1174: App
(→Explanation) |
m (→Explanation: No. "www" needs to fall out of the popular lexicon.) |
||
| Line 13: | Line 13: | ||
*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 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 | + | 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 programability 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|comic 869]]. | 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|comic 869]]. | ||
Latest revision as of 15:40, 21 February 2013
| App |
 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. |
[edit] 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 programability 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 comic 869.
[edit] Transcript
- [A popup window on top of a webpage displayed in a smartphone browser.]
- 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]
add a comment!Discussion
- 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)
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)
Chainsaw Suit also made almost the same joke: http://chainsawsuit.com/2013/01/23/view-the-desktop-version-of-this-site/
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.
