Big list of webapps masquerading as native



  • @marczellm ...dat player is a work of art...
    no buffering, and changing the quality 1. resets the video position; 2. makes "Play" button to stop responding, only way to recover being F5, which of course cancels the quality settings...



  • For me, changing the quality

    1. reset the video position
    2. did nothing for a while
    3. jumped back to the video position :)


  • @Adynathos except this doesn't really hold true for macOS where Ctrl is firmly less important than it is on other platforms.

    Do you follow the platform convention (and thus Cmd rather than Ctrl) or the convention that it is the same on all platforms and thus disjointed on some of them?

    Ports are hard to really do well.


  • area_pol

    @Arantor I agree it is difficult.
    Best solution is to make it configurable



  • @Adynathos said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    @Arantor I agree it is difficult.
    Best solution is to make it configurable

    So you're saying that it's fine to double (or more) the QA effort for those 0.00001% of users that work on multiple platforms? (to say nothing of the development effort) As the single developer on a cross platform program (windows/mac), fuck no.


  • area_pol

    @dcon said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    So you're saying that it's fine to double (or more) the QA effort for those 0.00001% of users that work on multiple platforms? (to say nothing of the development effort) As the single developer on a cross platform program (windows/mac), fuck no.

    So the key-binding menu would take half of the effort invested in your program? Maybe such a small program is not worth the effort at all.
    Ideally, this should be part of the UI framework: you declare a shortcut and default key, the framework makes an automatic key-binding menu. For example KDE does that.

    And it serves all users who want to change something, not only the ones who use other systems. For example those who have physical problems with using the default controls.

    Control configuration is a standard feature in games, so why not other programs?



  • @marczellm Yeah! Gotta make sure to handle those out of memory and stack overflows!



  • So the key-binding menu would take half of the effort invested in your program? Maybe such a small program is not worth the effort at all.
    Ideally, this should be part of the UI framework: you declare a shortcut and default key, the framework makes an automatic key-binding menu. For example KDE does that.

    Then there's things like button layouts. Mac and Windows do ok/cancel differently. And the framework I use does do the binding. But I can't easily (as far as I know), suddenly make the Mac use Ctrl instead of Cmd. That's what it sounded like you wanted. My program behaves properly on a Mac. And properly on Windows. But it does not behave the same way on both.



  • @Adynathos said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    Ideally, this should be part of the UI framework: you declare a shortcut and default key, the framework makes an automatic key-binding menu. For example KDE does that.

    Absolutely.

    Control configuration is a standard feature in games, so why not other programs?

    Sadly, games actually have to create their own keybinding editors (unless it has changed recently). You'd think after >20 years of every single game implementing that feature, some library developer would finally make it a standard feature.



  • @AlexMedia said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    Take for example a "Do you want to save changes?" question box. Windows uses "Yes, No, Cancel", while OS X uses "No, Cancel, Yes" and Linux people might be used to seeing "Cancel, Yes, No".

    And then there's


  • area_pol

    @dcon said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    And the framework I use does do the binding. But I can't easily (as far as I know), suddenly make the Mac use Ctrl instead of Cmd.

    Usually, you specify which binding you want to change, then the key combination is recorded.
    Does the Mac not have the Ctrl key or does it not notify the program that it is pressed?

    @anonymous234 said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    Sadly, games actually have to create their own keybinding editors (unless it has changed recently).

    In Unreal Engine it is somewhat in the middle: all key bindings are stored in configs and changeable, but you need to implement the UI for the menu yourself.
    There may be some plugin that provides that.
    I consider making such a plugin myself too...



  • @Steve_The_Cynic said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    Normally, I'd let this pass, except that those parts don't look like a browser. I mean, really, how much like a web browser does the STORE page of the Steam client look?

    Have you ever navigated to the Steam Store in Chrome? It's http://store.steampowered.com/ if you haven't. (Yes, HTTP not HTTPS).

    Hint: It's identical to the Store tab in the Steam client. It's missing the infiniscroll section if you're not logged in to Steam in your browser, though.

    If you mean the actual tab UI itself, it even has a URL bar up top with a reload button.



  • @powerlord said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    it even has a URL bar up top with a reload button.

