ive never understood why the ‘browser app’ isnt leveraged more. they are general purpose, multimedia, secure and mature. we spent decades making the mobile browsers very useful, and then build apps that just encapsulate a website. what an incredibly inefficiency
A shocking number of users would be hard pressed to figure out how to type in a url to a mobile web browser… or even know what that is, and they deserve a nice user interface too. App stores make it easier to find, too.
Apps are super efficient just not for the consumer. Not only do they get our money through buying their overpriced product they can sell the “depersonalized” data they scraped while you were using the app
The answer is app stores. People need to find your app, and web apps usually don’t show up there. Also the web ecosystem is inherently slower to adopt new features, and it has historically been harder to build very custom experiences on it.
yea I have it set as my start page / new tab in browser. it’s just an aggregator of a bunch of media sources and stuff I look at on the web. I have a logged in view too which tracks history / read articles / podcasts etc. hit / for search. i is available keyboard commands - but this is a personal project mostly but im thinking to make a public version
woooo thank you! it’s a react front end; pretty much all custom with some integrations like youtube player and maps. the back end is a python flask mongo api and I just scrape lots of sources for media. there’s some ai scripting for taxonomies, spam detection, sentiment analysis, etc.
ive never understood why the ‘browser app’ isnt leveraged more. they are general purpose, multimedia, secure and mature. we spent decades making the mobile browsers very useful, and then build apps that just encapsulate a website. what an incredibly inefficiency
Apps can harvest more data. Aside from use cases where high performance is required, that’s about the only reason.
A shocking number of users would be hard pressed to figure out how to type in a url to a mobile web browser… or even know what that is, and they deserve a nice user interface too. App stores make it easier to find, too.
A url shortcut would be indistinguishable from an app to these people, plus they’d have a more consistent user experience
These same users are the ones downloading malware and getting their info stolen.
Counter point: Once in a while, people should be expected to reach up a little bit instead of society constantly dumbing itself down.
Unfortunately, the lowest common denominator is becoming more and more common.
“Please type an 11 digit printer number to continue. You have 5 seconds.”
That should keep 'm out.
Apps are super efficient just not for the consumer. Not only do they get our money through buying their overpriced product they can sell the “depersonalized” data they scraped while you were using the app
A lot of “real” apps are just browser apps wrapped in a system web view with the assets pre-installed. That goes for both desktop and mobile apps.
What we really need more of, IMHO, are PWAs. They combine the benefits of regular web apps with with those of “native” apps built on web technology.
The answer is app stores. People need to find your app, and web apps usually don’t show up there. Also the web ecosystem is inherently slower to adopt new features, and it has historically been harder to build very custom experiences on it.
yea I went ahead and just tailored my own app experience: https://s.marko.tech
How did you get started with webapps? Any good resources?
it’s just building a regular website pretty much with some extra meta tags
What is this? It seems like it would be really handy, but I’m not sure what it is. Is it like a launcher, or all in one?
yea I have it set as my start page / new tab in browser. it’s just an aggregator of a bunch of media sources and stuff I look at on the web. I have a logged in view too which tracks history / read articles / podcasts etc. hit / for search. i is available keyboard commands - but this is a personal project mostly but im thinking to make a public version
Wow this is really cool. Mind if I ask how you built this? It runs so well on anything.
woooo thank you! it’s a react front end; pretty much all custom with some integrations like youtube player and maps. the back end is a python flask mongo api and I just scrape lots of sources for media. there’s some ai scripting for taxonomies, spam detection, sentiment analysis, etc.
Thank you. Well done dude.
That’s horrendous but in their head, having you have an app on your home screen is a constant reminder of their brand. “free” advertisement