Difference between revisions of "1174: App"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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(Explanation: rewording of the beginning)
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==Explanation==
 
==Explanation==
This comic is about how some web sites have a {{w|mobile app}} dedicated to mobile users (on smartphones, tablets or other mobile devices), which may or may not be an improved way for them to access the site's content. When this is the case, the site's owners generally ''want'' people to download their app and use it, so they frequently place on the site a banner that will pop up specifically on mobile screens, blocking view from the web page, and prompting the user to get the app instead of browsing the web site. They typically justify that with the fact that their app would be "optimized for viewing on mobile devices", which is often highly questionable, notably because of a few reasons pointed out by this comic :
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Some web sites have a {{w|mobile app}} designed for use on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. In theory this is because the main website will be more difficult to navigate on the small screen of a mobile, or some features won't work. In practice, this alternative is frequently worse than simply viewing the standard web page, for reasons offered in the comic:
* You cannot zoom or change the text size in most of these apps, whereas you generally can in the mobile browser of your choice.
 
* Usually, the mobile version of the web page is made separately from the regular version, so it's often incomplete, lacking part of the content, or lacking features available on the "full" web site.
 
For these reasons it can often be better to just view the regular version of the web site even when accessing the web from a mobile device.
 
  
In the comic, a mobile device user is trying to do just that: visit the regular version of web page through a mobile browser.  However, the site keeps on insisting (on every visit) that the user really should "download our app to visit an incomplete version of our website where you can't zoom", blocking at the same time the view from the content the user was looking for.  If the user chooses "no", it isn't really a "no", but rather a "no, but ask me again every time"; so this pop-up is going to get really annoying very soon.
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*You cannot zoom or change the text size in most of these apps, a feature available on mobile browsers.
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*The app is often of poor quality and is incomplete, lacks part of the content, or lacks features available on the standard web site.
  
In the title text, there's a reference to yet another very serious usability problem of the mobile version of web pages: the only page one can really see is the home page, and whenever the user tries to get anywhere else in the site, the server loses track of the navigation and sends the user back to the home page to start over again. This is the same effect described in [[869: Server Attention Span|comic 869]].
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The comic offers a brutally honest version of such a promotional popup. Alternatively to an app, some sites have a mobile version which is still an HTML-based website - just one that has been designed for mobile. These mobile versions (often denoted by being in an "m." subdomain) often have the same issues as above, or worse, because the sites do not have the benefit of the programmability of an app.
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Compounding the frustration is that some sites aggressively promote their app/mobile version with a popup message that repeats the suggestion on every visit to the site, and as the title text notes, if you reject the popup, you end up on the site's homepage, rather than the subpage you may have been trying to reach via a web search. A similar effect (where the mobile version will only load the site's main page) is described in more detail in [[869: Server Attention Span]].
  
 
==Transcript==
 
==Transcript==
:[a popup window on top of a webpage displayed in a smartphone browser]
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:[A popup window on top of a webpage displayed in a smartphone browser that looks like Safari.]
:Want to visit an incomplete version of our website where you '''can’t zoom'''?
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:Want to visit an incomplete version of our website where you '''can't zoom?'''
 
:'''Download our app!'''
 
:'''Download our app!'''
 
:[OK] [No, but ask me again every time]
 
:[OK] [No, but ask me again every time]
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<!-- Note the official transcript actually includes more ranting! -->
  
 
{{comic discussion}}
 
{{comic discussion}}
 
[[Category:Comics with color]]
 
[[Category:Comics with color]]
 
[[Category:Computers]]
 
[[Category:Computers]]

Revision as of 07:31, 26 June 2017

App
If I click 'no', I've probably given up on everything, so don't bother taking me to the page I was trying to go to. Just drop me on the homepage. Thanks.
Title text: If I click 'no', I've probably given up on everything, so don't bother taking me to the page I was trying to go to. Just drop me on the homepage. Thanks.

Explanation

Some web sites have a mobile app designed for use on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. In theory this is because the main website will be more difficult to navigate on the small screen of a mobile, or some features won't work. In practice, this alternative is frequently worse than simply viewing the standard web page, for reasons offered in the comic:

  • You cannot zoom or change the text size in most of these apps, a feature available on mobile browsers.
  • The app is often of poor quality and is incomplete, lacks part of the content, or lacks features available on the standard web site.

