9 ms·
I don't want to download your app
- scrrr 14y agoI think Apple has recognised the problem and they are now supporting some HTML-meta-tag that will simply insert an App-Store banner when you visit a site that has it with iPhone's Safari.
- TeMPOraL 14y agoJust an example of people thinking profit-first and value-to-users-second. Unfortunately very common, and while in many cases it could be justified, I still think many products would improve if their authors thought a little bit more about maximizing user value before their own profit.
- diziet 14y agoThe culprit often is "Tapatalk", a forum app that pops up a notification on every iOS device for a lot of forums.
- AskHugo 14y agoTapatalk is still completely opt-in though. Those forums have to include Tapatalk software within their own.
- runawaybottle 14y agoAnd for the most part, Tapatalk does improve the experience of navigating message boards.
- monochromatic 14y agoIt's opt-in for the forum admin, but it's opt-out for me... opt out every single fucking time I visit a forum that has opted in.
- jiggy2011 14y agoSadly this is probably a business decision and not a user experience decision. If I know I'm going to have my website there every time you tap to your homescreen or do a search on your phone I know that I'm probably more likely to convert you.
- artursapek 14y agoUsers aren't going to convert because they want to do you a favor. These "download our app" prompts feel like a beg for a favor.
- learn 14y agoIt feels like a man in a suit with a handful of money asking me to do a favor for him, but he keeps his handful of money.
- Evbn 14y agoYou underestimate the gullible sheepishness of mass media consumers.
- artursapek 14y agoYou overestimate the commitment, and therefore value, of mass media consumers.
- rhizome 14y agoFor as long as interstitial and modal app-begging has been going on, I've wondered if they're measuring their bounce rates. Something tells me maybe the people in charge of the business decision are the same people reporting the technique's efficacy, and they're hiding the numbers that would get the plug pulled on this garbage.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Nursie 14y agoNot just IOS devices neither, I'm getting fed up of shooing away the same stuff on android.
- cryptoz 14y agoI avoid this problem by instantly boycotting any site that does this. They clearly have absolutely no interest in serving me content or helping me do what I want to do, and there is always an alternative.
- mzarate06 14y agoI understand the frustration w/the manner in which some mobile apps are advertised, but wrt this statement in particular ... They clearly have absolutely no interest in serving me content or helping me do what I want to do ... coming from the site owner side of things, I'll offer a friendly counter argument (which has been rephrased in light of down votes): site owners are interested in serving you content, or helping you do what you want to do ... just in a better way. I agree ads or prompts can be annoying, but to say site owners go through the trouble of developing a mobile app and advertising it b/c they have no interest in serving content or helping the user experience doesn't quite fit. To me, a site that offers a mobile app says the exact opposite.
- cryptoz 14y agoOh definitely. The mobile app is almost always a better experience than using the site. But that's not the point. The point is that I'm on my phone with limited time on a slow internet connection, I have requested content from a site and that site has chosen to not show me the content that was expected, but instead display an advertisement. This is unacceptable to me, and rather than deal with it I usually just leave and never come back. A link at the top would suffice. Or the bottom. Or anywhere, really, that doesn't prevent me from viewing the content I was trying to view. Edit: In case it's not clear, I think the article is written about full screen overlays that I'm describing. If not, I'm all wrong here and my posts probably don't make sense. I'm totally cool with a site mentioning that they have an app and that I should get it. What I'm not okay with is when you are prevented from accessing the site until you agree or disagree to get their app.
- mzarate06 14y agoI see, thanks for elaborating. I suppose I took your comment ... They clearly have absolutely no interest in serving me content or helping me do what I want to do ... too literally. I believe the trouble of developing and offering a mobile app supplements their motivation to serve content, in a better way. But your point was well stated, and it's clear you're not against a better mobile experience, but rather the manner in which it's advertised. In which case I agree ... shoving a full screen ad down a user's throat is frustrating.
