Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

0xsid.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 599 posts

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#501

Post by bavell »

direwolf20 wrote: post #439
bobthepanda wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are actual user studies to show that wider text is harder to read. https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability The major difference is that in the era of print, it was pretty logical where a multicolumn wide layout could go like on a newspaper, but in an desktop experience the browser markup is theoretically endless.

Solution: rotate your monitor 90 degrees, and inform your OS that you have done so. Now your monitor is 1080x1920. You'll actually be amazed how much more of a document fits on screen without sacrificing readability.

Preach. I have 4 monitors and one is a vertical 1440x2560. Massive productivity boost - terminals running claude code, reading docs, IDE panes, anything with lots of scrolling. Highly recommend it!

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#502

Post by RRRA »

The worst thing about this is a company saying you need to lock yourself on one of the 2 proprietary platform that somehow didn't just wrap the web for apps and use a ridiculously small device you might own, but anyone on an open standard system can go F themselves...

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#503

Post by leptons »

AlBugdy wrote: post #437
leptons wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That the server can send you a backdoor every single time, made just for you, and nobody else will ever know? There is no "backdoor" when the browser is sandboxed. "backdoor" is a specific thing, I think you need to read up on it before you keep using it incorrectly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backdoor_(computing) >On the other hand, an app is sandboxed, too (on mobile OSes like Android and iOS). When you downloa…

It's obvious what GP meant - we can verify that the apps we download are the apps everyone else downloads. We can't do this with Proton where our mail is supposedly end-to-end encrypted. They can easily view our mail if they can send us a different code when we load their site. > That isn't what "sandboxed" means, it has nothing to do with checking hashes. And no, mobile apps are not really sandboxed Apps ARE somewha…

>We can't do this with Proton where our mail is supposedly end-to-end encrypted. They can easily view our mail if they can send us a different code when we load their site.

That isn't a problem with how the web works vs how apps work, that's a problem with you trusting Protonmail.

If you really wanted to be secure sending an email or any communication, you wouldn't trust any third party, be it an app or a website - you would encrypt your message on an air-gapped system, preferably a minimal known safe linux installation, and move the encrypted file to a USB, and then insert the USB into a system with network access, and then send the encrypted file to your destination through any service out there, even plain old unencrypted http would work at that point, because your message is already encrypted.

The second you give your unencrypted message to any third-party on any device with an input box and a network connection, is the moment you made it public. If I had to be extremely sure that my message isn't read by anyone else, typing it into a mobile app or a web browser isn't the place I'd start - it would only be done as a last resort.

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#506

Post by kazinator »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #49

What most people dont get: Most of folks on HN here are much older than todays "first customers" of 16y/17/18 For them: The "Smartphone is the internet", while for most of us the "Smartphone is an extension of the internet from our desktops" that we were used to (remember the years before dot com bubble, saying: "I will be down in the basement at the computer to surf on the net little bit" ? :-) But today, the very f…

This is about preferring the web version of the product from a mobile browser vs. the app on a mobile device, not desktop vs. mobile.

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#507

Post by zadikian »

Zak wrote: post #490
palata wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the idea is that the client should be open source, and audited. If you run a proprietary app, you have to blindly trust it (just like if you access a webapp). In terms of security, the best is an open source app, IMO.

Open source helps, but if you didn't build it yourself, you'll need to trust whoever did. F-Droid reproducible builds help in that you only need to trust either F-Droid or the developer, not both. The browser tends to be safer because it has a stronger sandbox than native apps on a mobile OS. It's meant to be able to run potentially malicious code with a very limited blast radius.

Also even obfuscated JS code is easier to understand than machine code, if you're trying to tell what some non-open-source thing is doing

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#508

Post by abustamam »

forgotusername6 wrote: post #458
leros wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I had a lengthy customer service email template explaining how to install the PWA for when people asked about a mobile app. Almost nobody installed it.

There's an install element in the works. Perhaps that will make it more obvious how to install it https://github.com/WICG/install-element?tab=readme-ov-file

Neat! I like this. But I still don't think it solves the problem of a random website saying "install me!" without the "secure" middleman of an App store.

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#509

Post by cush »

adzm wrote: post #171
cush wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYT occasionally uses fancy interactive articles. They have games, and other things that are better on the app. The NYT app is actually very good

Every time I end up trying an app for things like this, I end up missing tabs.

Yeah true. Tabs, history, etc on the browser are unparalleled.
Post reply on HN