The comic offers a brutally honest version of such a promotional popup. Alternatively to an app, some sites have a mobile version which is still an HTML-based website - just one that has been designed for mobile. These mobile versions (often denoted by being in an "m." subdomain) often have the same issues as above, or worse, because the sites do not have the benefit of the programmability of an app.

Compounding the frustration is that some sites aggressively promote their app/mobile version with a popup message that repeats the suggestion on every visit to the site, and as the title text notes, if you reject the popup, you end up on the site's homepage, rather than the subpage you may have been trying to reach via a web search. A similar effect (where the mobile version will only load the site's main page) is described in more detail in 869: Server Attention Span.

Transcript

[A popup window on top of a webpage displayed in a smartphone browser that looks like Safari.]
Want to visit an incomplete version of our website where you can't zoom?
Download our app!
[OK] [No, but ask me again every time]


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Discussion

Interestingly, Scott Hanselman just made a blog post about this very issue. Note how the page in its entirety was downloaded using his mobile data plan, but it's still in no way viewable. --Buggz (talk) 08:27, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

By "in no way viewable" you mean mobile browsers don't support editing page's DOM like Chrome does out of the box and Firefox do with FireBug extension? (Try pressing F12). Not to speaking about the javascript-in-location-bar tricks someone already started posting on the blog post you mentioned. -- Hkmaly (talk) 09:29, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
I was talking about how the website is done by design. Since the whole page is downloaded you can of course start "hacking" your way through to the content, but that's besides the point. --Buggz (talk) 11:00, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
It may be seen as hacking now. But removing ads from websites was also seen as hacking until ad blockers becamed fully automated and popular. If those overlays becomes anoying enough, someone will code extension to get rid of them. -- Hkmaly (talk) 09:35, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Most mobile browsers don't support extensions, but you COULD disable JavaScript before viewing the page then re enabling it after.

141.101.98.240 07:57, 4 November 2013 (UTC)


prompting mobile views = prompting people viewing the website from a mobile browser ("mobile views" is web designer terminology, not mainstream speech) -- 195.130.121.48 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Right, let's reword that (which you can do yourself, by the way, but I'll admit that from the main page it's not obvious for a newcomer). - Cos (talk) 11:45, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Seems like Spongebog did actually. - Cos (talk) 11:49, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Chainsaw Suit also made almost the same joke: http://chainsawsuit.com/2013/01/23/view-the-desktop-version-of-this-site/

It's been moved here: https://chainsawsuit.krisstraub.com/20130123.shtml Schmurr (talk) 19:58, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

It reminds me very much of the way tapatalk-enabled forums act. They keep prompting you to use the app, which - if you have the app - will not open the page you were on.

Related, I stopped using the BBC News App because part way through last year it insisted I use an account to access it (I now just view the BBC website). The BBC Weather App is now also starting to tell me that I will need an account (the same account, that I just don't feel like getting), so no doubt I will keep a tab open in my mobile browser for that, too, at some point.
I've been using the News/Weather Apps, on successive devices, for maybe a decade and they have worked perfectly well without needing any account-linking... Though the Weather App started to lose the ability to remember more than five locations at a time, without the login, which is a purely a designed-in reduction of functionality that has no technical necessity other than becoming more PesterWare to promote... something to do with branding/enhanced exploitation of user-profiles? Which I'm happy enough to do pasively (device-id, usual stuff) but I'll be darned if I'll actively help them. 172.69.79.185 21:16, 10 February 2023 (UTC)


What can we learn from this?

I've learned that there are a billion things in the world that still need to be improved and sometimes if you seeking inspirations for new inventions they sometimes stare you right in the face (Thank you Mr. XKCD). Software engineers among us, lets help them improve their designs and avoid their mistakes ok? - e-inspired 24.51.197.187 19:17, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I have been heavily influenced by Randall's view on the browser vs mobile dichotomy, (https://xkcd.com/1367/ this being his best showerthought) but I have come to realize that native apps are a genuinely better product than any webpage can be. The fact that apps don't have zoom is a feature, who wants to zoom to a picture, then pan to a scroll bar to move down and then go back to the picture column. Mobile has caught up in terms of UX and product quality, the reason Randall was initially skeptical is because he was born and raised in an internet generation where the best products and users had keyboards and browsers.-- Tomás 198.41.231.135 00:16, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
Well, this comic came out 6 years ago, when the apps were not necesarily providing a better UI/UX, and phone screens were often so small, that only a limited number of characters would be possible to display in a size where they can be read, so zooming in and out to read text was often necessary. --Lupo (talk) 06:30, 14 October 2019 (UTC)