- jburwell 14y agoAmen. To borrow a quote from Alton Brown, "I hate unitaskers." -- applies to apps, as well as, kitchen tools.
- baddox 14y agoI guess he wouldn't much like the Unix philosophy as summarized by Doug McIlroy.
- dredmorbius 14y agoUnitask tools of the Alton Brown stripe are leaf nodes, not pipe nodes. They're roach motels, not highways. You check in, you don't check out. Design is typically monolithic, not atomic. The Unix philosophy is for small, atomic, pipeable utilities that do a single task (more properly, subtask) in conjunction with other tools. There are exceptions. including, say, web browsers. But where a browser is one level of monolithic app, it's generalized to that particular information purpose. A site-dedicated application is worlds worse.
- kragen 14y agoNo, he's articulating the Unix philosophy: tools should do one thing (knives are for cutting), and their user should be able to use that one thing for many different purposes, in conjunction with other tools.
- gte910h 14y agoHe hates unitaskers in the kitchen because they take up finite space and money. These don't really apply to tiny free apps. It's like complaining about an extra key in a keyring you never use in a drawer you never open.
- lilsunnybee 14y agoNot sure how much space you have on your phone, but just a few more apps installed can cause problems for me.
- alpb 14y agoI find this an unnecessary flame. That’s why Apple introduced Smart App Banners for iOS and they work just fine. The problem is just with those redirect you to a separate app download page. http://david-smith.org/blog/2012/09/20/implementing-smart-app-banners/ http://david-smith.org/blog/2012/09/20/implementing-smart-ap...
- nicksergeant 14y agoI hate those things. They drastically reduce the viewable height of the actual content I'm trying to look at.
- rsaunders100 14y agoAgreed, but it is much better than most popups. Also its easily dismissed to reclaim the space.
- Yhippa 14y agoWhen I visit the Call of Duty Elite website there's a smart banner telling me to download the app. I went to the website because their iOS app is limited. When I click on the "x" to close it it takes me to the iOS app instead of removing the banner. I lose real estate like you mentioned. Real annoying.
- rhizome 14y agoThe tell is the word "smart" in any branding term.
- dpe82 14y agoFlame of whom? The problem is being nagged, popovered, redirected, or otherwise bothered to install something that does nothing to enhance the content but takes time to install and wastes space on your phone. Apple has indeed recently introduced a partial solution, but as many have pointed out few have adopted it yet.
- notatoad 14y agosmart banners have made things both better and worse. it's good when sites use them instead of a javascript alert or a full-screen nag, but it's encouraged so many more websites to start nagging you to install their app.
- photorized 14y agoWorst part is, most of these apps are essentially browsers. There is no additional content or interesting extra functionality being offered... just same old content, only formatted differently. So, this concept of installing a new browser every time I visit an unfamiliar site, really is ridiculous. This is almost as bad as "here's a mobile version of our site, opened automatically for your convenience". If your site is designed peoperly, my iOS device can browse your "full" site just fine, thank you.
- krickle 14y agoThey want to have push/local notifications. It's like getting ahold of an email, but moreso. I've turned off Javascript to avoid them asking, now I constantly get "turn on your javascript" black overlays from Wordpress sites. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
- photorized 14y agoOh, their motives are clear... It's the fact that they are doing absolutely nothing to entice the user to go through the inconvenience. This won't last.
- krickle 14y agoI certainly hope it won't last! But there isn't a large downside to angering the few of us that were just passing by. My dream is having some AdBlock-style filters for misbehaving websites, run by tens of thousands of people. Then we could nip these practices in the bud.
- nwh 14y agoThere's not much stopping you from making exactly that. The main issue is that iOS devices won't allow users to install that sort of modification, and it doesn't look like newer iOS devices are going to be jailbroken any time soon. Older devices though, sure.
- nwh 14y ago
- hindsightbias 14y agonews.google.com on safari/ipad always pulls up a "install this app..." popup that blocks the entry field. Anyone know how to disable this?