    Only if you enable that option in the settings.
    0_1497674223971_5186b458-6e08-4417-aeef-448300d607ee-image.png
    IIRC it's disabled by default.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Adynathos said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    Does the Mac not have the Ctrl key or does it not notify the program that it is pressed?

    Neither. It's got the key and it is reported to programs as such, but user expectations are strongly that the key combination Cmd+S will be used for saving. You can insist on using something else, but that just makes your program look like a pile of badly-ported Windows shit.

    There are other problems too. Did you know that font selection works completely differently on various platforms?


  • area_pol

    @dkf said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    user expectations are strongly that the key combination Cmd+S will be used for saving

    Yes, so make this the default, but let the user rebind to CTRL+S if they want.



  • @Adynathos are you seriously advocating that every program should offer every keybiniding as a configuration item?

    It would be a colossal mistake for programs that already have manny, many key bindings, e.g. Office, Photoshop.



  • pgAdmin 4 is a complete rewrite of pgAdmin, built using Python and Javascript/jQuery.


  • BINNED

    @marczellm said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    The menu is shown in the window frame, which doesn’t work with our frameless window design.

    Fuck frameless window design. I have KDE set to show sticky window and always on top buttons in the titlebar for a reason! Stop gimping my features in the name of "ooooh, shiny!"!


  • BINNED

    @marczellm said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    pgAdmin 4 is a complete rewrite of pgAdmin, built using Python and Javascript/jQuery.

    The sad part is it's still miles better than pgAdmin 3.

    Piece of shit throws wxWidgets errors at a rate of 14 per minute. The fact that it usually just does that without crashing is a small comfort.

    And don't get me started on its system theme integration (hint: it only changes the text editor background, but not the font color) and dropdowns not accepting keys and jumping to selection so I always have to scroll for a minute to get to serial...



  • Don't forget Game Dev Tycoon, a Node-WebKit mutant.


  • area_pol

    @Arantor said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    @Adynathos are you seriously advocating that every program should offer every keybiniding as a configuration item?

    Yes, and it should be part of a UI framework, with the developer only doing something liek
    registerKeyShortcut(action_id, description, default_key, callback)

    Then the framework would provide a widget for key configuration.
    It is already done this way in KDE: each of their programs (and the window manager too) has a standard key-binding menu.

    0_1497698100870_kde_key_bindings.jpg

    Additionally, a program can expose global shortcuts.

    It would be a colossal mistake for programs that already have manny, many key bindings, e.g. Office, Photoshop.

    Other big programs already have it, like Visual Studio or Blender.
    (I find it very useful, Visual Studio's default keybindings are weird)



  • @Adynathos the problem isn't technical.

    Notice the choice of apps which support this behaviour: not written for general end users.

    If you give regular users this power, you will never hear the end of the support requests it will generate.


  • area_pol

    @Arantor
    Somehow the general end users who play games can deal with it just fine.
    Or VLC which also has configurable keys - that one is definitely made for the general public.

    I think you overestimate the complexity of this feature.
    If someone does not actively change the settings, it has no effect.
    These changes can easily be reset to defaults.
    A list of actions and hotkey is conceptually simple and less likely to cause confusion than other features.
    If you have a big program with many shortcuts, its good to have a searchable reference list of them anyway.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Adynathos You neglect one key (😏) thing; changing key bindings is one of the simplest ways of configuring an application and adapting to different platforms. It gets a lot more complicated. For example, the expectations for how to configure an application's properties (a common feature of sophisticated apps) varies quite a lot between platforms: traditionally on Windows, you had a modal dialog with OK, Cancel and Apply buttons, whereas on OSX, you have options that just apply immediately as you change them in a non-modal window and there's usually no notion of cancelling, though undoing a change is also typically made easy. The presentation also varies quite a bit, though that's easier to fix with styling and toolkit trickery.

    There is no easy way to make an app support both ways of working: they require different ways of integrating. It's just technically a bit tricky as modal dialogs fit a model of procedure calls whereas non-modal dialogs are more like an independent thread, and even worse from a design perspective as the differences in how you interact make it so that you put different things in the dialog in the first place. (Ignoring anything that's plain platform-specific, of course.)

    Portable GUIs are hard. They're much harder than they appear to be at first glance, and are actually initially harder than writing a separate app for each platform. (Of course, if you can have some common library — common at the source level if nothing else — so that it is just the veneer that has to change then that makes everything much easier. It's probably a good idea to work that way anyway.)



