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A lot of native apps are just wrappers around a JS context with a few bridges into native APIs and they are pure data grabs. Reddit always asks you to use its

by ljm 1y ago

A lot of native apps are just wrappers around a JS context with a few bridges into native APIs and they are pure data grabs. Reddit always asks you to use its native app, for example. Why the fuck would I care so much about Reddit that I want it outside of my browser? Same goes for any other website.

spauldo 1y ago
Reddit is one of the cases where a native app makes sense. Some of the 3rd party Reddit apps were great. But I'll eat my hat before I'll install Reddit's own app. Reddit killing off 3rd party apps is why I post here and not there.
- andoando 1y ago
  That's because reddit on mobile browser sucks ass (feels like it's intentionally made to suck) even more so than its native app. I don't think being nativr is what made 3rd party apps great
- card_zero 1y ago
  I too switched from Reddit to HN during the API protests of '23. But I always browsed through old.reddit anyway, I never used the third party apps. I'm aware of names like RIF and that everyone said they were great, but what was great about them?
  - jombib 1y ago
    Better features, less ads, smoother experience and in the case of Apollo—the one I used—it just looked much better.
    - card_zero 1y ago
      So apart from the ad blocker, that's ... features, smoother, better. What? Edit: I'm not trying to be rude (it comes naturally). But you just explained "great" as "better, with more". I guess smooth might mean faster, which might be because it isn't doing ads and tracking. It seems to come back to third-party being the crucial difference, and "app" not mattering.
      - notpushkin 1y ago
        UI/UX is not that tricky. Caring about your users is the hard part usually. Third party clients could be webapps, too, of course.
        kro 1y ago
        Apps can bypass websecurity (CORS fetch), that allows for third party clients for example on video platforms using their internal APIs. I don't think the reddit clients work this way though.
  - spauldo 1y ago
    I imagine it depends on how you use it. I came to Reddit late and never got into the old interface. I commented a lot on technical subreddits and didn't do much with the doomscrolling ones. I used Boost. Its ads were not intrusive (and I despise ads) and the UI was written with a small touchscreen in mind. If not for my distaste for phone keyboards, I'd say it was a better experience than the website on a desktop. Would it be possible for a mobile browser to have a better experience? I don't know. I value my sanity too much to do web development. But Reddit was absolutely determined to make its mobile site unusable and the official Reddit app had a bad reputation (and I wouldn't give those bastards the satisfaction after being nagged so much to install it), so a 3rd party app was the only reasonable solution.
    - card_zero 1y ago
      I hold phones sideways, then I forget that it's weird to do. People like apps (and mobile versions of sites) because of human hand anatomy, I guess.
      - efreak 1y ago
        Unfortunately, it's getting harder and harder to hold your phone like this and see any useable amount of information. I'd love to have a 3:2 desktop monitor to replace my 16:10, but even 16:10 isn't available for phones. My current phone is 9:19, and I think I've seen 9:21. The wider the phone is, the larger percentage of precious screen space the system UI uses up when horizontal. I can see half a paragraph on my phone in landscape mode, and if it was any wider I'd never even try. As soon as I want to type something, I have to switch to portrait or I lose my view of what I'm looking at. There are terminal apps I simply cannot use because portrait mode isn't wide enough (unless I shrink the font so small I can't read it) and landscape mode I can't see anything at all. This affects some websites as well, due to their insistence on removing UI elements entirely when the device is too narrow (instead of moving them to the bottom) and others that set a ridiculously large minimum width. I far prefer tethering my phone to my tablet for this reason, which I'm lucky enough to have in 16:10 form factor.
  - proverbialbunny 1y ago
    Caching and loading times mostly. I'm on old.reddit.com too and I use the mobile app (including the 3rd party ones back when they existed) for one primary reason: Two windows I can quickly switch back and forth on. On my phone I use Reddit to look up things. I can have a Reddit thread on one window and a Google search on the other and go back and forth. In a browser switching tabs back and forth is painful, often reloading pages, losing the spot in the browser, having this url bar and top bar taking up tons of screen space.
- Gigachad 1y ago
  How does an app for Reddit make sense? It’s an image and text platform. There’s no weird hardware apis required. Native apps make sense when you need to tap in to platform specific features like the Lidar api and such. They don’t make any sense for most websites.
  - hammock 1y ago
    We’ve forgotten what an “app” was
  - galangalalgol 1y ago
    There isn't even a need for JavaScript for reddit though it does seem to require it. I posted this without JavaScript enabled so it obviously would be fine for reddit too. Using an app for reddit doesn't make any sense to me at all. Banking apps make sense, they are doing some crazy device finger-printing to avoid id theft. But when the goal is to convey information use html and css. If you are taking payments then yeah maybe some JS. If it is a game, try wasm. Apps are for things that need access to hardware that the browser doesn't allow, which these days is a short list.
    - chasing0entropy 1y ago
      Reddit is in full in AI data hoarding mode. Try to load their website with fingerprinting entirely mitigated and you'll be greeted by impossible are you a robot validation
      - Barbing 1y ago
        >fingerprinting entirely mitigated This is an interest of mine, but I’m still fingerprinted per a recent comment. May I ask: How?
        chasing0entropy 1y ago
        Chromium with autogenerate device resolution and client agent id with only simple JavaScript enabled(no rtc or gdi data) is enough to wall you from Reddit login script unless you're already validated by cookie
- teaearlgraycold 1y ago
  I use HN+Tildes instead. I left a couple years before the API fiasco because I was sick of the ragebait and toxic culture.
- WatchDog 1y ago
  Some of the third party apps were quite good, certainly better than the reddit mobile site, but that's mostly because the reddit mobile site is just so deliberately awful. There aren't really any major technical reasons why the mobile site couldn't be as good.
- twelvechairs 1y ago
  Redreader is still around as a good 3rd party app.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  > Some of the 3rd party Reddit apps were great. Because they were competently designed. But you could put that same design into a web page and it would work fine.
- linhns 1y ago
  Yeah but if you want some restricted content the app is the only way
  - spauldo 1y ago
    That was part of the 3rd party app purge. Before then, the 3rd party apps could see NSFW content just fine.
xtracto 1y ago
This is so funny. For me, it was as if the "monkey's paw" had played me. Back in the early 2000s, I loved desktop applications. My thinking was that there's no way a web app could do what a desktop application could. I loathed slow, proprietary, online-requiring, HTML based web apps . 25 years have passed, and now we DO have some "native" device apps... but they are just HTML web elements bubdled in a freaking custom browser. Edit: anyone remember the "PortableApps" wave? I loved having that in a usb drive.
- reactordev 1y ago
  You never experienced the horror that is XAML. Not HTML, not native control either, it’s a weird middle ground of platform lock-in that you couldn’t escape until recently. What I miss are the days where one could Win32 call a window up, and it looked like every other. Not sugar for me and none for thee. I cut my teeth programming GUIs, I still like making GUIs - immediate mode guis, event based guis, animated guis and informational guis. I left front-end web dev when every 6 months there was a new framework, a new new, and everyone dropped everything for it. I understand why React ate the world at the time but it’s gotten to the point where it’s no longer standards driven, its ecosystem driven, and even then it’s leaking. What I love about these hybrid apps though is that from Apache Cordova (PhoneGap) onwards, they’ve all looked really really good. Proving that a normal user can’t tell the difference. Which makes solo-dev or small-dev dev easier. Go with what you know. No need to learn flutter, or SwiftUI, or Kotlin.
  - notpushkin 1y ago
    Svelte’s been pretty great in terms of “just use web standards where it makes sense” so far.
notpushkin 1y ago
Speaking of apps that are just wrappers around websites – it’s possible to do that in just 50 kb: https://f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.maps https://f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.maps
blensor 1y ago
The most annoying thing is repeat questions ( reddit, linkedin, facebook, ... ). If I already told the site 10 times that I don't want to use the mobile app, stop asking me. That's even worse than cookie consent banners, at least those stay away
sprior 1y ago
Your comment got me a bit curious and so I spent time playing around creating a simple Android app using webView for my personal website and got it working, the only permission I added was INTERNET. So what's the next level of awfulness - do I add additional permissions and then additional information can be presented to my website server, or would I actually have to implement an additional path to collect the kind of info these apps are trying for?

