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

581–590 of 599 posts

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

#581

Post by account42 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #555
jonathanlb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully, old.reddit.com as a default option still works. The kicker is that the text is so small and to make the site usable (and readable) you need to rotate your phone to landscape mode. This works well enough that I haven't downloaded the reddit mobile app or used their mobile site ever since they killed Apollo.

But i.reddit.com does not. That was the original mobile experience. And worse: neither would propagate to on-site links. That is, if someone had explicitly linked "www" rather than "old" or "i" at reddit, then regardless of which interface you'd arrived at it from, requiring you to constantly re-specify the actual interface you want. Particularly when not logged in to the site. I'd begun using Reddit nearly 15 years…

It used to be that you could set old.reddit.com as the default interface for www.reddit.com URLs, with the new interface still being available at new.reddit.com - is that no longer the case?

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

#582

Post by account42 »

jedberg wrote: post #24

While I sympathize with the author, and feel the same way, I think Apple/Google have some blame here. They make certain simple things only possible in the apps, because the APIs are not exposed via the web. Notifications is a big obvious one. Not sure if they've changed it since I last looked into it, but having an app installed was the only way to send a notification to someone for a long time.

Chrome has notifications at least in the desktop version and it's the most horrible thing ever as noobs end up with tons of notifications from random scam websites.

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

#583

Post by scorpionfeet »

graemep wrote: post #539
scorpionfeet wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unapproved by the company.

So its their device you are using? otherwise how to they know what authenticator you are using? Most use the same standard.

Bank has its own Authenticator app. That’s how.

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

#584

Post by stvltvs »

armadyl wrote: post #438
stvltvs wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not the UX is better, from a security standpoint I choose the web version because of browser sandboxing unless I'm forced to use the app. If I'm forced to use the app, I probably choose not to use the service.

> from a security standpoint Ironically applications are far more secure running in the OS sandbox than the browser if you're on Android or iOS.

How so?

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

#585

Post by samrus »

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…

Thats a reason for the clients to be mobile first, but not why it meeds to be an app. It can be the movile version of the website too. Itll be less code manage that way too. Why dont companies just focus on mobile web?

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

#586

Post by t-3 »

account42 wrote: post #572
t-3 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointers aren't hard, it's C/C++ that make them complicated. Addresses and indirection in any assembly language are simple and straightforward, easy and even intuitive once you start actually writing programs.

C and C++ pointers aren't any harder than pointers in assembly, at least as far as novices complaining about pointers being hard are concerned.

They are though! Indirection in assembly is just something like:

  ldr dest, [src, offset]
It's straightforward and pretty hard to mess up, and easy to read to because the format is consistent.

Whereas in C all the following are valid (and it becomes even more confusing with assignment in the declaration statement, tons of footguns and weird syntax):

  int* a;
  int *a;
  int a[];
  int a[5];
Assignment is weird too, especially because dereferencing and defining a pointer both use '*'.

  *a   = c;
  a[0] = c;
Then you have structs/unions and their members, and what if those are pointers? You get . and -> syntax. It's weird and complicated, much much more complicated than assembly. That's before you get to casting and types which make C much more complicated than assembly for doing low level stuff.

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

#587

Post by neutronicus »

phist_mcgee wrote: post #486
t-3 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointers aren't hard, it's C/C++ that make them complicated. Addresses and indirection in any assembly language are simple and straightforward, easy and even intuitive once you start actually writing programs.

Tell that to the thousands of comp sci students who drop out every year because they don't like programming in C!

Right, but it's hard to tell how much confusion is caused by C syntax vs the idea of a memory address.

In particular I think people are very confused by declaring pointers and the overloaded meaning of the dereference operator.

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

#588

Post by dredmorbius »

account42 wrote: post #581
dredmorbius wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But i.reddit.com does not. That was the original mobile experience. And worse: neither would propagate to on-site links. That is, if someone had explicitly linked "www" rather than "old" or "i" at reddit, then regardless of which interface you'd arrived at it from, requiring you to constantly re-specify the actual interface you want. Particularly when not logged in to the site. I'd begun using Reddit nearly 15 years…

It used to be that you could set old.reddit.com as the default interface for www.reddit.com URLs, with the new interface still being available at new.reddit.com - is that no longer the case?

You can specify the interface as preferred, if you are logged in to your Reddit account.

However *if you're visiting the site via a specified hostname ("www" or "old", previously "i"), following any arbitrary link from a post, comment, or Wiki page to Reddit will not respect the hostname you'd arrived at that link from.

This to me is absolutely maddening behaviour, as it's now necessary to edit the URL within the browser nav bar. Tedious on desktop, painful on a touchscreen device.

I no longer read Reddit.

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

#589

Post by FabHK »

account42 wrote: post #575
prmoustache wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still more secure than non encrypted email yet a lot of people still use email to send fairly sensitive data.

Email doesn't go through an app controlled by Facebook so I don't agree about your security assessment.

You don't know where your email goes through, and email for sure is not end to end encrypted.

WhatsApp uses the Signal protocol. Closed source code can be decompiled, open source does not magically give you better security properties.

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

#590

Post by appsoftware »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #71
rickdg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For years, Apple has muffled PWAs under a pillow. No one knows that you can add them to your homescreen or how that unlocks the possibility of getting push notifications. You also lose any stored data when you go from Safari to an homescreen web app.

I guess this is by intention since with a PWA you would have "near app experience" but for free?

That sounds likely
Post reply on HN