  • @Adynathos no, you underestimate it.

    A typical game has maybe 15 controls for most operations. Yes, there are exceptions (MMOs come to mind, but these already have a high learning curve and most people don't rebind)

    Now go look up how many shortcuts there are for, say, Word. And remember, the group of people here is a very different group from the motivated gamer who cares.



  • @Adynathos said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    No, I want program A to behave the same way on every OS. But it can behave differently than program B, as long as the behaviour is logical.

    This is really bad if you don’t know that particular program, and that’s exactly the problem that operating systems’ default GUIs are there to solve by setting standards and conventions that all applications should (ideally) adhere to unless they have a really good reason not to. Make your program work the same way on all platforms and you end up with Adobe’s crapware, but worse.

    I don't even know what those platform conventions would be. That theres an X button to close the program and that you click on buttons in the UI?

    Oh, just stuff nobody ever uses. Like a button to close the window, as you mentioned — and where on the window that button is, whether there’s even a button for a certain function at all, from which sides you can resize a window, what shortcut keys you can press, whether you have to single- or double-click on things, what types of controls exist … do I need to go on?

    @wharrgarbl said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    Have everything not provided by the system be identical and don't mess with the rest.

    Even that won’t necessarily work because people used to different OS'es expect different things even from controls etc. the OS doesn’t provide, because of similarities to existing ones.

    @AlexMedia said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    Take for example a "Do you want to save changes?" question box. Windows uses "Yes, No, Cancel", while OS X uses "No, Cancel, Yes"

    Older OS X will have “Don’t Save, Cancel, Save” buttons. More current versions have those too, but only if the app doesn’t support automatic saving (otherwise, it will just save and close the document) or if you haven’t saved the file before at all (and in that case it also prompts you for a filename and location in the same dialog).

    @Adynathos said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    Yes, so make this the default, but let the user rebind to CTRL+S if they want.

    Since we’re talking about macOS here, you can basically do that by setting in the system preferences that the Control key functions as Command, and that means it’ll work that way in all applications — except, probably, certain applications that have been ported from other systems and when built for macOS, specifically listen for the Command key instead of asking the OS which key has been pressed (or something).

    Also, you can define your own shortcuts for any menu item in any program via the system preferences as well. The program doesn’t need its own functionality for this (implemented differently in each), but in practice I suspect few people use it — partly because it’s hidden where they don’t expect it, and partly because they don’t need it because Apple strongly encourages developers to follow its UI guidelines (or, perhaps, developers choose to do that). Much more than on Windows, by the looks of it, and let’s not even mention Linux.



  • @Adynathos said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    But if I want to save, i will press CTRL + S and I want it to work regardless of OS.

    That won't work on a Mac, where the shortcut for save is Command-S. (Macs haven't changed that much in the last 5 years, have they?)



  • @Adynathos said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    Best solution is to make it configurable

    No. No. No no no. No. No no no no no no no no no no. No.

    First of all, there's an objectively correct way to show a "do you want to save this document?" dialog on every platform. (Except perhaps Linux, which is a ball of shit.) There's no point to "configuring" it to do something different, because one way is objectively correct for that platform and all other ways are objectively incorrect.

    Secondly, your complaint is that porting software is difficult. (Ok, fair enough.) So your solution is to increase your QA burden by like 6 times by making everything configurable? Now you don't just have to QA "does it work on Windows", you have to QA:

    • does it work on Windows when set to Windows conventions
    • does it work on Linux when set to Windows conventions
    • does it work on Windows when set to Linux conventions
    • does it work on macOS when set to Linux con--

    You get the fucking point.

    If your complaint is that it's too much effort, why did you multiply the effort several times?

    Your post is stupid and you should feel bad about it.



  • @Adynathos said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    Somehow the general end users who play games can deal with it just fine.

    So you know for sure that, for example, Ubisoft doesn't have a tech support burden from people who called them up because they (or someone else in their household) changed the default keys and now they don't know how to do something in the game?

    Can you prove that? Or are you just yanking that factoid right out of your ass and plopping it here?

    @Adynathos said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    Or VLC which also has configurable keys - that one is definitely made for the general public.

    A person who's obviously never used VLC!

    (Well, ok, I guess it might be made for the general public, but it's made for the general public by morons who have no clue how to write a usable app.)

