this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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Building a great mobile website is much harder than building a great mobile app, so I understand when they just don't build a great website to begin with, but taking away an existing website, yeah, that sucks.
You need one anyway for desktop users. A desktop-first website will usually be more accessible and easier to onboard, especially for infrequent users.
Example: To track a package, a certain store emailed me a button whose destination is this monster of a URL:
(Numbers and some strings were changed but the gist and 604-character length remains.)
The main function of such a long URL is to redirect desktop users to
https://order.fart.cum/cz/cs/purchases/4206913372/to see the tracking info while mobile users get directed to the app store to get an app (or view the link in the app if they have it). These are (probably) Google Firebase links and they're absolutely terrible. While they make life slightly easier for existing app users (saves one click but only if they go through the email), this implementation makes it way harder for others to reach the content. Either you get the app, log in there and part with fucking 300 MB of storage, or if you have no mainstream App Store, storage or time, you are forced to do a workaround: Desktop Mode (that may or may not work), rewriting the URL (difficult because it’s so long and includeshttps:several times, may require hex-decoding), or finding a computer. All this just to check one order from a store you’ll forget about next week.I have demonstrated that instead of just getting sent the desktop-friendly URL (and perhaps seeing a floating “Open in app” button at the destination), most users are put through extra nuisance that took effort to implement. Sure, some customers are frequent enough to use the app while most are happy with a website but once the business invests in the app, they will absolutely make sure everyone is pushed there despite it being less convenient for both parties.
I think this point needs to be stressed more. It is dead simple to write a website that works well on mobile phones. In fact, the first ever website, without CSS, without any JS, without fancy HTML5 features, is mobile friendly: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
It’s only when you start adding useless bells and whistles like floating shit in from left and right, tons of animations, side-by-side displays, overlays and whatnot that you need to start being competent to make it work on mobile.
You are correct. I once tried to develop a multi-platform web app and getting the touch events right was a pain. But a somewhat basic ESP32 setup website worked on mobile without extra effort.
Sooooo... were "labia.fart.cum" parts that were changed, or...??
Sure, go to labia.fart.cum. But you’ll only get the full Fart.cum^®^ experience with the Fart Labia™ app!
You’ll be hearing from the lawyers at queef.org
Most apps would do fine without a website. Most everyone has a phone, but a fair number of people don't have a desktop or laptop. And pretty much everyone who has a desktop or laptop also has a phone.
A number of currently popular apps don't have a website, let alone a mobile friendly website.
You’re missing the main point: A web app works for both desktop and phone users. A mobile app doesn’t.
And I, for one, don’t have a smart phone, though I’ll admit I’m lonely in this position.
A webapp sometimes works fine for phone users. There are things that websites can't do on mobile. For example, on iOS, only the latest OS version has support for push notifications from PWAs, and even then, they can't make noise or vibrations. They are always delivered silently. PWAs are also always rendered with WebKit on iOS. WebKit doesn't support a number of features.
Yes, a mobile app doesn't help desktop users, but there are waaaaaaaay more mobile users than desktop users.
I mean, for an email app, that’s kind of a big deal.
Only if you absolutely need some crucial bit of information the moment it arrives, in which case, email isn’t for you, since messages can take up to 3 days to arrive.
I like having noisy push notifications for certain emails. I apologize if that’s not ok.
You are not 100% alone. I technically have a smartphone but use it as a mini (5") tablet. My SIM is in a feature phone because greedy T-Mobile (Telekom in Deutschland) will not give me more than 1 MB/day for a decent price.
That depends on what kind of service you provide.
Games more complex than 2048, video calls? Sure.
Short video platform? Maybe.
Commerce? Absolutely not.
Yes, that's why I said most instead of all. And to be clear, I'm not a fan of apps without websites, that's just how things are.
Are you a web developer and an equally good app developer to make such a statement?
Yes.
I have doubts. Great website developers often make a half-assed app by wrapping the website in a crippled browser. The T-Mobile app is not even subtle about this, there was a URL bar in the version I last used.
You're talking about Cordova. Cordova can actually be pretty good, if it's made well (for example, the Voyager Lemmy app is a Cordova app), but no, I make apps with native UIs.