- hub_ 14y agoWhen they don't put the "Download Chrome" banner every time you go visit a Google property.
- pacala 14y agoBut we want: 1. To spam you. 2. To track your every move.
- arn 14y agoI don't think the easy answer is "all such things suck". You spend the time and money developing an app, and you want your visitors to know about the app. The prime candidates are those who visit your site on that device. So, the targeting is right, but the execution is what typically sucks. From my own personal experience, if I'm visiting a specific article on the site, my immediate interest is getting the information from the article. Downloading an app is not going to take priority, even if I do ultimately want the app. We had mocked up a "email me a link to this app" link for our site, in order to give the reader an option to email themselves an iTunes link for later, without taking them outside of the scope of reading the specific article they are looking at. In the end, we switched over to Apple's HTML banner thingy, which gives the opporutnity for people who have already installed the app the ability to open the specific article in the app itself.
- dpe82 14y ago> You spend the time and money developing an app, and you want your visitors to know about the app These popovers/nags/redirects are typically annoying because the apps do little to nothing to add to the content or user experience. Just because the company spent time and money developing them doesn't make them useful. Why burden users with the company's poor decision?
- arn 14y agoThere is no scenario where a mobile app could be superior to the web app?
- dpe82 14y agoNot if the content is standard text/images/video and the app gets in the way of consuming the content - which is what a user wants to do when they click on a link to an article. Can an app be superior because it allows other types of content that can't be done well via web technologies? Perhaps. Can an app help with content discovery? Perhaps. But when a user clicks on a link to standard text/images/video they're not looking for either of those. If you want to advertise your app because it provides other features that a user may find valuable, that's fine. Advertise it like any other product that runs against your content. If nobody uses it there's likely a good reason. Don't force it on them.
- forgetcolor 14y agoI feel the same way about sites with special iPad interfaces. Every time I visit one I start to see/read the content as it loads and then the site goes blank while some heavy and slow annoying swipe theme finally comes up. when this happens I just leave.
- bloaf 14y agoI think there is a fascinating split personality to the internet these days. On the one hand, there is a big drive to move traditional desktop application functionality into the web browser (e.g. google and microsoft's office web apps, photo editing, and even some computation in the case of Wolfram Alpha.) On the other hand, there is a big drive to push traditional internet content into standalone apps, as this author outlines. Currently it seems that the vast majority of the apps in the Windows 8 store fall into this category.
- dmix 14y agoThe long term push is towards html5 mobile apps period. The only problem is performance (which is improving), immature javascript programming libraries/communities and poor adoption of HTML5 mobile features by the OSes (such as being able to use datepickers and other essential APIs for building apps). That's why native apps are still important. Once the above is figured out, I highly doubt companies will want to pay to develop on 2-3 different codebases in different programming languages than their website, to support native apps. But iOS/Android make their money from native apps so I doubt they're particularly motivated to make mobile HTML5 apps the standard.
- codeka 14y ago> That's why native apps are still important. Once the above is figured out, I highly doubt companies will want to pay to develop on 2-3 different codebases in different programming languages than their website, to support native apps. But that's the thing: we're talking about forums and news sites here. Mobile browsers are perfectly capable of rendering news, blogs and forums as fast as you'd ever need. Companies aren't building these kinds of native apps for the performance.
- fusiongyro 14y agoA better explanation is that apps are simply the fashion right now. Everybody and their brother doesn't need a web page any more than they need an app.
- dendory 14y agoI blogged about that a while back. It's particularly bad on iOS since it seems more sites have iPhone apps. And many of them don't even just put a small link. Many, like Techcrunch, put a full page modal ad. Then there's sites who don't even ask you and redirect to an AppStore link. Stupid.
