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All Web Developers Should Stop Doing This Immediately

435 points by rberger 15y ago

lojack 15y ago
This decision has nothing to do with web developers. These are the kinds of choices made by those who don't understand the usability implications of their decisions.
angrycoder 15y ago
A web developer made that page, but it wasn't his decision to put it there. I am going to go out on a very short limb here and say the web developer was on the few people advocating against blocking tablet users from using the normal website, since they actually understand how the web works. In fact, when presented with the mandate that they needed a mobile app, the web developer probably just wanted to create a nice HTML5 site that could be served up in any tablet or mobile browser without the need to install a special app for their particular device. Know why? Because that is what web developers do.
- Andrenid 15y ago
  As a web developer who has to implement stupid stuff like the OP's link every single day, for a large corporation that refuses to listen to anything the IT team says... I tend to agree with you.
- mcrider 15y ago
  Web developers aren't always altruistic and some even have some business sense. Not that I agree with the what the 60 minutes site did (at least provide a link to go to the full site!), but pushing a mobile app will give them the opportunity to make money off of app fees (or app subscription services, or ads, or better data, or whatever).
  - marshray 15y ago
    ... and slurp up your address book.
- dmethvin 15y ago
  I completely agree that web sites should be accessible to all visitors. The problem seems to be that the developers on many sites have infrastructure that is half a decade old and they are only making minor tweaks. It's easier for them to create a new dev group to build an app than to disturb their delicate website house of cards. Then there is the issue of privileges available to apps vs. web sites; until the browser supports webkitUploadAddressBook({ stealthy: true }) there will be a strong incentive to develop an app.
- ramblerman 15y ago
  so web developers are bad at convincing/advising their peers? You know, since we're over generalizing to empty statements anyways.
- ArbitraryLimits 15y ago
  I have a friend who was an accountant, found that he liked writing VBA scripts in Excel, and eventually wound up at a company big enough to need an IT department but small enough not to afford a big one, and now he's basically got a dual CFO/CIO role. Every six months or so he tells me about the new mobile app he's got in development for the salesmen to place orders, or for manufacturing line inspectors to check inventory, or something. I always point out that it would be cheaper, faster, and more general to just build a wep application, and he always rolls his eyes and tells me I don't understand the marketing power of mobile apps. Which is true, I don't. But it got me thinking about all the "browser is the new OS" and "the Internet is OS-agnostic" and "this is the end of Microsoft" talk from the late 90s. Anyone else remember those days? Because Steve Jobs and the IPhone pretty much undid it all. It's 15 years later and everyone cares about the OS again. Weird.
  - Legion 15y ago
    > Because Steve Jobs and the IPhone pretty much undid it all. It's funny that you pin it on Jobs, who didn't want apps in the first place. Indeed, in 2007, Apple was telling developers to make web apps - http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/06/11iPhone-to-Support-Third-Party-Web-2-0-Applications.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/06/11iPhone-to-Support-... It was user demand that drove the creation of third party native app development.
    - wmf 15y ago
      Jobs didn't want apps or Jobs said he didn't want apps? If the native SDK wasn't ready yet, I would have been promoting Web apps, too.
      - Joeri 15y ago
        He really didn't want apps: http://www.nbclosangeles.com/blogs/press-here/Steve-Jobs-Didnt-Want-Apps-on-the-iPhone-in-the-Beginning-132334378.html http://www.nbclosangeles.com/blogs/press-here/Steve-Jobs-Did...
        15y ago
- Silhouette 15y ago
  > In fact, when presented with the mandate that they needed a mobile app, the web developer probably just wanted to create a nice HTML5 site that could be served up in any tablet or mobile browser without the need to install a special app for their particular device. Know why? Because that is what web developers do. That's what we did, the first time. We carefully constructed a responsive design that would scale to an iPad resolution and make good use of the screen space, and that would scale again to a smartphone, taking into account single-handed use, UI guidelines for the size of controls so they could be tapped reliably on a high-res screen, and all that jazz. And we learned in the process how many different ways Apple deliberately break the web browsers in their mobile devices. They pretend they're on a different size of screen that has no relationship to physical reality, and scale your page accordingly. I'm sure that's great if you really want to see an entire web site squeezed into a few square inches with text too small to read, but it completely breaks the usual CSS tools for building a responsive design. You can fix that by forcing the viewport size. However, if you do then as soon as the user rotates their iPad the browser zooms the page to show the same content at a different scale instead of actually letting the responsive design do its work by reflowing the layout to take advantage of the new page dimensions while keeping everything at the same size. You can fix that by setting a maximum zoom level, and a lot of developers stop here, but if you do then you'll sacrifice accessibility for users who genuinely want to zoom because they have imperfect vision and have difficulty enjoying a site at a size that is aimed at a typical visitor. You can fix that by setting the default zoom instead, detecting an orientation change event, and resetting your overrides each time the page rotates, as long as you can get all the proprietary hooks right and you don't mind either browser sniffing on your server or shoving the extra code to all your users even though most won't benefit. And so on, and so on. If Apple want usability for web sites on their iOS devices, they need to stop making it actively difficult for web developers to support their users. A single, simple option that says "make 1px = 1 physical pixel" would be sufficient to fix almost everything they get wrong as far as responsive design goes. Is that really so much to ask? <cynic> But maybe they don't, because after all they take a hefty cut of the profits on anything you make via an app, so they have a vested interest in pretending to support web standards but actually screwing them up to make app development more attractive. </cynic> If users don't like the experience they get as a result, there is an easy solution: don't buy Apple products that are shiny but broken, buy something else that works instead. There's no shortage of either good smartphones or good tablets from other sources today. (Edit: FAOD, the "we" above refers to my team and me, developing our own products. We're not connected to the site linked at the top of this discussion.)
tkahn6 15y ago
Is there a way to change your User-Agent in the iPad browser?
- Ogre 15y ago
  Not in Safari, but there are other browsers like Terra (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/terra-web-browser-tabs-full/id394704159?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/terra-web-browser-tabs-full/i...) that let you select a User-Agent. Sites that do this are pretty much the only reason I have Terra on my iPad.
- hellweaver666 15y ago
