Slashdot Mirror
Which do You Prefer: Mobile Web Apps or Mobile Websites? (Video)
On December 28, 2015, Larry Seltzer wrote an article for Ars Technica provocatively titled (by Ars editors), The App-ocalypse: Can Web standards make mobile apps obsolete? A link to this article was posted on Slashdot, where it provoked a spirited discussion. In this video conversation, we talked to Larry about mobile aps vs. Web standards. Not surprisingly, he had some interesting things to say.
Yeah, fuck that. Thank you.
It's bad enough when you're locked out because shits like the BBC deem your iOS level isn't high enough, just to steam radio our license fee pays for. cunts.
I don't see why this topic keeps coming up. It's well-known that web apps are always inferior to native apps.
Somebody like tepples will probably come along and try to argue that web apps are better because "they can run everywhere", but that's just plain wrong.
You can always get a better user experience using a real native framework like Qt, with separate native apps for desktops/laptops versus mobile devices.
It's impossible to target all sorts of devices with a single app, like web apps attempt to do. The result is always total shit.
100% prefer mobile web apps over mobile web sites for 1 reason and 1 reason ONLY.
The got damn mother fucking ads in mobile apps are usually just an annoying banner at the bottom of the app. Ads on mobile sites are full on browser-taking-over malicious bullshit. I can't even count the number of times I open an article and a few seconds later, the browser just redirects to a phishing site that looks like mobile Facebook or a fake security screen. It isn't just an ad spot on a page that does it, it takes over the entire browser session. And they are done in such a way that the browser's back button doesn't go back to the article in question either, it simply reloads the goddamn malicious web page.
*NOW* if we could get a decent ad blockers on a mobile browser without A) requiring root access, or B) requiring the installation of an entirely different browser, THAN I would be all for mobile sites over mobile apps. But until this condition is met, apps are simply the safer way to go right now.
Hate apps for the most part because they don't let you finger zoom and other things you can do in browsers.
But from TFA:
Historically, the problem with using Web applications on mobile devices is that webpages have not been able to do the things we expect of apps: features like pinch and zoom
Wuuuut? That is the opposite of what is my observation.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Give me a real website. My screen resolution on my phone is crazy big, and it can zoom with a flick of two fingers if I need to. Reduced functionality/UI mobile sites are grandfathered crap intended for web-enabled Moto Razr phones from pre-smartphone days.
Neither
I prefer using my small 27-inch desktop.
Now, if I could just get Apple to make a 40-inch iMac, I wold be happy.
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
Why are we getting videos at all? This isn't TV. I come here to read things, not watch them.
It really does depend though, if I'm just reading the news a web page is probably more than sufficient. I'm not sure that I need the CNN app to get a quality reading experience. I guess if I read all the CNN.com articles every day then maybe the app might be helpful, but I still just want to be able to read a news story on the web rather than downloading an app.
That said I think some categories are better in an app... shopping seems a bit nicer, things with heave interactions, games certainly... I think its a balance because if I just want to check something out I don't want to download an app for it, but when I shop on amazon on my phone I am more likely to use their app than the mobile web (or, more likely, I will wait till I am in front of a computer).
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I really hate it when I have two windows up and go to a web site with "mobile" support. god damn do they suck, or at least the ones I have seen. The worst part about these mobile sites is there they don't say if you are looking at a mobile version. and it always sucks.
I generally prefer reading news on Safari. If the ads are obnoxious (as in ads following you around as you scroll), then I go into Reader Mode and I just get text (and maybe an image). I find the Boston Globe news app tolerable though it has those ads that follow you around in the menu page. My preferred style of reading is to use web pages, then cut and paste the text into emacs to save a few days of articles. When I have enough of them, I cut and paste them into LibreOffice, save as .docx and email it to my Kindle account and then just read the news as text on the Kindle. That might be a tablet, phone, or iPod. It's nice in that it syncs where I left off through all of my devices.
I have AdBlock Plus on Firefox but I need to use multiple browsers for different news sites. I will also forward news articles or dump of them to other family members.
I'd say for 99% of web sites, just bloody damn well design your web site to be readable. Get rid of all the stupid flashy shit and just provide your content which is seldom more than a couple of paragraphs of text and maybe an image or two. You could even have a "brought to you by blah" line for ads.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
"Dear sirs, it has come to my attention that this newspaper contains a sports section. I do not follow sports and will never read about sports. Please cease putting things in your newspaper that I do not read."