- YeahKIA 14y agoThis is not just about a single purpose app by any website. I think the problem is that apps in general have been isolated silos. That's one other area where windows phone kicks ass IMO. It has neat app contracts that lets one app talk to other thus making it more connected and hence more useful
- visualcsharp 14y ago1. Purchase Atomic Web Browser 2. Configure the User Agent setting to use Safari Desktop instead of Safari iPhone/iPad 3. Win 9000+ internets when you're no longer prompted to download their shitty app
- brudgers 14y agoThe idea of using an iPhone app to browse a particular website reminds me of AOL keywords like "www.cbs.com". Every time I see an "Ask HN: what app do you use for HN?" I wonder why people don't just use the browser. What is the allure?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- GuiA 14y agoWell for HN, the website has poor design (tiny font, flowing text) in the first place which makes it very hard to read on native iOS.
- __david__ 14y agoHacker News is usable on mobile Safari, but it's not as good as it could be. Try using Alien Blue to browse reddit on an iPhone (and especially an iPad). It is a superior experience to using the plain web site (even m.reddit.com). I very much wish there was an equivalent for Hacker News.
- peterhunt 14y agoI use ihackernews.com, works pretty well.
- prophetjohn 14y agoHacker Node works pretty well, but doesn't support voting, commenting or submitting.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ghayes 14y agoThe worst for me was a site (forget which one) which asked me to download the app, and then redirected me to their homepage when I declined (as opposed to the article I was trying to read). That was an unfortunate user experience.
- Shank 14y agoThis, so much this. I think Gawker is one who does it - if you change from the mobile version to desktop version you lose the page you were on.
- omarchowdhury 14y agoLooking for that page again means more ad loads.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoFscking Tapatalk. I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever install your app, even if it scratches my back. Ever; just because of your incessant, annoying spam on every god damn forum I ever go to. Give me a global opt-out. I can't wait to get over this hard-on for native apps. ABC, you too, for god's sake, I clicked on a random news story, I don't need your app.
- zalew 14y ago> just because of your incessant, annoying spam on every god damn sent from my iphone. sent from my ipad. yeah, because I care what device you sent me an email from. sent from my desktop computer using firefox.
- sachingulaya 14y agoMany people do care. It gives context to short emails or emails with errors.
- xbryanx 14y agoSending an email from a tablet or phone isn't an excuse for errors and typos.
- catshirt 14y agoi suppose this opinion would vary by recipient. more importantly, already addressed, is the context it provides around the time spent on a response. in most cases, when responding on a mobile device, you simply can't put the same time into a response. i think it's considerate.
- biturd 14y agoI agree. I change it to say "Sent from a mobile device". There are cases where a message mandates a reply but a mobile device isn't to an ideal platform. iPhone only recently allowed file attachments beyond 1, and that was if you remembered to attach it first. I don't think you could even attach to replies. Many emails do necessitate a reply but you aren't going to be able to spellcheck and put the time into it as you would on a desktop. Afterall, you are mobile. Stating so in the signature lets the recipient know you are giving them your full attention as much as the technology and situation will allow. I've always felt it was a good thing when users noted this. And of course, as someone has mentioned, it is the default on iOS devices. Then again, users unable to edit their default signature probably aren't giving you their full attention and the reply will amount to yes/no or worse, not answer a single question with any sort of detail. Not that if the user were on a desktop that would change a bit. I'm not sure how these people are employed as I would fire so many people over the way they handle email.
- notatoad 14y agoThis is one of the best advantages android has over iOS - you don't have all those goddamn app nag screens all over the internet.
- chops 14y agoThat's not my experience at all. I get that "Install our app" popup on Android when loading many forum/discussion-type sites. And it's really goddamn annoying.
