I tried looking at the reviews for a monitor, and when I clicked “see more reviews” I got redirected to a page asking me to login and to provide my mobile phone number (which I didn’t do for privacy reasons).
On Instagram I was confused at everyone else mentioning Instagram stories because I only have the option of uploading pictures and videos. Then I found out that it’s something you can only do if you use Instagram on a phone… I swear I’ve came across a few sites that wouldn’t even let you sign up if you were using a PC
I only ever browse social media on a PC and that’s the way it will always be. Sometimes I can’t help but feel like desktop/computer users are becoming an afterthought. Anyone else have similar feelings? 🫠
I mean, its been more than a decade since mobile traffic overtook desktop web traffic. So yeah, it makes sense to prioritize mobile especially if they can get you to install their (spyware)app.
I’m sure it is a different ratio for things like B2B.
No, but the mobile market is where the money is, and greedy corps are gonna chase the almighty fucking dollar at all costs.
no. its one of my pet peeves that we spent decades creating sites with dynamic viewports (mobile friendly/any screen size) only for kids to wonder where the ‘app’ is for your site.
and conversely, server products created with such minimal features as to require an external app to fulfill basic functionality.
god i hate apps.
Fret not! Lots and lots of apps are just PWAs packaged into thin wrappers so they can be distributed through an app store. Humanity gets all, or at least most, of the benefits of the web with unmatched cross-platform support, and our Grandmothers and 12 year olds still get to tap on the Spotify and Starbucks icons. Win-win!
I’d way rather use a pwa than an election/react native/whatever app
On the flip side, applications now suck because everything is a shit web wrapper. Nobody wants to develop using native UI on desktop anymore.
its the trend of everything being a service. organizations dont have on-prem data centers anymore, its all web services tied to other web services.
its all about that subscription revenue, per-process nickel-and-diming and super fast development cycles.
But they already have APIs in a lot of cases, so just wire the application to the API? Why the random HTML/JavaScript trash?
By the way I’m a web application developer. I understand SaaS, infrastructure and all why it’s easier to wrap it all up but I don’t care. Why do application developers tolerate this?
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There are Instagram proxies like imginn that you can use to new stories and posts
Sorry for being meta but I think this belongs in rants more than in CC
Sorry, is there a rants community? I wasn’t aware there was one so I apologize if it’s out of place here. It’s not something I’m angry about it’s just something I find mildly annoying and I was wondering how many people can relate 😅
I think it’s fine personally as well, but I can see it brushing up against these rules:
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Keep the conversation nice and light hearted
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Avoid controversial topics such as politics or societal debates
It’s a slightly contentious issue, so not as easy to keep it lighthearted when people want to complain about it, and technically it could be considered a “societal debate.”
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I’m not a mod or anything but I think it’s fine. At least it’s not some of the political or doomer stuff that you see here sometimes
Egh I guess
Mobile traffic far outweighs desktop for most sites, so it makes sense to do so. It’s expensive to maintain two UIs, so most sites just go with a hybrid approach that works well for mobile and fine for desktop.
i dont buy it. modern frameworks allow you to maintain a single codebase for mobile and desktop
I feel this. I prefer desktop for almost all of my posting and reading online. I only use phone when I am out and about.
Prefering a system over another is just bad design. Probably more profitable, but they shouldn’t care if I upload from my self build phone, desktop, tablet or what ever.
Agreed.
Because “mobile first” design, means “PC last (if at all)”.
I think they get more data from your usage on mobile.
I think it’s also that just significantly more people own a phone than a laptop.
It’s like those demographics maps that are really just population maps.
If companies really designed sites and apps thinking on the majority of people they would make their software as lightweight as possible, so that they could run fine on cheaper hardware
Fucking seeeeeerrrioussslyyy dude I remember when GoogleTalk took 8 megabytes of RAM. Discord at minimum takes about 200mb.
Phones have web browsers. You can view websites easily from your phone.