"Old man yells at systemd"
Some people watch videos, some don't. We mark all videos as videos to keep you from watching them by mistake, and provide transcripts if you want the information in them but would rather read than view.
We *could* transmit videos directly to your brain using our subdural trans-pyschic information refabulizer, but we have decided not to do this. For now.
Sig: c++ = --java
[Got a filter error on this one: "Your comment looks too much like ascii art. Hell, Slashdot, get out of the '80s !!]
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
of mobile apps at all ? The world would be so much of a better place....
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
"Dear sirs, it has come to my attention that this newspaper contains a sports section. I do not follow sports and will never read about sports. Please cease putting things in your newspaper that I do not read."
In other words, U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M, get over it.....you are not special...
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
Why should I have to install software on my device just to do the job that an image, an html table, a couple of text fields, and a couple of buttons can do?
Screw that. I don't need to give some corporation access to my location and personal data just to find me a damn restaurant.
you click a deep link into someone's web site on your phone and the page says OOOOO you are coming from a phone and redirects you... to the home page of the mobile site.
m.facebook.com is wayyyy better than the bloated app. loads faster, has access to the chat whitout a second app, etc.
Be or ben't
It's simple: Slashdot is a dying website. Dice appears to be throwing shit at the wall, so to speak, desperately trying to get something to stick in an attempt to salvage Slashdot from the pits of hell.
Videos are popular at YouTube, so maybe Dice thought they'd be popular here, too. So we get subjected to shitty videos. Of course, that ignores the fact that Slashdot isn't YouTube! Like you're well aware, we don't want any goddamn videos here.
"Social justice" is popular on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook, so maybe Dice thought it'd be popular here, too. So we get subjected to idiotic submissions about non-issues, rife with false accusations of various -isms or -phobias. Of course, that ignores the fact that Slashdot's users, aside from a few whackos, are very much the opposite of Twitter/Tumblr/Facebook "social justice" freaks and thus don't support the totalitarian, unjust, bullying tactics of "social justice".
Politics are popular on Huffington Post, so maybe Dice thought politics would be popular here, too. So we get subjected to irrelevant submissions about political issues that have nothing to do with technology, science, math, or anything relevant like that. Of course, that ignores the fact that Slashdot's users want to read about technology, science, math, and everything but politics.
It's really quite sad. All that Dice needs to do to restore Slashdot to its former glory is:
1. Get rid of the videos, the "social justice", and the political articles.
2. Get rid of the moderating. It no longer works well, and only serves to stifle discussion instead of enabling it.
3. Get rid of the posting limits. Again, they stifle discussion instead of enabling it.
4. Enable discussion instead of stifling it!
We don't come here for the videos. We don't come here for most of the submissions. We come here to discuss things, and we need to be able to do that unhindered if this site to remain viable!
Wake the hell up, Dice!
.
From now on, for me it is mobile websites only.
Because of echo, sound comes out your speakers and back into your microphone. Skype and other software can attempt to mute your microphone to avoid it but this causes issues when you're trying to talk.
I imagine the hidden in-ear headphones aren't cheap and they aren't going to send them out to every person they interview.
I don't want to download your stupid app. Just make your website not suck on mobile devices. End of story.
If your app really truly has enough complexity that a mobile site is too slow, and a native app is the only way to get decent performance, your app is probably too complicated. Keep it simple stupid.
Maybe 1% of apps actually honestly need to be a standalone app.
Why do you think a video of a guy sitting in front of his computer adds anything worth the headache of watching a video?
Is there some kind of Skype-type intimacy that clearly doesn't register with me that I seem to be missing?
I can almost get a normal TV-type interview where the camera films the subject actually engaging with the interviewer and we catch some kind of something from his human interaction, but here it's just some guy in front of a computer.
Seriously. They both suck. So it's like asking which I'd prefer to eat. A bucket of solid shit or a bucket of diarrhea.
So I avoid "mobile" options like the inferior plague they are.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
So I avoid "mobile" options like the inferior plague they are.
So what do you use?
So read the transcript and don't watch the video. Some people like them, some don't. You know this site is for sale, right? What if the new owner starts sending goon squads out to force you to watch videos? What will you do THEN, I ask you?
Seriously - if you think of the videos as an easy, low-cost way to produce verbatim text interviews, they make sense for that alone, with the video itself as a free bonus. I have friends, including some very smart people, who are dyslexic enough that it's easier for them to watch someone talk than to read the same thing. At the other extreme, you have speedreaders -- including me -- who process text faster than anyone can talk. So videos + transcripts = the best compromise and way to reach both groups end everybody in between.