  You can change it in Safari, but only if you Jailbreak. In fact, it's one of the first apps Cydia recommends to you (I'm using it to identify as desktop Safari, and it's blissful!)
hmottestad 15y ago
Have you tried using a different browser and changing your user-agent?
shrikant 15y ago
I didn't see the author of the piece mention it anywhere, but this is clearly because his friend sent him a link to a video which is delivered via Flash. 60 Minutes video segments on the CBS News site don't have any associated text below them. He'd have been better served by his friend sending him the link to the associated article instead. (...or is this so blindingly obvious that it just doesn't warrant a mention?) IIRC on the iPad, even YouTube links open the YouTube app. Not sure what happens if you don't have the app installed - does it ask you to download the app instead? Edit: I suppose one could make the argument that if the CBS News website can serve up different stuff to the iPad, then they might as well serve up what's compatible instead..
- Ogre 15y ago
  YouTube links do open the YouTube app, but embedded YouTube videos also work just fine inline. If you open youtube.com in the browser, videos also play in the browser. Vimeo and other video sites also play directly in the browser, no app required. You can't play Flash video in the browser, but that doesn't mean you can't play video in the browser.
  - john-n 15y ago
    Until you meet a monetized video, and will likely be "not available on mobile", since they cant prevent you easily copying that video etc etc. Has there been any movement on a secure way to use the <video> tag yet?
    - comex 15y ago
      The security of Flash video is a myth, as rtmpdump has had RTMPE support for a long time (though Flash has been ahead of the cat and mouse game for temporary periods), and Replay Video Catcher provides a more general solution. "Securing" HTML5 video would be a shameful waste of time, as it would inevitably mess up Linux etc. with no actual benefit to publishers.
      - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
ypcx 15y ago
On my Galaxy Nexus I have an option "Load the Desktop version of this site". I don't see this option in the new Chrome Beta though. On iOS I had to jailbreak and install an SBSettings toggle to change Safari's UA, which restarted it, but then it worked more reliably than the one in my Android. But yeah, not having to root or jailbreak and getting the functionality I need is one of the long list of reasons I will never look back to Apple's ecosystem. The future is open, the future is web apps, and there is no place for closed ecosystems no matter how rich or extensive they may look now. Give people open tools and we can have more web apps than app store has apps in a very rapid time.
- philbarr 15y ago
  Dolphin allows you to choose your user agent on Android. I'm starting to really like Dolphin...
dave1010uk 15y ago
This isn't just on tablets but all mobile devices to some extent. People assume a context based on the browser's user agent string. A good tradeoff is a banner at the top of the page, with a link to the app. I've also seen people remove information from a site for mobile users as its less important. If content isn't important to show to some users then it's likely it shouldn't be shown at all. Another assumption web developers make is that mobile users won't be browsing certain pages that advertise a mobile site or app. I've seen many blog posts saying "check out our new mobile sites at m.example.com", using the bold tag to show its a URL instead of an HTML link.
frankus 15y ago
My pet peeve is deep links that get redirected to the mobile home page. That and sites that open in "mobile mode" on a tablet. 10x7 should be plenty of pixels for your normal site.
- setrofim_ 15y ago
  There is another concern besides screen space -- bandwidth. Since a mobile device can be accessing the site over 3G as well as WiFi, where bandwidth is at a premium, it is better to serve up the smaller mobile version.
  - frankus 15y ago
    I hadn't thought of that. I've only recently gotten a 3G-capable iPad, and I did manage to rack up 121MB in a few hours of browsing.
xefer 15y ago
They're a scourge. In Terms of overall annoyance, it's ironic that Apps are quietly ecoming the new Flash.
joshu 15y ago
it is totally awesome when sites offer a crappy ancient mobile version of the site that doesn't actually remember the page you wanted to go to. it is even more offen when they offer a crazy javascript version of the site that crashes if you try to "swipe" to the next page.
johnrob 15y ago
That whole internet/hyperlink/REST thing that we developed over the last 20 years? That was just a stop gap while we transitioned from mouse pointers to capacitive touch screens. Now that we point with our fingers instead of our hands, we need to reinvent the architecture of shared information.
mustardhamsters 15y ago
I have been fortunate enough that when my bosses come to me and say "we want an iPhone app" I can explain why this is a bad business decision and they listen to me. A native app should not just be a little button for your web content.
sravfeyn 15y ago
It's too uncommon to find this kind of article(rants) on Technology Review.
xelfer 15y ago
Even though IMDB have a mobile site (automatically redirects you to m.imdb.com), it STILL prompts you to download the app every single time you visit. Extremely annoying.
chmike 15y ago
This also put forward the problem of table and mobile apps behaving as isolated information processing silos. I wouldn't say it breaks the web, but it is clearly missing a fundamental and significant property of the web and from this perspective it is a regression.
fookyong 15y ago
This decision was made by sales / marketing. The people who pay the developer. Go work at a big company where you are a cost center (they make their money from ad sales not your web innovation) and you'll get to implement the same dumb crap as this.
kyberias 15y ago
The author does not _want_ to download an app because it is "antisocial use of public bandwidth". What exactly is social use of the bandwidth then? Is this kind of attitude common?
- alexchamberlain 15y ago
  I agree to an extent; I try to avoid downloading apps when I'm not on WiFi - mobile internet is slow enough as it is!
- jonpacker 15y ago
  Furthermore, the author was just about to stream a video which would likely be much larger than the app itself.
- mjwalshe 15y ago
  Makess sense when you see how much mobile data costs.
- jackalope 15y ago
  I'd be very uncomfortable downloading an app on a foreign network simply because a single web page told me to do so. I'm sure I'm more paranoid than most, but that's an easy way to get phished. I'm surprised the author didn't cite that as a reason.
pan69 15y ago
This has nothing to do with web developers, they don't make the decisions there. A bunch of marketing bimbo's do.
Confusion 15y ago
Awesome, I'm not the only one that hates apps that are nothing more than a browser for a single website. What are people thinking, that we like to have a separate app for every website we enjoy visiting? Have they actually ever used a smartphone/tablet? If your website links to other sites and you load that in Safari again? Guess what, you just lost me. I'm not going to close Safari and load your app again, whereas closing a new tab would have returned me to your site. The same thing happens when your in-app browser just isn't up to scratch: I'll have to copy-paste the address into Safari and I'm annoyed and gone.
jwr 15y ago
Oh yes. We should also mention the horrible broken piece of crap called "Onswipe", that produces a slow, broken, confusing interface that also happens to limit screen space dedicated to reading and breaks built-in Safari zooming. For some reason people think that they need to have a "Special Tablet Version". You don't! Just have a normal web site, we'll be fine! The onswipe situation got so bad that whenever I encounter a site using it I immediately click "back" and never come back again. UPDATE: Oh, I should also mention that half the time when trying to click "back" I actually click the silly Onswipe button in the upper left corner of the screen that pretends to be the back button but actually does something else (takes you to the main blog page I think). Cursing ensues.