Apps give them access to everything. You can request access to contact lists, even, and most people won’t even think twice to allowing access.
yep. tons of telemetry.
Even moreso for apps, you can still retain some control through Firefox and others on mobile, but it’s still limited.
They want to push people to apps because you have no control over how you view the site, unlike on a traditional web browser where you can tweak such things and block advertiser connections.
Ayup. Iphones at least sandbox, but even then, you’re still talking a sieve over a bucket leak-wise
It’s because the apps work as black boxes stopping the end user from blocking their telemetry, advertising and tracking.
What I hate more is how companies deliberately add blocks to their websites if you’re on mobile so as to force the user to download the app.
Two of the most egregious samples I’ve seen so far is Microsoft teams that shows a banner saying “this browser is not supported”, but switching your user agent or enabling desktop mode from within your phone’s browser makes it work perfectly fine.
Another is Facebook (yuck) which displays a fake loading bar that never finishes unless you trick it the same way as with teams. Their mobile site prevents you from posting anything, commenting, viewing random posts, uploading files, or seeing notifications. If you don’t have the app installed, you’re essentially locked out of messenger because it is reluctant at opening any shared files or posts as that has to be opened through the facebook app (obviously). What’s worse is I’m prompted to log in to Facebook every time I open any link Facebook or not from within messenger.
I’d love to fully uninstall meta’s apps but I have family members that only use their apps (fuck the networking effect)
Shoutout to spotify who have a perfectly functional HTTP interface that inexplicably breaks when viewed on a phone. I end up using a modded client.
Facebook on mobile web is buggy AF, but the adblocker works so it’s still better.
I’d honestly love a wall of shame for websites and “tech products” that showcases their hostility to users trying to circumvent their tracking
Louis Rossmann just launched a database for something related to that. Go check it out, it might be what you’re looking for.
Another bad one is reddit. The amount it pushes the mobile interface while on mobile is painful, but switch to desktop mode and it all goes away.
I don’t go on it a lot anymore, but when I do it’s typically from my phone and its really gotten worse.
I get frustrated with that with the fediverse. To see an image in a post at a proper size ends up taking 3 clicks
I’ve noticed that with Tumblr as well (which is a really good site for artists btw!)
When you first click on an image, it’s kinda small and to view it full size you have to right click, open the image in a new tab, click on the new tab and click the image again to enlarge it.
Use RTINGS next time for electronics reviews. They’re so much more in-depth than any other review site; they test every single aspect of the products and lay out the info in a manner that’s easy to understand, while still providing all the technical jargon for geeks like me. And no mobile number needed, either. The site is well-optimized for desktop.
Hi sorry for my late reply! I just checked that site out and it’s so in depth and goes into detail about so many parameters that aren’t typically listed on the sites I buy them from, and I’ll be using this site to check reviews if I want to buy a new monitor. Thank you! 😃
It’s all attempts at vendor lock-in because phones are more locked down than computers and more people only have just a phone.
It’s up there with how I think Youtube/Tiktok videos are an absolutely terrible way to explore deep problems.
If I have to watch a three hour video with only spoken references, I’m sorry, I’d way rather have a 300-page document with figures, graphs, and most fucking importantly god damned footnotes and endnotes.
Especially since this is the fucking internet that was built on hypertext which is like a footnote on steroids since you can directly link to the original document instead of just referencing it.
Videos are fine for lots of things, but not always long-form deep-dives into difficult and complex subjects. Often it makes sense to have a video in a lecture set up, if you’re actually trying to educate people and not just inform them, but otherwise text does fine for research.
Fuck apps and their spyware bullshit, fuck all knowledge being in videos you can’t footnote, fuck trying to turn the internet into a one-way-medium like cable TV.
With cross platform frameworks there is no excuse to have features pariry
Surely you mean there is no excuse not to.
Yes
Cross-platform frameworks generally make for truly shit apps, though.
So yeah, there’s a valid excuse in that you actually want to build a good product for the end users - cross-platform frameworks are antithetical to that goal
