Install this app to browse our website...
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Yes, yes, some sites advertise their apps as an afterthought, but this one is particularly egregious...
Yeah, if you didn't deliberately put a 20s interstitial in there it wouldn't be a problem.
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@PJH ...which one?
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@masonwheeler said in Install this app to browse our website...:
@PJH ...which one?
Fumbled wrong button on mobile. OP Is now what I intended.
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No Reddit, I don't want infinite scrolls and I definitely don't want autoplay gifs. Just give me some HTML and CSS and maybe some JS if you don't want to use new HTML5
details
elements.
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Almost semi-related:
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Reddit has gotten particularly nasty at this lately.
Imgur, the picture host that doesn't suck as much, has gotten even worse. Their mobile website no longer lets you upload pictures to them - mind you, their core business - they demand that you use their app.
Same goes for Facebook: they neutered their mobile website ages ago ("want to send someone a message? Install the Messenger app!") and recently they've started placing overlay banners on the site. I guess it's a matter of time until FB goes full Pinterest on their mobile users and just redirects them to the app store.
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@PJH If you use i.reddit.com (their old mobile site), pages load instantaneously (as they should, since it's just fucking text). But if you use their "modern" one, it takes like 5 seconds per load on a good connection.
MAYBE THE APP WOULDN'T BE FASTER IF THE WEB WASN'T SO HORRIFYINGLY SLOW.
Maybe it's intentional to get you to download their app. Maybe it's just sheer incompetence. Either case, fuck you reddit.
@AlexMedia The irony is that imgur's new website is actually significantly faster than their previous one... so of course, they had to limit its usefulness or people might start using it.
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@AlexMedia said in Install this app to browse our website...:
Imgur, . . . mobile website no longer lets you upload pictures to them - mind you, their core business - they demand that you use their app.
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@anonymous234 said in Install this app to browse our website...:
But if you use their "modern" one, it takes like 5 seconds per load on a good connection.
Two years ago, load times were worse. Much worse.
https://github.com/reddit/reddit-mobile/issues/247
While the development stack (babel, react, npm, etc) is modern and feels great, it ends up shoving a lot of JS at the browser to make it all work.
Ugh, web developers. :/
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From one of the Reddit Mobile devs in the same thread I just linked to:
A lot of this was very quickly built up from a tech demo, so it leaves quite a bit to be desired (and refactored).
ARGH. Don't push something to production if it "leaves quite a bit to be desired", but do it when it's done and in a stable condition.
Also, if a dev of Chrome comes by to tell you how bad your code performs and what you should do to fix it, you really f*cked up.
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@AlexMedia Ah, so it's incompetence.
When you make a very simple website using a fancy stack, and it takes 45 seconds to load that website (on 4G), shouldn't your first reaction be to throw that stack away and try again?
I mean, they already have the desktop website, which is static, and the old mobile website, which is also static... a few CSS adjustments, a few javascript fixes, and they'd have a good, super fast mobile website. I don't see why they had to rewrite it.
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@anonymous234 said in Install this app to browse our website...:
When you make a very simple website using a fancy stack, and it takes 45 seconds to load that website (on 4G), shouldn't your first reaction be to throw that stack away and try again?
Not if you use scrum! Because then you'll just "fix" it in the next sprint, right?
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@PJH said in Install this app to browse our website...:
Yes, yes, some sites advertise their apps as an afterthought, but this one is particularly egregious...
[snip]Yeah, if you didn't deliberately put a 20s interstitial in there it wouldn't be a problem.
Meanwhile this is one of the (redacted) emails I received from Facebook:
You know, I can see "This message" just fine, and if you'd inline the content of the original message in the email I could actually read it immediately instead of all this content walled garden bullshit!
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This post is deleted!
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@AlexMedia said in Install this app to browse our website...:
Their mobile website no longer lets you upload pictures to them
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@Dreikin said in Install this app to browse our website...:
@AlexMedia said in Install this app to browse our website...:
Their mobile website no longer lets you upload pictures to them
Edt: Huh.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Install this app to browse our website...:
Huh
Also, GG NodeBB for letting me DoS imgur merely by typing in the editor.
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That's the desktop website. On my phone it doesn't work properly.
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What I don't understand is, what is the business case for a) having an app version of your site, and b) preferring it as the way your users interact with you?
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@Kian The app is WebView + ads. I hope it answers your questions.
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@Kian said in Install this app to browse our website...:
What I don't understand is, what is the business case for a) having an app version of your site, and b) preferring it as the way your users interact with you?
At my work place we happen to have an app which is 90% browser, though the remaining 10% is meant to access cryptography hardware like reading personal identity tokens.
In case of Reddit I would concur with @Gąska that it's likely a browser app which might do some aggressive caching for performance (Reddit can update the app if their server code changes, browsers cannot make such a hard assumption even though they try), then as a "bonus" stop you from using an ad blocker.
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@Kian It's the most reliable way to tell what device they're on ;)
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Speaking of mobile pages. I noticed that Twitter sometimes cannot display tweets on mobile that I can see perfectly fine if I switch to desktop version. I get the "this tweet is loading for too long" error, sometimes adter 10 seconds, sometimes after 10 milliseconds. Strangely enough, it only happens with tweets of Scott Adams, Kellyanne Conway, Malik Obama, Wikileaks etc.
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@Gąska the API used for their app is not used on the desktop, and the app API is notoriously flaky.
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@Arantor said in Install this app to browse our website...:
@Gąska the API used for their app is not used on the desktop, and the app API is notoriously flaky.
Not mobile app. Mobile page.