- swombat 15y ago
  As much as I like the team behind OnSwipe (Jason L Baptiste and Mark Bao in particular), I have to agree with you, unfortunately. Whenever I get this OnSwipe thing replacing a page that was perfectly good and readable, I almost always click back without reading (once the cpu-intensive javascript pauses long enough to allow me to do so). What's really weird is that the result of OnSwipe being applied is actually a page that is significantly MORE broken. The reason I've developed a habit of clicking back is because I often can't read the article anyway, since the scrolling is usually broken in some annoying way (keeps jumping around, not smooth, etc). This is exceptionally bad considering that the underlying page would almost certainly work just fine.
  - rdl 15y ago
    You could browse on an iPad 1; then, rather than having to click back manually, OnSwipe will helpfully crash Safari so you don't need to bother doing anything yourself.
    - ChrisLTD 15y ago
      Amen, brother. How did the current version of OnSwipe pass basic compatibility testing?
TwoBit 15y ago
IMO this is part Safari's fault for not giving you the option of acting like a desktop browser and not being able to run Flash. The former can be solved by downloading a different ipad browser.
MattBearman 15y ago
Like other's have said, this is not the developer's decision. In fact it was things like this that made me quit my job to go freelance. Me and the other developers would spend literally hours explaining and re-explaining why links to external sites should not be opened in a new window. But because some marketing douchebag once said it was a good idea, our pleas went un-heard. In short, don't blame the developers, admittedly a small portion of the blame is with them for not fighting hard enough, or being prepared to walk away. But the vast majority of the blame lies higher up the food chain.
- HaloZero 15y ago
  I'm curious, why is opening external links in a new window a bad idea? Just breaking the flow of navigation?
  - Lockyy 15y ago
    As a user, assuming by "new window" he also means "new tab", I would always prefer external links to open in a new tab. I don't want to click a link half way through an article and suddenly have the new page replace my current one. Because hey, I was reading that. If he is specifically talking about arguing against opening in a new window as opposed to a new tab then I'm behind him 100%. Why would you even do that? It makes no sense. I would be interested in clarification however. And if he is arguing against opening new tabs, why? Edit: Unless he is talking about a pre-tab era?
    - icebraining 15y ago
      As a user, I like to remain in control of whether it should open on a new tab or not. I hate sites that decide for me.
      - Lockyy 15y ago
        After both your posts I just realised that yes, it is better to let it overwrite the page, because the option is there for the user to override this with the middle-click. I've middle clicked all links for so long that I didn't even think about the fact I was choosing to open things in a new tab. Thanks for changing my mind.
atirip 15y ago
Totally wrong forum/place to complain. Here at HN people love that a lot! Because there was some time ago some post where on iPad I arrived on app download page - so I posted comment a'la "what shit is this" and got massively downvoted for that.
- shrikant 15y ago
  It gets my goat when people complain of having been downvoted for saying 'the exact same thing', when something else in line with a previous sentiment is heavily upvoted. (Maybe I just need to develop a greater Internet forum tolerance..) You seem to be referring to this comment[1]. Actually speaking though, you weren't downvoted because people disagreed, but because your comment: 1) didn't add anything to the discussion at hand 2) wasn't particularly coherent 3) set no context whatsoever for your discontent (were you on an iPad? some other mobile device? does it seem like a common occurrence?) I've made my fair share off-topic rants about the submission's readability and other annoyances (and seen other such comments) that were reasonably 'well received' by the community because it actually set the tone for a discussion. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3173014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3173014
  - atirip 15y ago
    I wasn't complaining at all. I was ironic, but as I got downvoted for that too, then irony i guess, is also not welcome here...
    - marshray 15y ago
      People here want something that makes them think. They go out of their way to reject posts for which the primary responses are simple agreement ("me too") or disagreement ("is not"). Perhaps you simply weren't being ironic in a sufficiently interesting way.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
There is a variant of this which is to auto-detect mobile browsers and redirect from "desktop" urls to the mobile homepage. This behavior is so massively brain dead it's ridiculous. If you're not going to do a smart redirect to the proper mobile version of the actual individual page then in most cases it's best to just serve up the desktop page.
eapen 15y ago
Web developers may not be responsible but they are sensible enough to advocate against such an approach. I have also come across the same issue on my Android phone and even after installing their stupid app, I still get prompted to download it. I gave their app the minimum possible rating.
brador 15y ago
Useful titles, that work well in RSS and search need to be enforced, else we will get a situation like Reddit's front page, which is currently full of meaningless clickbait titles.
- lignuist 15y ago
  All HN Posters Should Stop Doing This Immediately. I wonder, if it's just a lacking sense of communication. For example, a friend of mine sends me emails like "Do you have a minute. I've got a question.", "There's something we should talk about.", without mentioning what's the actual purpose of his messages. I would expect at least a keyword. More than once I tried to stop him from doing this - without success.
klez 15y ago
> It feels like vandalism. This is what hackers do. He lost me here. Too bad it was almost the end of the article and I also agreed with him.
- baumgartn3r 15y ago
  +1
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- marshray 15y ago
  I thought it was an interesting comparison. Although I would disagree with it in the sense that any real hacker would likely come up with a far more creative defacement. :-)
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
51Cards 15y ago
It's really simple, I believe they serve up their videos with Flash which your tablet doesn't support. Flash for video isn't going away yet in many cases because HTML 5 video is still lacking all of the security features sites like this one require. So they did the next best thing, they built a custom app for your platform which gave them the security they desired and you a full user experience. Edit: Just confirmed I can watch their videos on my Android tablet, thus it's just a lack of Flash that caused this. In fact on my ASUS Slider they are playing perfectly.
- hollerith 15y ago
  Consequently, Apple should provide a secure way for outfits like 60 Minutes to publish video to iPads without the outfit having to have an iPad app.
  - untog 15y ago
    Where's their incentive to do that?
    - hollerith 15y ago
      Actually they do do that: it's called iTunes Video Store.
  - pmjordan 15y ago