    @Adynathos said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    I think you overestimate the complexity of this feature.
    If someone does not actively change the settings, it has no effect.
    These changes can easily be reset to defaults.

    It's a bad idea for a program to have completely different control sets. One of my major gripes about ReSharper is that it changes so much shit in Visual Studio, including utterly pointless changes like changing the "search everywhere" keyboard shortcut for no goddamned reason at all, that people who spend a couple months getting used to ReSharper can't use stock VS anymore, and nobody who uses stock VS can use ReSharper when all its features are turned on.

    Hell, just recently I failed a job interview because they plopped me in front of a ReSharper-mutated VS to write a code problem, and it was so mutated from standard VS I could barely fucking type!

    Having multiple UIs for the same program (on the same platform) is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. The support burden is the most costly of those, not the only one.


  • area_pol

    @blakeyrat said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    Secondly, your complaint is that porting software is difficult.

    That is not my complaint at all.
    My point is that I personally like using software which works the same way on every OS, despite it not conforming to OS conventions.
    I understand that many other people prefer programs conforming to OS conventions.
    I think configurability is a good compromise.
    I do not claim that making software that I like using is a way to maximize profit or minimize development effort.


    I must admit that the vast majority of programs that I use behaves exactly the same on Linux and Windows, so either the conventions are the very similar or the programs indeed ignore the them.
    In this context, this discussion is very abstract. Sorry...

    @blakeyrat said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    So you know for sure that, for example, Ubisoft doesn't have a tech support burden from people who called them up because they (or someone else in their household) changed the default keys and now they don't know how to do something in the game?
    Can you prove that? Or are you just yanking that factoid right out of your ass and plopping it here?

    When a game is missing key-binding settings, it often causes complains on steam forum and video reviews.
    The situation you describe can happen to any person only once - then they learn how these settings work.

    @blakeyrat said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    One of my major gripes about ReSharper is that it changes so much shit in Visual Studio, including utterly pointless changes like changing the "search everywhere" keyboard shortcut for no goddamned reason at all, that people who spend a couple months getting used to ReSharper can't use stock VS anymore, and nobody who uses stock VS can use ReSharper when all its features are turned on.

    Yes, that is exactly the situation I have in mind.
    If a program works differently on different OSes, me switching between OSes is like you switching between VS and VS+ReSharper.
    Imagine if you did the switch every day.
    But because VS has key-binding settings, you could rebind ReSharper shortcuts to the ones you are used to.



  • @Adynathos said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    If a program works differently on different OSes, me switching between OSes is like you switching between VS and VS+ReSharper.
    Imagine if you did the switch every day.

    You have a point if the only programs you use on different systems are the same on both. I have this feeling that if you mainly use those programs but also need another occasionally, you’ll get just as annoyed by the shortcuts etc. that you changed from the defaults, because those defaults will still apply in other programs. It’s probably less likely to be a problem if you go between Windows and Linux, since a lot of Linux desktop environments use basically Windows shortcuts, but some years ago when I had mentally change between Windows and OS X at least twice a day, the other system tended to get in my way for a bit most times. Having to keep switching between a program you set up to use your preferred shortcuts, and all the others that stick to the OS defaults, gives much the same trouble except all day long.



  • Fuck software that try to translate shortcuts to my local language instead of using the standards we memorized decades ago.


  • 🚽 Regular

    @Arantor said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    @Adynathos are you seriously advocating that every program should offer every keybiniding as a configuration item?

    It would be a colossal mistake for programs that already have manny, many key bindings, e.g. Office, Photoshop.

    The PT-PT version of Office maps Ctrl+N to bold and Ctrl+S to underline. It's great fun.

    Edit: didn't even read @wharrgarbl's post before posting this.


  • Considered Harmful

    @cartman82 said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    All electron apps that I use are great.

    If "great" is taken to mean "uses CPU like crazy" and "makes an Emmental look perfectly solid in comparison", then yes.



  • @LaoC said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    If "great" is taken to mean "uses CPU like crazy" and "makes an Emmental look perfectly solid in comparison", then yes.

    Whatever, CPU is there to be used.

    As for security, sounds like more bullshit theater. Until there are widespread instances of people's computers being hacked by script kiddies, without phishing and other personalized tricks, I am fine with it.


