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? 🫠
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.
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?
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
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
On Instagram
Funny you describe all the annoyances of web vs mobile, but visit this awful site. Instagram wont let me see anything at all, web, mobile or otherwise because I don’t and won’t have an account.
Maybe avoiding social media all together is a better idea.
there is NO social media that’s worth getting frustrated over
the first time a site does something stupid (“enter your ph # to continue!” or “disable your adblocker to continue!”) i’m out and never going back. the internet exists to provide me with things, not the other way around
Same.
There’s almost never only a single option to offer me what I’m after, so I’ll just go back to my search results or whatever and pick the next link and move on.
There’s no way in hell I’m giving some jackasses my phone number, though. I don’t even like giving people who really actually need to be able to call me my number, so why would I give some sketchy-ass website it?
I know it’s not what you were asking about, but you will probably find this website helpful: https://www.rtings.com/
They are by far the best consumer electronic rating website I’ve ever seen. There’s a table view where you can do things like show me all computer monitors that have black frame insertion or show me all headphones with an audio delay of less than 5 ms and other weirdly specific stuff like that.
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.
This shouldn’t really be surprising, I’d think most people’s internet usage is probably on their phone, and has been for some time.
People don’t want to sit at a desk or whatever and browse or do their socials stuff, they want to do it sat on the sofa while the TV is on or in between chores in the house.
I think the last two companies I’ve worked for, both B2C have had mobile web and app usage way higher than desktop web.
They don’t prioritize mobile users, they prioritize mobile apps - easier to track and gather telemetry, easier to show ads (harder to use adblock), easier to send notifications, you can expect the user to return if they already downloaded an app.
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.
As someone who is on mobile a lot, I find the opposite to be the case. So many websites are not optimized for mobile browsing.
Sometimes I get the urge to go check Reddit. But not with that app of theirs, thru Firefox on my mobile and never logged in. Well after trying to view a few things it’s so buggy and broken and sometimes it doesn’t go back to the threads and just stays in the page I was viewing and suddenly the urge is gone. It’s so badly coded.
I don’t have an account on Reddit but I’ve browsed it a few times and got the same type of thing. They do have an old version of the UI that’s all wide and fits nicely on a desktop and you just have to type in “old.” before “Reddit” in the address bar. On the current UI I’ll sometimes click back and instead of going back the page will break and “Reddit” will be in giant blue letters it’s weird.
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? 🫠
They are. This gives much better control to them of what we’re doing when we’re doingon ‘our’ phone, and much less control to us at the same time. It’s a Win-Win situation… for them only. And a lose-lose for us (worse experience and much less control of it).
That’s one of the reasons I refuse to use my phone to do anything… where I still have the option.
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.
Also the opposite can be infuriating. When a company asks you to install their app, you usually find that the website has more features. Looks like usually the app is just a bare bones version of the actual website with several core features missing.
Yes, I hate it. In fact, I hate most of the impact of smartphones on the internet:
- I’m not giving you my phone number. Shu’up. Stop asking.
- I’m not installing your broken browser made for a single site. Aka, your “app”. And if you don’t let me check your site without that “app”, I am not doing it.
- My screen is larger than it is high; most [all?] smartphones are the opposite. Smart web devs can deal with it, except that those are a minority, so guess what - I get blank space on both sides!
- I’ve noticed that the same people people have worse basic reading comprehension when using a phone than a computer; that’s anecdotal but based on both myself and people whom I interact personally with. And I’m tempted to blame the sorry state of social media partially on that.