    They do. The BBC use it for the web-based version of the iPlayer, for example. (which only works on iOS devices and various set-top boxes and web-connected TVs - try it in the iOS Simulator or any other desktop browser with a spoofed user agent and it'll fail) Basically, the (HTTPS) server can require the client to provide a special Apple-signed client certificate, which the server then verifies. If verification fails, it closes the connection. If it succeeds, the video is transmitted encrypted (SSL) and plays back just like any other <video> tag. There's also a variant that lets you statically encrypt the video and serve it via Apple's "HTTP Live Streaming" protocol, with the keys for decryption downloaded via the client-certificate-authenticated SSL connection described above. This lets you avoid the overhead of SSL for gigs and gigs of data, as you only have to encrypt the files once, offline.
buff-a 15y ago
A friend sends me a link to a 60 Minutes segment she feels it's important I watch. I'm on an iPad -- not that it matters ... There is no alternative -- no way to click through to the video or text that I was after Somewhere like this: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7398478n http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7398478n ? ... <div id="flashvideocontent"> So, no there is no way to click through to the video you were after because you are on an iPad, and iPad's do not have Adobe Flash. That means if you want to see the link that your friend sent, then you are going to have to download an app. Blame Apple and Adobe, not the website.
- marknutter 15y ago
  Yet youtube videos work on the iPad.. hmm..
- Turing_Machine 15y ago
  "So, no there is no way to click through to the video" Because the site set it up that way. Intentionally. So, yes, I blame the site. Sites with a clue (like YouTube and Vimeo) have been serving HTML5 video for a couple of years now. It's just a matter of adding another step to your automated transcoding workflow (you have one, right?) For a small indie site the disk space consumed by keeping video in 2 or 3 different formats might be an issue, but for CBS?
Torn 15y ago
CBSNews (powering Gamespot and a load of other content sites) are f---ing terrible at mobile interaction. View a site link on a mobile device and they'll serve you a mobile version of their front page. That's it. You've then got to click 'full site' to see the full frontpage and set your preference cookie, and then press back a few times to retry your original request.
ABS 15y ago
Or: All Technical Savvy People Should Stop Buying A Device Entirely Built Around Apps Over The Web And Then Complain They Have To Download Apps. (or buy it and don't complain, that's fine too)
nikanj 15y ago
All Content Posters Should Start Writing Headlines That Don't Remind Me Of Reddit.
tocomment 15y ago
Is there any way to change the user agent on the iPhone or iPad? Maybe someone could start a proxy for iPhones that could do this?
tocomment 15y ago
You know what else bothers me on mobile browsing. There are some websites where I can't zoom in on the iPhone. I've tried researching it so I could make a bookmarklett or something to disable that, but I can't find what's causing it. Does anyone know?
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Mobile/Viewport_meta_tag https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Mobile/Viewport_meta_tag
- arguesalot 15y ago
  Worse, there are websites where you cant scroll on the ipad. Even worse: all research journals that are published through Elsevier's sciencedirect.com do this.
gravitronic 15y ago
The irony is that their app will probably just be a framed browser view anyways...
chernevik 15y ago
Native apps do have a persistence advantage over HTML. My apps for the WSJ, FT and Economist download entire issues for availability offline. I haven't seen that done in HTML. In terms of web breakage, these all offer urls to the same article on the web page, so they don't break the web going into the sites. I haven't seen them use outbound links.
pacala 15y ago
> Why do so many web developers think that tablets are an excuse to break the functionality of the web? ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION, ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION, INTERNET, PROCESS_OUTGOING_CALLS, READ_CALENDAR, READ_CONTACTS, READ_HISTORY_BOOKMARKS, READ_PROFILE, READ_SMS, READ_SOCIAL_STREAM, SUBSCRIBED_FEEDS_READ user: scroll, scroll, grumble, scroll, scroll, scroll, finally!, ALLOW
gallerytungsten 15y ago
Isn't there a user agent switcher for iPad? That would seem to be the easy fix for such annoyances. (I don't have an iPad, but it seems like an obvious thing that would be available.)
tmroyal 15y ago
Isn't the real problem here that instead of an honest statement about why the app needs to be downloaded (ie. no Flash on the iPad), something looking like an advertisement is served instead? That the author assumed the worst might be due to the apparent dishonesty rather than any paranoia on the author's part. Of course, the problem might be a little more complicated, because some less adept users seeing that a website will not load on their device might blame those who made the website. Still, CBS's solution clearly isn't the one making lemonade out of lemons.
radarsat1 15y ago
Another thing: we need a "tablet" mode for websites, that is distinct from "mobile." Several websites assume I am on a phone when I visit them with my Galaxy Tab, and enforce the use of a tiny font. Perhaps ironically, on these "mobile" websites, zooming seems to be broken, whereas on regular websites I can double-tap and it will zoom in to make the font size bigger and reflow the paragraph to fit my device. Examples are Slashdot and Live Journal, but there are others.
untog 15y ago
A few days ago I had an article that was popular on HN. I was watching my live Analytics tracking and saw that I had an inbound referral from "chat.stackexchange.com"- I looked up the full URL, and tried it in my browser. Just like that, I was in the chat room discussing the topic of my post with the people that had found it. It occurred to me that if they were using almost any other kind of chat system (like an app, but also including IRC) I would never have been able to do that. It's a shame, but I suppose there are also privacy concerns at stake.
peterwwillis 15y ago
"Why do so many web developers think that tablets are an excuse to break the functionality of the web?" Web developers have been breaking the functionality of the web for years. A lot of 'feature-rich' web apps today are almost unusable on a mobile device, much less for a disabled person. So instead of making a 'mobile friendly' version of their site, they made an app. Maybe some day they'll find it cheaper and easier to just make one site that works for all devices. But that probably sounds crazy.
mattbeck 15y ago
It's not just tablets, I get that junk on my other android and iOS devices (nook, phone, etc) all the time now. For some reason the news sites seem to be the worst offenders. It feels very much like the paywall thing that devastated so many newspaper sites a few years back. Despite having highly desirable content, they just don't get the internet (still).
greggman 15y ago
The cynical answer is because once you install an app they can * Push ads to you even when you're not viewing their content * Read your address book I hate it too. I also hate sites that ask me to install their app every time I visit. No, I don't want the IMDB app nor do I want the Rottentomatoes app, etc etc.. Unfortunately the majority seem to love it :-(
teeray 15y ago
Equally frustrating: when the no scale attribute is set for sites that are not optimized for viewing on mobile or tablet screens.
albertsun 15y ago
Web developers need conscientious objector status when tasked with building features they know are bad for the web.