- yareally 14y agoI usually just switch my user agent on my Android Phone to be a desktop one permanently. Though, that requires a browser that can do it from the Android Market or using a ROM with it like Cyanogen (or modding the AOSP browser and recompiling it with the feature). Many cases, you can just pull the browser from Cyanogen and stick it in /system/app if rooted (though I think the feature was only added with ICS). I can't stand that popup either though and have a severe dislike for tapatalk. From my experience with administering a forum, they charge quite a bit for their software and then charge quite a bit more on top for small bug fixes they won't fix otherwise :( One example is tapatalk users not being aware you're part of the forum staff when you're attempting to calm down some users and they go off on you. Though that works two ways I suppose, since they can't see you're part of the staff and go off on you as well and gives you an excuse to give them a couple day vacation :)
- notatoad 14y agoah, i use firefox as my browser on android, which may also be mitigating some of this. Anybody who uses an alternate browser on iOS want to let us know what your experience is with the nag screens?
- MartinCron 14y agoChrome on iOS I still get the nag screens. Sadly.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
- fpgeek 14y agoOn Android, my personal pet peeve are apps that don't bother to handle their own links. Fine. You've made a special mobile app for your site and "convinced" (i.e. nagged) me to download it. If your app is so gosh-darn wonderful, why the fsck can't I use it whenever I'm using your site? Third-party app Twitter apps can figure this out. Why not you? Hint: The answer probably is that your app isn't nearly as wonderful as you think it is.
- AYBABTME 14y agoBhe, Github handles all the github.com links. Yet, when it's not something supported by their app (like 95% of the links I stumble upon), they simply redirect the handling to a browser. The result is: - Click github link. - Prompt menu : which application do you wish to use? List of browsers and the github app. - Click on github. - Github loads, then... - Prompt menu : which application do you wish to use? List of browsers. I could use the 'Always' option, but then the github app wouldn't recognize the links it actually handles.
- Evbn 14y agoThis is a problem in Android OS. App have to handle all URLs with a certain prefix (or maybe for a while domain?), not a regex pattern they want. Google itself got burned by this, and they didn't even bother building a workaround like github did. It was just mostly impossible to shop for a Nexus device on a Nexus device, since Play hijacked all play.google.com links and then failed to actually show content, since Nexus devices weren't in the native Play Store
- dkarl 14y agoThe Delta iPhone app saved my ass and let me check in right before the cut-off for flight I needed to make, while I was stuck in traffic in a cab outside the airport. However, downloading the app was preceded by ten minutes of trying desperately to check in using the Delta web site on my iPhone. I was stymied by a combination of strangely sized fonts (which forced me to zoom way in on a huge page in order to locate and click on tiny menu titles at the bottom of the page), mysteriously placed menu pop-ups (as in I clicked a button to open a menu, and then had to pan around the page trying to find where the menu had appeared), and other problems that I never figured out. I downloaded the app out of sheer desperation to check in on time for my flight. In any other circumstance, I would have given up, gone to a competitor, and filed the company and brand name in my brain under "fuck you." (Actually, I did that last part anyway.) Nagging me to download an app is bad enough. If you took the time to build an iOS or Android app but didn't put any effort into mobile usability for your web site, then you presumed you could make me install your app. You presumed too much.
- wisty 14y agoI thought most airlines let you check in via a web app. But maybe I'm spoilt - Australian airlines are a lot less competitive than US ones (they aren't often bankrupt), and perhaps they can afford such niceties.
- k3n 14y agoYes, but he mentioned that it was virtually unusable on his mobile device. Instead of a download app they could have just made the website mobile-friendly.
- philwelch 14y agoUS airline bankruptcies explained: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines
- rhizome 14y agoI wouldn't be surprised if responsive/web-OK site views were budgeted away in favor of app development. They should be complementary, but this is an airline we're talking about.
- McKittrick 14y agoI recently put all my apps into the cloud. I now access them through a single app I call a "browser."
- g2e 14y agoWhat about the whole Objective-C > HTML5 thing though?