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@Gąska oh, my bad. In that case it's their server simulating mobile connectivity
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@AlexMedia said in Install this app to browse our website...:
Same goes for Facebook: they neutered their mobile website ages ago ("want to send someone a message? Install the Messenger app!") and recently they've started placing overlay banners on the site. I guess it's a matter of time until FB goes full Pinterest on their mobile users and just redirects them to the app store.
Pro tip for you and others: You can view and send Messenger messages still through mbasic.facebook.com.
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@Gąska said in Install this app to browse our website...:
Speaking of mobile pages. I noticed that Twitter sometimes cannot display tweets on mobile that I can see perfectly fine if I switch to desktop version. I get the "this tweet is loading for too long" error, sometimes adter 10 seconds, sometimes after 10 milliseconds. Strangely enough, it only happens with tweets of Scott Adams, Kellyanne Conway, Malik Obama, Wikileaks etc.
You're posting on this website about a shitty piece of software and you're assuming it's because of malice instead of the developer being a complete moron?
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sometimes I wonder if the the modern frontend web stack was created to give front end devs job security
any time they have to make themselves useful, they can just remove one framework and make a post on medium about the performance improvements
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@ben_lubar said in Install this app to browse our website...:
@Gąska said in Install this app to browse our website...:
Speaking of mobile pages. I noticed that Twitter sometimes cannot display tweets on mobile that I can see perfectly fine if I switch to desktop version. I get the "this tweet is loading for too long" error, sometimes adter 10 seconds, sometimes after 10 milliseconds. Strangely enough, it only happens with tweets of Scott Adams, Kellyanne Conway, Malik Obama, Wikileaks etc.
You're posting on this website about a shitty piece of software and you're assuming it's because of malice instead of the developer being a complete moron?
It's just a total coincidence that posts disappearing from people's timelines, followers suddenly stopping following, the tweets they're replying to showing as unavailable, all happen exclusively to Trump supporters. Hanlon's razor requires adequate explanation.
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@Gąska said in Install this app to browse our website...:
all happen exclusively to Trump supporters
Or maybe they don't happen exclusively to Trump supporters and there's some other factor linking those accounts, like users of the website reporting the posts (possibly wrongly) for abuse?
It seems like an extremely indirect, expensive-to-maintain, pointless attack if it's actually intentional.
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@ben_lubar said in Install this app to browse our website...:
Or maybe they don't happen exclusively to Trump supporters and there's some other factor linking those accounts, like users of the website reporting the posts (possibly wrongly) for abuse?
If posts are removed due to reports, it says they're removed. If account is blocked due to many reported tweets, it says it's blocked. What happens here is something that from the outside is indistinguishible from technical difficulties - but it's very weird for one side of political spectrum to have them much more often than the other. I mean, the code accessing the tweets is the same regardless of who the poster is, right?
Shadowbanning is great because you can never prove it.
@ben_lubar said in Install this app to browse our website...:
It seems like an extremely indirect, expensive-to-maintain, pointless attack if it's actually intentional.
Indirect? About as much as burning the Bible is indirect attack on Christians. Expensive to maintain? Just a single "I don't like this guy" checkbox in Twitter admin panel and a single if statement before showing content - and it doesn't even have to work reliably! Pointless? Well, I know of at least one person who was successfully convinced by showing him carefully selected news stories that Republicans deserve to die.
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@heterodox said in Install this app to browse our website...:
Pro tip for you and others: You can view and send Messenger messages still through mbasic.facebook.com.
I did not know that. Thanks!
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@Gąska said in Install this app to browse our website...:
it's very weird for one side of political spectrum to have them much more often than the other
Do you have any evidence of that or is it pure speculation based on what you've observed yourself?
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@Gąska said in Install this app to browse our website...:
but it's very weird for one side of political spectrum to have them much more often than the other
I smell confirmation bias.
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@Jaloopa said in Install this app to browse our website...:
@Gąska said in Install this app to browse our website...:
it's very weird for one side of political spectrum to have them much more often than the other
Do you have any evidence of that or is it pure speculation based on what you've observed yourself?
Considering how much SJWs love to complain about everything, I think there would be at least one article by SJW about being shadowbanned. I've seen none so far. There might be one, but I haven't seen it - if someone has a link, I'd love to read it.
Yes, in the basic sense, it's pure speculation on what I've observed. But then, so is entire science.
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@Gąska said in Install this app to browse our website...:
I think there would be at least one article by SJW about being shadowbanned
Maybe they've only ever posted it to places where they're shadowbanned and where nobody else needs to care?
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@Gąska said in Install this app to browse our website...:
Speaking of mobile pages. I noticed that Twitter sometimes cannot display tweets on mobile that I can see perfectly fine if I switch to desktop version. I get the "this tweet is loading for too long" error, sometimes adter 10 seconds, sometimes after 10 milliseconds. Strangely enough, it only happens with tweets of Scott Adams, Kellyanne Conway, Malik Obama, Wikileaks etc.
I've noticed a similar thing, but not limited to any particular user. The mobile site is just a complete train wreck. Opening a tweet in Relay (reddit app), it's a 50/50 chance of immediately timing out () or saying "You are not authorized to view this tweet", and opening the same in browser will either show it or (again) immediately time out. Refreshing with the browser control (as opposed to the useless "Try again" button Twitter gives you) usually solves the timeout problem.
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Presented without comment. Except that one, of course; and this one.
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Twitter is full of Twits. News at 11!
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The sticky title bug made this relevant:
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@pjh I use an unofficial app
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@wharrgarbl said in Install this app to browse our website...:
@pjh I use an unofficial app
is it called Chrome?