435 points by rberger 15y ago

This decision has nothing to do with web developers. These are the kinds of choices made by those who don't understand the usability implications of their decisions.

angrycoder 15y ago

A web developer made that page, but it wasn't his decision to put it there. I am going to go out on a very short limb here and say the web developer was on the few people advocating against blocking tablet users from using the normal website, since they actually understand how the web works. In fact, when presented with the mandate that they needed a mobile app, the web developer probably just wanted to create a nice HTML5 site that could be served up in any tablet or mobile browser without the need to install a special app for their particular device. Know why? Because that is what web developers do.

Andrenid 15y ago
As a web developer who has to implement stupid stuff like the OP's link every single day, for a large corporation that refuses to listen to anything the IT team says... I tend to agree with you.
mcrider 15y ago
Web developers aren't always altruistic and some even have some business sense. Not that I agree with the what the 60 minutes site did (at least provide a link to go to the full site!), but pushing a mobile app will give them the opportunity to make money off of app fees (or app subscription services, or ads, or better data, or whatever).
- marshray 15y ago
  ... and slurp up your address book.
dmethvin 15y ago
I completely agree that web sites should be accessible to all visitors. The problem seems to be that the developers on many sites have infrastructure that is half a decade old and they are only making minor tweaks. It's easier for them to create a new dev group to build an app than to disturb their delicate website house of cards. Then there is the issue of privileges available to apps vs. web sites; until the browser supports webkitUploadAddressBook({ stealthy: true }) there will be a strong incentive to develop an app.
ramblerman 15y ago
so web developers are bad at convincing/advising their peers? You know, since we're over generalizing to empty statements anyways.
ArbitraryLimits 15y ago
I have a friend who was an accountant, found that he liked writing VBA scripts in Excel, and eventually wound up at a company big enough to need an IT department but small enough not to afford a big one, and now he's basically got a dual CFO/CIO role. Every six months or so he tells me about the new mobile app he's got in development for the salesmen to place orders, or for manufacturing line inspectors to check inventory, or something. I always point out that it would be cheaper, faster, and more general to just build a wep application, and he always rolls his eyes and tells me I don't understand the marketing power of mobile apps. Which is true, I don't. But it got me thinking about all the "browser is the new OS" and "the Internet is OS-agnostic" and "this is the end of Microsoft" talk from the late 90s. Anyone else remember those days? Because Steve Jobs and the IPhone pretty much undid it all. It's 15 years later and everyone cares about the OS again. Weird.
- Legion 15y ago
  > Because Steve Jobs and the IPhone pretty much undid it all. It's funny that you pin it on Jobs, who didn't want apps in the first place. Indeed, in 2007, Apple was telling developers to make web apps - http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/06/11iPhone-to-Support-Third-Party-Web-2-0-Applications.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/06/11iPhone-to-Support-... It was user demand that drove the creation of third party native app development.
  - wmf 15y ago
    Jobs didn't want apps or Jobs said he didn't want apps? If the native SDK wasn't ready yet, I would have been promoting Web apps, too.
    - Joeri 15y ago
      He really didn't want apps: http://www.nbclosangeles.com/blogs/press-here/Steve-Jobs-Didnt-Want-Apps-on-the-iPhone-in-the-Beginning-132334378.html http://www.nbclosangeles.com/blogs/press-here/Steve-Jobs-Did...
      - 15y ago
Silhouette 15y ago
> In fact, when presented with the mandate that they needed a mobile app, the web developer probably just wanted to create a nice HTML5 site that could be served up in any tablet or mobile browser without the need to install a special app for their particular device. Know why? Because that is what web developers do. That's what we did, the first time. We carefully constructed a responsive design that would scale to an iPad resolution and make good use of the screen space, and that would scale again to a smartphone, taking into account single-handed use, UI guidelines for the size of controls so they could be tapped reliably on a high-res screen, and all that jazz. And we learned in the process how many different ways Apple deliberately break the web browsers in their mobile devices. They pretend they're on a different size of screen that has no relationship to physical reality, and scale your page accordingly. I'm sure that's great if you really want to see an entire web site squeezed into a few square inches with text too small to read, but it completely breaks the usual CSS tools for building a responsive design. You can fix that by forcing the viewport size. However, if you do then as soon as the user rotates their iPad the browser zooms the page to show the same content at a different scale instead of actually letting the responsive design do its work by reflowing the layout to take advantage of the new page dimensions while keeping everything at the same size. You can fix that by setting a maximum zoom level, and a lot of developers stop here, but if you do then you'll sacrifice accessibility for users who genuinely want to zoom because they have imperfect vision and have difficulty enjoying a site at a size that is aimed at a typical visitor. You can fix that by setting the default zoom instead, detecting an orientation change event, and resetting your overrides each time the page rotates, as long as you can get all the proprietary hooks right and you don't mind either browser sniffing on your server or shoving the extra code to all your users even though most won't benefit. And so on, and so on. If Apple want usability for web sites on their iOS devices, they need to stop making it actively difficult for web developers to support their users. A single, simple option that says "make 1px = 1 physical pixel" would be sufficient to fix almost everything they get wrong as far as responsive design goes. Is that really so much to ask? <cynic> But maybe they don't, because after all they take a hefty cut of the profits on anything you make via an app, so they have a vested interest in pretending to support web standards but actually screwing them up to make app development more attractive. </cynic> If users don't like the experience they get as a result, there is an easy solution: don't buy Apple products that are shiny but broken, buy something else that works instead. There's no shortage of either good smartphones or good tablets from other sources today. (Edit: FAOD, the "we" above refers to my team and me, developing our own products. We're not connected to the site linked at the top of this discussion.)

tkahn6 15y ago

Is there a way to change your User-Agent in the iPad browser?

Ogre 15y ago
Not in Safari, but there are other browsers like Terra (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/terra-web-browser-tabs-full/id394704159?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/terra-web-browser-tabs-full/i...) that let you select a User-Agent. Sites that do this are pretty much the only reason I have Terra on my iPad.
hellweaver666 15y ago
You can change it in Safari, but only if you Jailbreak. In fact, it's one of the first apps Cydia recommends to you (I'm using it to identify as desktop Safari, and it's blissful!)

hmottestad 15y ago

Have you tried using a different browser and changing your user-agent?

shrikant 15y ago

I didn't see the author of the piece mention it anywhere, but this is clearly because his friend sent him a link to a video which is delivered via Flash. 60 Minutes video segments on the CBS News site don't have any associated text below them. He'd have been better served by his friend sending him the link to the associated article instead. (...or is this so blindingly obvious that it just doesn't warrant a mention?) IIRC on the iPad, even YouTube links open the YouTube app. Not sure what happens if you don't have the app installed - does it ask you to download the app instead? Edit: I suppose one could make the argument that if the CBS News website can serve up different stuff to the iPad, then they might as well serve up what's compatible instead..