- hnriot 14y agoI noticed that coincidentally maybe to this, google news has stopped nagging me to save to the home screen with an annoying nag. I'd like to say I would boycott a site for its a noting nag screens but I don't think that's a very mature way to handle it and all it hurts is me. For me the most annoying thing is that sometimes I already do have the app and there's no good hand off. For example, I have the yelp app, but when google takes me to a yelp review and the nag screen says install the app, I would expect it to transition my current page view to th app equivalent. Sadly this is not the case. Ditto for LinkedIn
- olefoo 14y agoMy theory is that organizational politics are what's driving many media companies to push their 'app' over their website. Building native apps means that new people with new training need to be hired, a new team with a new manager needs to be formed. And once the budget is there for the new shiny; it must be spent, to do otherwise would be wasteful! Never underestimate the power of a bureaucracy to make things more complex so that actors on the inside can justify their existence.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoYes, a hundred times, yes. I've watched a company build a Flex app two years ago. "Why not use Web tech". Then they (several years late) decided they needed to jump on the iOS bandwagon (this, at the point that their target market was surely starting to tip to Android majority), and within the last 4 months have started working on a web app to get Android, iOS and Windows 8. So, so, so much duplicated effort. I've watched a very similar pattern play out at a local startup company as well. Even more painfully they designed their own awkward middle-layer to try to abstract out differences between iOS and Android. The problem is with higher-ups that are on the backside of trends but also think it needs to be a priority to do it soon... Okay.
- jeffool 14y agoMan that's so painful to see. I imagine most here on HN are "ahead of the curve", but I envy those who work in an environment where that's more common. I worked at a news station and when we finally opened a Facebook page my boss couldn't understand when I asked why we were put entire stories on Facebook, rather than just linking and using Facebook login or the likes. "Well the consultants recommend this way." Of course it changed eventually, but man it's weird to see. Of course, the we often joked that a consultant's job was to say do B while we were doing A, then come back in six months and ask why we were doing B? A was obviously the way to go!
- rhizome 14y agoBuilding native apps means that new people with new training need to be hired, a new team with a new manager needs to be formed. I think it's more that existing employees want to amp up their resumes, and/or Mortgage-Driven Development. That the apps (and their CTAs) routinely suck tells me it's Mr. Learned-Rails-In-24hrs doing tech-lead.
- dangrover 14y agoThe irritating part is that, even if I decide I want the app, I still have to use the website to see the particular piece of content I was linked to. Most sites just tell you to get their app, they don't deep link into the app when you do have it.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mverwijs 14y agoEven worse: I can't recall the number of times I've clicked 'No thanks' on a 'Download our app'-page, only to get redirected to the homepage, instead of the page I was originally supposed to view. Server attention span is still terrible, as explained by XKCD: http://xkcd.com/869/ http://xkcd.com/869/
- dredmorbius 14y agoI'll make a specific call-out to G+, which won't allow you to view a user's profile page on mobile unless you're signed into a G+ account. Fuck you, Google.
- noinput 14y agoThe irony of it all at the bottom of the post: Now Available! Download WordPress for iOS
- hayksaakian 14y agoThe problem is that mobile browsers are especially bad, not that dedicated apps are somehow better. (Regarding most CRUD native apps)
- peterhunt 14y agoI think the big reason for this is to unlock the engagement goldmine that is push notifications. I bet they've crunched the numbers and would prefer a few users having push notifications to more users not having them.
- ohwp 14y agoCompany X reads in a magazine they really really needs an app to keep up. Developer X sees money and ofcourse builds the app. Just don't install the app and the hype will soon be gone.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- stesch 14y agoMost of the time I just visit a site from my phone because somebody posted a link on Twitter. I visit the site for the very first time and won't see it again. Why bothering me? Make an ad in the sidebar but don't open a fucking confirm window!
- NameNickHN 14y agoBelieve it or not but there are heavy user on all of those websites who probably love those apps. They are the target audience for those apps (even if the app publishes don't realize that). Only because those websites are less famous than e.g. reddit or HN, it doesn't mean that they shouldn't offer their own app. The real issue here is how they inform you about this app. The less intrusive and obnoxious they do this, the better, obviously.
