOS and Windows, as much as they are annoying, the MacOS nags look like a 1999 rework of the…

... if I am listening to music in YouTube it should be trivial to find the browser tab involved ...

A key reason why I tend to access media through a media player (usually mpv in a terminal, occasionally others), and would favour a Web model which divides textual content, media, retail/commerce, and apps into their own apps.

That is, not an app per retail site, but a retail app which manages payment, reputation, identity, and related tasks. Shoehorning everything into "the Web browser" is a category error IMO.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#486

Post by jolmg » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 1:33 PM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #323

jolmg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i have two dozen tmux windows in half a dozen sessions locally. > i have yet to find a window manager that lets me group so many terminals into sessions all on the same workspace. Locally-speaking, I don't really see the point of mixing tmux sessions and tmux windows. I wonder if you mean "sessions" -> tmux windows and "windows" -> tmux panes. What about i3/sway? You can have a tabbed container (functions like tmux…

I don't really see the point of mixing tmux sessions and tmux windows. sessions let you group windows. i have a group/session for each project/purpose. one session is for all remote connections. one for my personal stuff, diary, etc. one for my hobby. one for personal dev projects, one for client work. sessions also means that i can connect to tmux from multiple terminal windows. i generally have two windows, one for…

> generally i feel that having more than half a dozen windows in a session makes the session unwieldy

> which would be the same problem if each was a gui window. try to find your way around 20 gui windows.

I mean, just like how you can organize tmux windows in tmux sessions, you can organize gui windows in workspaces and containers to arbitrary depths.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#487

Post by chatmasta » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 1:59 PM UTC

I think this is cool - I won’t comment on the utility of it.

But you gotta work on the performance. My iPhone 15 Pro is practically burning my hand and I don’t even have the tab open anymore. I’ve lost 5% of battery just reading two pages on the site and iOS dimmed my screen in an attempt to cool down the device.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#488

Post by arghwhat » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 3:01 PM UTC

ninetyninenine wrote: post #420

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…

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…

I read it in full before posting. Writing about something doesn't make it a better idea afterwards.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#489

Post by badsectoracula » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 3:08 PM UTC

Twey wrote: post #475

badsectoracula wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, i already mentioned an example: image editors. IMO image editing is one of the perfect cases for MDI because not only you can have multiple images visible at the same time, but also multiple views of the same image (useful for pixel art, for example). Most MDI applications allow you to dock and/or float stuff in the edges/over the windows which is useful to avoid repeating the same chrome at every window (which…

There's nothing stopping a window manager from supporting docking windows to each other, or the more common option in tiling window managers of having nested tiling groups so you can arrange your editor windows however you like and manipulate them together. Metisse [1] takes it even further, letting you slice a ‘palette’ out of one window and put it in another. In practice I, like you and I suspect a lot of other peo…

There is a lot of stuff that window managers could in theory do (e.g. something i'd like Window Maker to be able to do is "combining" windows so that the title bar becomes a tab bar that contains multiple windows in the same screen space region) but in practice never end up doing for whatever reasons (i could in theory spend the time to implement such a feature in Window Maker but it is very low in my priorities for whenever i have time to spend). And more importantly, not everyone has the same window manager, so even if my window manager could provide a feature that made some application feature unnecessary, someone else's window manager might still not provide it (but might provide some other feature they want that mine doesn't).

> The only applications that really need MDI are those that do something with their windows other than window management, which (loosely) implies that those things are something other than windows.

Well, in the example of image editors i mentioned, these windows are views to the underlying image documents - and being able to move and resize those views arbitrarily, together with a caption about the document they're about, is very useful. It also matches perfectly with embedded/MDI windows.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#490

Post by 9rx » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 4:47 PM UTC

troupo wrote: post #444

9rx wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cookies don't matter. There are many different ways to track users without using cookies even when talking about browsers specifically. But what does matter was already discussed. Are you reading comments in complete isolation again or what? There is a context that has been built up.

> Cookies don't matter. There are many different ways to track users without using cookies Oh look. Here's what I wrote: --- start quote --- The law isn't about browsers or websites. It equally applies to all tracking. E.g. in apps. Or in physical stores. --- end quote --- > But what does matter was already discussed. Are you reading comments in complete isolation again or what? There is a context that has been built…

> The law isn't about browsers or websites.

A historical law that hasn't had anything to do with the discussion since conception isn't about browsers, but the discussion about how future laws might improve upon 'malicious' use of browsers is. Said 'malicious' use of browser isn't about cookies, though, so such a new law would not be written about cookies anyway, so where do you think cookies even fit?

> I was specifically replying to your comment

You replied to it in a mechanical sense. But you did not reply to the content of it. And now are apparently doubling down on that even after it was brought to your attention...