Ogre 15y ago
YouTube links do open the YouTube app, but embedded YouTube videos also work just fine inline. If you open youtube.com in the browser, videos also play in the browser. Vimeo and other video sites also play directly in the browser, no app required. You can't play Flash video in the browser, but that doesn't mean you can't play video in the browser.
- john-n 15y ago
  Until you meet a monetized video, and will likely be "not available on mobile", since they cant prevent you easily copying that video etc etc. Has there been any movement on a secure way to use the <video> tag yet?
  - comex 15y ago
    The security of Flash video is a myth, as rtmpdump has had RTMPE support for a long time (though Flash has been ahead of the cat and mouse game for temporary periods), and Replay Video Catcher provides a more general solution. "Securing" HTML5 video would be a shameful waste of time, as it would inevitably mess up Linux etc. with no actual benefit to publishers.
    - MatthewPhillips 15y ago

ypcx 15y ago

On my Galaxy Nexus I have an option "Load the Desktop version of this site". I don't see this option in the new Chrome Beta though. On iOS I had to jailbreak and install an SBSettings toggle to change Safari's UA, which restarted it, but then it worked more reliably than the one in my Android. But yeah, not having to root or jailbreak and getting the functionality I need is one of the long list of reasons I will never look back to Apple's ecosystem. The future is open, the future is web apps, and there is no place for closed ecosystems no matter how rich or extensive they may look now. Give people open tools and we can have more web apps than app store has apps in a very rapid time.

philbarr 15y ago
Dolphin allows you to choose your user agent on Android. I'm starting to really like Dolphin...

dave1010uk 15y ago

This isn't just on tablets but all mobile devices to some extent. People assume a context based on the browser's user agent string. A good tradeoff is a banner at the top of the page, with a link to the app. I've also seen people remove information from a site for mobile users as its less important. If content isn't important to show to some users then it's likely it shouldn't be shown at all. Another assumption web developers make is that mobile users won't be browsing certain pages that advertise a mobile site or app. I've seen many blog posts saying "check out our new mobile sites at m.example.com", using the bold tag to show its a URL instead of an HTML link.

frankus 15y ago

My pet peeve is deep links that get redirected to the mobile home page. That and sites that open in "mobile mode" on a tablet. 10x7 should be plenty of pixels for your normal site.

setrofim_ 15y ago
There is another concern besides screen space -- bandwidth. Since a mobile device can be accessing the site over 3G as well as WiFi, where bandwidth is at a premium, it is better to serve up the smaller mobile version.
- frankus 15y ago
  I hadn't thought of that. I've only recently gotten a 3G-capable iPad, and I did manage to rack up 121MB in a few hours of browsing.

xefer 15y ago

They're a scourge. In Terms of overall annoyance, it's ironic that Apps are quietly ecoming the new Flash.

joshu 15y ago

it is totally awesome when sites offer a crappy ancient mobile version of the site that doesn't actually remember the page you wanted to go to. it is even more offen when they offer a crazy javascript version of the site that crashes if you try to "swipe" to the next page.

johnrob 15y ago

That whole internet/hyperlink/REST thing that we developed over the last 20 years? That was just a stop gap while we transitioned from mouse pointers to capacitive touch screens. Now that we point with our fingers instead of our hands, we need to reinvent the architecture of shared information.

mustardhamsters 15y ago

I have been fortunate enough that when my bosses come to me and say "we want an iPhone app" I can explain why this is a bad business decision and they listen to me. A native app should not just be a little button for your web content.

sravfeyn 15y ago

It's too uncommon to find this kind of article(rants) on Technology Review.

xelfer 15y ago

Even though IMDB have a mobile site (automatically redirects you to m.imdb.com), it STILL prompts you to download the app every single time you visit. Extremely annoying.

chmike 15y ago

This also put forward the problem of table and mobile apps behaving as isolated information processing silos. I wouldn't say it breaks the web, but it is clearly missing a fundamental and significant property of the web and from this perspective it is a regression.

fookyong 15y ago

This decision was made by sales / marketing. The people who pay the developer. Go work at a big company where you are a cost center (they make their money from ad sales not your web innovation) and you'll get to implement the same dumb crap as this.

kyberias 15y ago

The author does not _want_ to download an app because it is "antisocial use of public bandwidth". What exactly is social use of the bandwidth then? Is this kind of attitude common?

alexchamberlain 15y ago
I agree to an extent; I try to avoid downloading apps when I'm not on WiFi - mobile internet is slow enough as it is!
jonpacker 15y ago
Furthermore, the author was just about to stream a video which would likely be much larger than the app itself.
mjwalshe 15y ago
Makess sense when you see how much mobile data costs.
jackalope 15y ago
I'd be very uncomfortable downloading an app on a foreign network simply because a single web page told me to do so. I'm sure I'm more paranoid than most, but that's an easy way to get phished. I'm surprised the author didn't cite that as a reason.

pan69 15y ago

This has nothing to do with web developers, they don't make the decisions there. A bunch of marketing bimbo's do.