And we realize that complaining, valid or not, is a big Slashdot sport, too. :)
The fact that the Facebook app was written by 100 monkeys sitting at keyboards might have something to do with that.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Unless you have a VERY expensive phone, with 32gb or more of space, you're NOT gonna be putting every fucking app that some asshole company advertises.. I'm on (and I bet a lot of other readers here) a very limited budget, and as much as I'd love to have a $500-$700 latest/greatest Nexus phone, it aint happening anytime soon, and since I don't DO phone contracts, I'm on an MVNO of Sprint and Tmobile (Ting, if you must know), I'm not gonna get a phone thru osmosis, with a first-line carrier.. I buy my phones on either eBay or Glyde and they're usually 2010-vintage ones, so they don't have a hell of a lot of room after bloatware takes up 25-30% of the space. Since the phone I currently have is very difficult to root, I'm stuck with all of the useless bloatware that the carrier *thoughtfully* puts on the phones. So to make a long story short, I go for the mobile website for ANYthing over and above the several apps I do use, namely my credit unions app and a few others...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
You can't possibly believe that. Do you have an application on your computer for every website? Why not? Don't your arguments hold up there as well? Web apps designed for mobile can be just as good as native in almost every situation, sometimes better. My vision isn't so hot so I like to zoom and stuff. Some web apps don't let you do that, but I don't know of any mobile apps that allow that. With the ability to use local storage and manifests for storing web content locally like it's an "app" that updates itself when it opens if it can. You can access everything even when you aren't connected to the network if that's your use case in this situation. Web apps can open the camera and interact with it, you can use GPS, you can do pretty much everything except looking at your phone's data which I don't want them doing anyway and they could get similar information from Facebook or Google if I wanted them to do so. You want it to look native? Device recognition will work for that. The myth that native always is better isn't true. Can it be better? Sure. Will it be? Probably not because it takes more effort as a developer, new versions of the app have a longer deployment time because of the application store, and the audience will be smaller as well so there is less incentive for a company to pour resources in to the app. Plus you have to develop 2 different versions of the app or ignore half the possible users. In summary, the slight edge native has on capabilities lives in a small space that most "apps" (native or web) won't use, and making the thing work as well natively as it does in the browser is harder, so most developers or teams won't get that far let alone going beyond the web experience. Finally, maintenance and agility are a pain in the ass so a native user will always have to wait longer for there usually inferior experience.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
And we realize that complaining, valid or not, is a big Slashdot sport, too. :)
Why are there *still* no prizes for the best complaints?
*Still* negative function...
I don't do phone contracts either. But I got this nice Moto E phone eight a Walmart that works with Virgin Mobile. The phone was $40, the service is $30 per month . Cash over the counter $20. No commitment. The Moto E is a nice phone for $40.
Mod parent up! The rationale makes perfect sense. I can't stand where I visit a website on my phone that I visit with my desktop and on the phone it says "Download our app!" NO! I just want to go to your website. I don't want your app. Privacy issues and storage issues aside... why do I want a specific program to access your information? That seems silly.
On top of that 99% of mobile "apps" are just WebView wrappers anyhow. I can even make little "icons" on my launcher that take me to a website. The way I see it almost nothing needs to be a real app on my phone except when doing extraordinary things (e.g. driving directions or interfacing with NFC, etc).
Isn't there an app that does that?
Depends really... is it a web site with static content and an app as a wrapper for mobile?
Or is it an actual application that someone turned into a webapp? Or a highly interactive site such Google Photos or Google Docs or an online image editor...
In the former case, I'll take the web site (whether it's properly formatted for mobile or not - I can view standard WXGA-formatted sites on my phone just fine, thanks) any day instead of downloading an app.
In the latter case, I'll likely prefer the native app.
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The article doesn't claim that web apps are as good as native. It claims that standards are advancing rapidly and that they *will* be as good as native, at which point the benefits of the web become compelling.
fuck you
W3C has done a fantastic job pushing for cross-browser/platform standards. The App market is still going through iOS-vs-Android war, so it only makes sense to develop an app for projects that need to do a lot of client-side processing, and where the demand will make-up for the extra cost of developing the same app twice. For content delivery and e-commerce, mobile apps aren't even contenders against dynamic web apps, but maybe if we can get to a standard where a single app works equally well on iOS as on Android, then maybe the apps will win out. Until then, it's too expensive to develop a whole app if server scripting, HTML and javascript libraries can do a better job, and work equally well on all devices, for a fraction of the cost.