I'm also frustrated. But at work the other day I learned that like 75% of our usage is from mobile phone users. Sometimes you just have to realize you're in the minority; and that other people will make bad choices.
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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I used to be upset by all the mobile shit and then I went to college for computer stuff and started hating looking at computers after working on them all day. Now I'm a help desk tech and I don't own a working computer of my own because using them outside of work feels like work. If I can't do something official on mobile, I just get permission to do it on my work computer. If something for fun doesn't have a mobile version, I don't do whatever that thing is.
I do not like all the requests for phone numbers and shit, though. Just let me look at the site without being bothered.
Ironically enough I only use lemmy on my phone (browser or voyager) and it works way better than desktop for some reason. I couldnβt even get a post to work on firefox the other day, and images were not loading.
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.
I only ever browse social media on a PC and thatβs the way it will always be. Sometimes I canβt help but feel like desktop/computer users are becoming an afterthought. Anyone else have similar feelings? π«
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think they get more data from your usage on mobile.
yep. tons of telemetry.
Even moreso for apps, you can still retain some control through Firefox and others on mobile, but it's still limited.
They want to push people to apps because you have no control over how you view the site, unlike on a traditional web browser where you can tweak such things and block advertiser connections.
I think it's also that just significantly more people own a phone than a laptop.
It's like those demographics maps that are really just population maps.
Phones have web browsers. You can view websites easily from your phone.
Apps give them access to everything. You can request access to contact lists, even, and most people won't even think twice to allowing access.
Ayup. Iphones at least sandbox, but even then, you're still talking a sieve over a bucket leak-wise
check out pixelfed its like instagram but on the fediverse and its been in browser up until the app released only yesterday so you can do both now but browser is where its at
I made a Pixelfed art account a while ago and I think it's pretty good! The site's very responsive and I prefer it over Instagram. Pixelfed has been experiencing an influx of new users lately too which is great! Do you have an account there?
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
What does my head in as someone with a large monitor is even the desktop site is formatted in a way that only takes 1/3 of the space i have. My old blind arse has that extra space for a reason
You mean the narrow kinda look? I also have a large monitor and prefer the bigger/wider versions too since I find it easier on the eyes and it looks less weird. I know UI design isn't easy but it'd be nice if there was an option for that for the reason you mention.
Yeh right in the center of the screen in a column. Bonus hate if there's no dark mode.
Think it annoys me more as I work for a Web app company in infrastructure and know there's some tricks to make it look decent enough.
That said I bitched and moaned for a dark mode for our internal instance before they did anything about it.
Iβm sure you know about browser extensions like Dark Reader that can force websites to be dark mode. ( I wish it could work beyond the browser as well )
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 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.
I'm more upset that RSS is dying off.
With cross platform frameworks there is no excuse to not have features pariry
Cross-platform frameworks generally make for truly shit apps, though.
So yeah, there's a valid excuse in that you actually want to build a good product for the end users - cross-platform frameworks are antithetical to that goal
Surely you mean there is no excuse not to.
Yes
Sorry for being meta but I think this belongs in rants more than in CC
Sorry, is there a rants community? I wasn't aware there was one so I apologize if it's out of place here. It's not something I'm angry about it's just something I find mildly annoying and I was wondering how many people can relate π
I think it's fine personally as well, but I can see it brushing up against these rules:
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Keep the conversation nice and light hearted
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Avoid controversial topics such as politics or societal debates
It's a slightly contentious issue, so not as easy to keep it lighthearted when people want to complain about it, and technically it could be considered a "societal debate."
I'm not a mod or anything but I think it's fine. At least it's not some of the political or doomer stuff that you see here sometimes
Egh I guess
Mobile traffic far outweighs desktop for most sites, so it makes sense to do so. Itβs 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