Confusion 15y ago

Awesome, I'm not the only one that hates apps that are nothing more than a browser for a single website. What are people thinking, that we like to have a separate app for every website we enjoy visiting? Have they actually ever used a smartphone/tablet? If your website links to other sites and you load that in Safari again? Guess what, you just lost me. I'm not going to close Safari and load your app again, whereas closing a new tab would have returned me to your site. The same thing happens when your in-app browser just isn't up to scratch: I'll have to copy-paste the address into Safari and I'm annoyed and gone.

jwr 15y ago

Oh yes. We should also mention the horrible broken piece of crap called "Onswipe", that produces a slow, broken, confusing interface that also happens to limit screen space dedicated to reading and breaks built-in Safari zooming. For some reason people think that they need to have a "Special Tablet Version". You don't! Just have a normal web site, we'll be fine! The onswipe situation got so bad that whenever I encounter a site using it I immediately click "back" and never come back again. UPDATE: Oh, I should also mention that half the time when trying to click "back" I actually click the silly Onswipe button in the upper left corner of the screen that pretends to be the back button but actually does something else (takes you to the main blog page I think). Cursing ensues.

swombat 15y ago
As much as I like the team behind OnSwipe (Jason L Baptiste and Mark Bao in particular), I have to agree with you, unfortunately. Whenever I get this OnSwipe thing replacing a page that was perfectly good and readable, I almost always click back without reading (once the cpu-intensive javascript pauses long enough to allow me to do so). What's really weird is that the result of OnSwipe being applied is actually a page that is significantly MORE broken. The reason I've developed a habit of clicking back is because I often can't read the article anyway, since the scrolling is usually broken in some annoying way (keeps jumping around, not smooth, etc). This is exceptionally bad considering that the underlying page would almost certainly work just fine.
- rdl 15y ago
  You could browse on an iPad 1; then, rather than having to click back manually, OnSwipe will helpfully crash Safari so you don't need to bother doing anything yourself.
  - ChrisLTD 15y ago
    Amen, brother. How did the current version of OnSwipe pass basic compatibility testing?

TwoBit 15y ago

IMO this is part Safari's fault for not giving you the option of acting like a desktop browser and not being able to run Flash. The former can be solved by downloading a different ipad browser.

MattBearman 15y ago

Like other's have said, this is not the developer's decision. In fact it was things like this that made me quit my job to go freelance. Me and the other developers would spend literally hours explaining and re-explaining why links to external sites should not be opened in a new window. But because some marketing douchebag once said it was a good idea, our pleas went un-heard. In short, don't blame the developers, admittedly a small portion of the blame is with them for not fighting hard enough, or being prepared to walk away. But the vast majority of the blame lies higher up the food chain.

HaloZero 15y ago
I'm curious, why is opening external links in a new window a bad idea? Just breaking the flow of navigation?
- Lockyy 15y ago
  As a user, assuming by "new window" he also means "new tab", I would always prefer external links to open in a new tab. I don't want to click a link half way through an article and suddenly have the new page replace my current one. Because hey, I was reading that. If he is specifically talking about arguing against opening in a new window as opposed to a new tab then I'm behind him 100%. Why would you even do that? It makes no sense. I would be interested in clarification however. And if he is arguing against opening new tabs, why? Edit: Unless he is talking about a pre-tab era?
  - icebraining 15y ago
    As a user, I like to remain in control of whether it should open on a new tab or not. I hate sites that decide for me.
    - Lockyy 15y ago
      After both your posts I just realised that yes, it is better to let it overwrite the page, because the option is there for the user to override this with the middle-click. I've middle clicked all links for so long that I didn't even think about the fact I was choosing to open things in a new tab. Thanks for changing my mind.

atirip 15y ago

Totally wrong forum/place to complain. Here at HN people love that a lot! Because there was some time ago some post where on iPad I arrived on app download page - so I posted comment a'la "what shit is this" and got massively downvoted for that.

shrikant 15y ago
It gets my goat when people complain of having been downvoted for saying 'the exact same thing', when something else in line with a previous sentiment is heavily upvoted. (Maybe I just need to develop a greater Internet forum tolerance..) You seem to be referring to this comment[1]. Actually speaking though, you weren't downvoted because people disagreed, but because your comment: 1) didn't add anything to the discussion at hand 2) wasn't particularly coherent 3) set no context whatsoever for your discontent (were you on an iPad? some other mobile device? does it seem like a common occurrence?) I've made my fair share off-topic rants about the submission's readability and other annoyances (and seen other such comments) that were reasonably 'well received' by the community because it actually set the tone for a discussion. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3173014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3173014
- atirip 15y ago
  I wasn't complaining at all. I was ironic, but as I got downvoted for that too, then irony i guess, is also not welcome here...
  - marshray 15y ago
    People here want something that makes them think. They go out of their way to reject posts for which the primary responses are simple agreement ("me too") or disagreement ("is not"). Perhaps you simply weren't being ironic in a sufficiently interesting way.

InclinedPlane 15y ago

There is a variant of this which is to auto-detect mobile browsers and redirect from "desktop" urls to the mobile homepage. This behavior is so massively brain dead it's ridiculous. If you're not going to do a smart redirect to the proper mobile version of the actual individual page then in most cases it's best to just serve up the desktop page.

eapen 15y ago

Web developers may not be responsible but they are sensible enough to advocate against such an approach. I have also come across the same issue on my Android phone and even after installing their stupid app, I still get prompted to download it. I gave their app the minimum possible rating.

brador 15y ago

Useful titles, that work well in RSS and search need to be enforced, else we will get a situation like Reddit's front page, which is currently full of meaningless clickbait titles.

lignuist 15y ago
All HN Posters Should Stop Doing This Immediately. I wonder, if it's just a lacking sense of communication. For example, a friend of mine sends me emails like "Do you have a minute. I've got a question.", "There's something we should talk about.", without mentioning what's the actual purpose of his messages. I would expect at least a keyword. More than once I tried to stop him from doing this - without success.

klez 15y ago

> It feels like vandalism. This is what hackers do. He lost me here. Too bad it was almost the end of the article and I also agreed with him.

baumgartn3r 15y ago
+1
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
marshray 15y ago
I thought it was an interesting comparison. Although I would disagree with it in the sense that any real hacker would likely come up with a far more creative defacement. :-)

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

51Cards 15y ago

It's really simple, I believe they serve up their videos with Flash which your tablet doesn't support. Flash for video isn't going away yet in many cases because HTML 5 video is still lacking all of the security features sites like this one require. So they did the next best thing, they built a custom app for your platform which gave them the security they desired and you a full user experience. Edit: Just confirmed I can watch their videos on my Android tablet, thus it's just a lack of Flash that caused this. In fact on my ASUS Slider they are playing perfectly.