- SiVal 14y agoAre there any web templates, frameworks, libraries, or whatever that are carefully crafted to look exactly like the native app UIs on major phone platforms? If more developers used them, more users might develop a preference for web apps over native apps as a default policy.
- muratmutlu 14y agoA collection of bad mobile web experiences (app download blockers etc) are showcased here http://wtfmobileweb.com/ http://wtfmobileweb.com/
- glesica 14y agoYes! This frustrates me to no end. A surprising culprit is (or was, I stopped using them because of this) Hipmunk. I would think that a new, web-savvy company would have a reasonable web site. But they don't. Their web site is complete garbage on a mobile device and the solution is to download their app. Sorry guys, not gonna happen.
- ruswick 14y agoThis is especially problematic with companies like Quora, which coerce you into downloading their app. They literally obfuscate all answers and tell you to download the app, which is absurd. Here is the actual wording: http://cl.ly/image/1n3P0e072m0F http://cl.ly/image/1n3P0e072m0F
- hub_ 14y agoBut Quora has also had a douchey attitude wtr to login and things like that. If you are logged out you almost get coerced to log back in. And it does not behave the same if you were never logged in.
- mark_l_watson 14y ago+1 Right on. At least we should have something similar to a global opt out list for nagging to install apps. Most companies have become much better at making it easy to opt out of emails after you have done business with them. Web portals should learn the same lesson with nags for app installations. I am firmly in the HTML5 camp on rich web apps instead of custom apps. A tangent, but: our purpose in life is to make life better for those we love and also the world in general. Assuming that you are producing good content, do you feel like you better serve people with a universal web + mobile HTML5 web app, or some custom Android and/or iOS app? One of my projects for the new year is to take my old cookingspace.com hack and add "AI" for suggesting alternative recipes, generating recipes based on ingredients on hand, etc. Yesterday I started to flesh out a simple UI in an Android app, basically just having fun. This morning I had one of those "what was I thinking" moments, and then saw the linked article which I agree with.
- LnxPrgr3 14y agoYou know what's funny? I like native apps for a lot of things. They feel and act, well… native! Maybe I just haven't seen enough well executed HTML5 apps, but every one I've used so far is a far cry from what a native app can be. It's often pretty obvious when a "native" app is just a glorified Web view. But… I don't want to download an app to access your Web forum or read your news articles. I don't need a new app for every freaking Web site I visit. My phone has a perfectly capable Web browser, and I'm not afraid to use it. It works surprisingly well even on a lot of sites that obviously weren't designed for it. "I do like having the option of a higher-fidelity experience if I want it. If you provide a lot of value, I’ll grab the app on my own accord and enjoy it that much more, thanks." Exactly! For sites I access super frequently, and where the app actually makes it easier to use, I'm all for it! But with rare exceptions, I just don't spend enough time on a given news site or forum to warrant downloading an app for it, no matter how amazing that app is. HTML5 is a fine medium for content delivery. Please get out of my face and let me browse your damn site! (On a related note: sites pretending to be iPhone apps in the browser are… usually more irritating than useful. I know Apple did it with their iPhone manual, but I think even their attempt is kinda lame. If you look like a native app, I start expecting your UI to respond like a native app, and I'm usually very disappointed.)
- Cowen 14y agoI once had an idea for an "app-aggregating app." I realized that a lot of apps that I get prompted to download have effectively one-off usage patterns and I'd delete them immediately after downloading and using them. This app would've essentially just allowed for very basic functionality for layouts, buttons, and form input from however many companies built these basic interfaces. That way I wouldn't have to download any more super-special apps, I could just load up the interface and work with that. As I started thinking about this app more, I realized it was called a "web browser." I wish more companies put stronger emphasis on their mobile site.
- vojant 14y agoAgree, I prefer browser than apps. I always use many tabs - its just faster than goin from app to another single-purpose app.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]