  • FoxDev

    @LaoC said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    makes an Emmental look perfectly solid in comparison

    unpached versions of Chromium

    0_1497869263618_49a62643-7314-4602-8fcd-70c669be4a4c-image.png



  • @cartman82 And using RAM like crazy?

    Although this is more a general problem with the web as a platform. A friend of mine was running Chrome with like 10-12 tabs, and VS Code, and his 8 GB RAM filled up to the point that Windows started complaining that if you don't close something it can lead to data loss. :wtf: Meanwhile he had Total Commander open, with addons, and that used like under 1 MB IIRC. And it's a very complex app too. I hear the same problems with the Slack client.

    So until the memory usage of HTML/JS gets optimized WAAAY down, so that, y'know, you can run a few apps side by side, Electron apps are more or less banned from my machine.



  • @marczellm said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    @cartman82 And using RAM like crazy?
    Although this is more a general problem with the web as a platform. A friend of mine was running Chrome with like 10-12 tabs, and VS Code, and his 8 GB RAM filled up to the point that Windows started complaining that if you don't close something it can lead to data loss. Meanwhile he had Total Commander open, with addons, and that used like under 1 MB IIRC. And it's a very complex app too. I hear the same problems with the Slack client.

    So until the memory usage of HTML/JS gets optimized WAAAY down, so that, y'know, you can run a few apps side by side, Electron apps are more or less banned from my machine.

    Yeah, they work one or two levels of abstraction above TC, so the resource usage is greater.

    I am sure someone could hand-assemble something that uses even less RAM than TC, like some of those demo scene things that fit entirely into 1KB of RAM.

    I. Don't. Care.

    I have like 24-32 GB ram on my various machines, and a lot of it is often unused. If you can shave off a year of dev or pump some more features or better UX, but have to use a bit more resources, that's an absolutely no-brainer trade-off in my book.


  • kills Dumbledore



  • @Jaloopa said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    TC

    Top Cat?

    @marczellm said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    Meanwhile he had Total Commander open


  • area_pol

    @RaceProUK said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    unpached versions of Chromium

    I do not say Electron is good, but why does that particular thing matter at all?
    Exploits in browsers are usually holes in the sandbox (which can be disabled in electron anyway).
    But here, the browser is running the desktop application, not arbitrary content from the internet.


  • FoxDev

    @Adynathos said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    I do not say Electron is good, but why does that particular thing matter at all?

    Are you asking why unpatched vulnerabilities in a major component matter?


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @cartman82 said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    I have like 24-32 GB ram on my various machines

    So long as you realize that that's highly unusual. The average is 6-8GB.



  • @Adynathos It's not a problem IF the developer is careful not to load any unsecured third party content at all. But I suspect most of these apps have a dozen scripts and iframes from random people.



  • @Yamikuronue said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    So long as you realize that that's highly unusual. The average is 6-8GB.

    Yeah, but folk who have 6-8 GB on average have much fewer apps open at one time (being less of power users), so it equals out IMO.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @cartman82 But if Chrome happily chews up all 8GB, life sucks. I run into serious bottlenecks, frequently, on my 8GB machine.



  • @Yamikuronue said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    @cartman82 But if Chrome happily chews up all 8GB, life sucks. I run into serious bottlenecks, frequently, on my 8GB machine.

    You are a power user. You should have more RAM.

    I was thinking someone like my mother, who opens one browser tab, and reads everything inside that, because she is not very crafty with multitasking.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @cartman82 said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    You should have more RAM.

    Yeah, but I don't. Because I don't have the time or money to build my own machine. Something like a web browser should be better optimized for the average user anyway.


  • 🚽 Regular

    @LB_ said in Cool Computing Videos:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tefielQeHZY

    cnn.com :
    0_1497879390523_Capture.PNG

    That's 5 times more CSS than images, for rice's sake.

    Mind you, this is with uMatrix ON.

    So it's not only the browser makers' fault.



  • @Adynathos said in Big list of webapps masquerading as native:

    If a program works differently on different OSes, me switching between OSes is like you switching between VS and VS+ReSharper.
    Imagine if you did the switch every day.

    Imagine if I had a Windows PC and a Macbook, and used (e.g.) Sublime Text on both, and somehow had no problem going back and forth between them, even with the window controls on the wrong side and the save shortcut using a different modifier key.


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