hollerith 15y ago
Consequently, Apple should provide a secure way for outfits like 60 Minutes to publish video to iPads without the outfit having to have an iPad app.
- untog 15y ago
  Where's their incentive to do that?
  - hollerith 15y ago
    Actually they do do that: it's called iTunes Video Store.
- pmjordan 15y ago
  They do. The BBC use it for the web-based version of the iPlayer, for example. (which only works on iOS devices and various set-top boxes and web-connected TVs - try it in the iOS Simulator or any other desktop browser with a spoofed user agent and it'll fail) Basically, the (HTTPS) server can require the client to provide a special Apple-signed client certificate, which the server then verifies. If verification fails, it closes the connection. If it succeeds, the video is transmitted encrypted (SSL) and plays back just like any other <video> tag. There's also a variant that lets you statically encrypt the video and serve it via Apple's "HTTP Live Streaming" protocol, with the keys for decryption downloaded via the client-certificate-authenticated SSL connection described above. This lets you avoid the overhead of SSL for gigs and gigs of data, as you only have to encrypt the files once, offline.

buff-a 15y ago

A friend sends me a link to a 60 Minutes segment she feels it's important I watch. I'm on an iPad -- not that it matters ... There is no alternative -- no way to click through to the video or text that I was after Somewhere like this: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7398478n http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7398478n ? ... <div id="flashvideocontent"> So, no there is no way to click through to the video you were after because you are on an iPad, and iPad's do not have Adobe Flash. That means if you want to see the link that your friend sent, then you are going to have to download an app. Blame Apple and Adobe, not the website.

marknutter 15y ago
Yet youtube videos work on the iPad.. hmm..
Turing_Machine 15y ago
"So, no there is no way to click through to the video" Because the site set it up that way. Intentionally. So, yes, I blame the site. Sites with a clue (like YouTube and Vimeo) have been serving HTML5 video for a couple of years now. It's just a matter of adding another step to your automated transcoding workflow (you have one, right?) For a small indie site the disk space consumed by keeping video in 2 or 3 different formats might be an issue, but for CBS?

Torn 15y ago

CBSNews (powering Gamespot and a load of other content sites) are f---ing terrible at mobile interaction. View a site link on a mobile device and they'll serve you a mobile version of their front page. That's it. You've then got to click 'full site' to see the full frontpage and set your preference cookie, and then press back a few times to retry your original request.

ABS 15y ago

Or: All Technical Savvy People Should Stop Buying A Device Entirely Built Around Apps Over The Web And Then Complain They Have To Download Apps. (or buy it and don't complain, that's fine too)

nikanj 15y ago

All Content Posters Should Start Writing Headlines That Don't Remind Me Of Reddit.

tocomment 15y ago

Is there any way to change the user agent on the iPhone or iPad? Maybe someone could start a proxy for iPhones that could do this?

tocomment 15y ago

You know what else bothers me on mobile browsing. There are some websites where I can't zoom in on the iPhone. I've tried researching it so I could make a bookmarklett or something to disable that, but I can't find what's causing it. Does anyone know?

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Mobile/Viewport_meta_tag https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Mobile/Viewport_meta_tag
arguesalot 15y ago
Worse, there are websites where you cant scroll on the ipad. Even worse: all research journals that are published through Elsevier's sciencedirect.com do this.

gravitronic 15y ago

The irony is that their app will probably just be a framed browser view anyways...

chernevik 15y ago

Native apps do have a persistence advantage over HTML. My apps for the WSJ, FT and Economist download entire issues for availability offline. I haven't seen that done in HTML. In terms of web breakage, these all offer urls to the same article on the web page, so they don't break the web going into the sites. I haven't seen them use outbound links.

pacala 15y ago

> Why do so many web developers think that tablets are an excuse to break the functionality of the web? ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION, ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION, INTERNET, PROCESS_OUTGOING_CALLS, READ_CALENDAR, READ_CONTACTS, READ_HISTORY_BOOKMARKS, READ_PROFILE, READ_SMS, READ_SOCIAL_STREAM, SUBSCRIBED_FEEDS_READ user: scroll, scroll, grumble, scroll, scroll, scroll, finally!, ALLOW

gallerytungsten 15y ago

Isn't there a user agent switcher for iPad? That would seem to be the easy fix for such annoyances. (I don't have an iPad, but it seems like an obvious thing that would be available.)

tmroyal 15y ago

Isn't the real problem here that instead of an honest statement about why the app needs to be downloaded (ie. no Flash on the iPad), something looking like an advertisement is served instead? That the author assumed the worst might be due to the apparent dishonesty rather than any paranoia on the author's part. Of course, the problem might be a little more complicated, because some less adept users seeing that a website will not load on their device might blame those who made the website. Still, CBS's solution clearly isn't the one making lemonade out of lemons.

radarsat1 15y ago

Another thing: we need a "tablet" mode for websites, that is distinct from "mobile." Several websites assume I am on a phone when I visit them with my Galaxy Tab, and enforce the use of a tiny font. Perhaps ironically, on these "mobile" websites, zooming seems to be broken, whereas on regular websites I can double-tap and it will zoom in to make the font size bigger and reflow the paragraph to fit my device. Examples are Slashdot and Live Journal, but there are others.

untog 15y ago

A few days ago I had an article that was popular on HN. I was watching my live Analytics tracking and saw that I had an inbound referral from "chat.stackexchange.com"- I looked up the full URL, and tried it in my browser. Just like that, I was in the chat room discussing the topic of my post with the people that had found it. It occurred to me that if they were using almost any other kind of chat system (like an app, but also including IRC) I would never have been able to do that. It's a shame, but I suppose there are also privacy concerns at stake.

peterwwillis 15y ago

"Why do so many web developers think that tablets are an excuse to break the functionality of the web?" Web developers have been breaking the functionality of the web for years. A lot of 'feature-rich' web apps today are almost unusable on a mobile device, much less for a disabled person. So instead of making a 'mobile friendly' version of their site, they made an app. Maybe some day they'll find it cheaper and easier to just make one site that works for all devices. But that probably sounds crazy.

mattbeck 15y ago

It's not just tablets, I get that junk on my other android and iOS devices (nook, phone, etc) all the time now. For some reason the news sites seem to be the worst offenders. It feels very much like the paywall thing that devastated so many newspaper sites a few years back. Despite having highly desirable content, they just don't get the internet (still).

greggman 15y ago

The cynical answer is because once you install an app they can * Push ads to you even when you're not viewing their content * Read your address book I hate it too. I also hate sites that ask me to install their app every time I visit. No, I don't want the IMDB app nor do I want the Rottentomatoes app, etc etc.. Unfortunately the majority seem to love it :-(

teeray 15y ago

Equally frustrating: when the no scale attribute is set for sites that are not optimized for viewing on mobile or tablet screens.

albertsun 15y ago

Web developers need conscientious objector status when tasked with building features they know are bad for the web.