by ljm 1y ago

spauldo 1y ago

Reddit is one of the cases where a native app makes sense. Some of the 3rd party Reddit apps were great. But I'll eat my hat before I'll install Reddit's own app. Reddit killing off 3rd party apps is why I post here and not there.

andoando 1y ago
That's because reddit on mobile browser sucks ass (feels like it's intentionally made to suck) even more so than its native app. I don't think being nativr is what made 3rd party apps great
card_zero 1y ago
I too switched from Reddit to HN during the API protests of '23. But I always browsed through old.reddit anyway, I never used the third party apps. I'm aware of names like RIF and that everyone said they were great, but what was great about them?
- jombib 1y ago
  Better features, less ads, smoother experience and in the case of Apollo—the one I used—it just looked much better.
  - card_zero 1y ago
    So apart from the ad blocker, that's ... features, smoother, better. What? Edit: I'm not trying to be rude (it comes naturally). But you just explained "great" as "better, with more". I guess smooth might mean faster, which might be because it isn't doing ads and tracking. It seems to come back to third-party being the crucial difference, and "app" not mattering.
    - notpushkin 1y ago
      UI/UX is not that tricky. Caring about your users is the hard part usually. Third party clients could be webapps, too, of course.
      - kro 1y ago
        Apps can bypass websecurity (CORS fetch), that allows for third party clients for example on video platforms using their internal APIs. I don't think the reddit clients work this way though.
- spauldo 1y ago
  I imagine it depends on how you use it. I came to Reddit late and never got into the old interface. I commented a lot on technical subreddits and didn't do much with the doomscrolling ones. I used Boost. Its ads were not intrusive (and I despise ads) and the UI was written with a small touchscreen in mind. If not for my distaste for phone keyboards, I'd say it was a better experience than the website on a desktop. Would it be possible for a mobile browser to have a better experience? I don't know. I value my sanity too much to do web development. But Reddit was absolutely determined to make its mobile site unusable and the official Reddit app had a bad reputation (and I wouldn't give those bastards the satisfaction after being nagged so much to install it), so a 3rd party app was the only reasonable solution.
  - card_zero 1y ago
    I hold phones sideways, then I forget that it's weird to do. People like apps (and mobile versions of sites) because of human hand anatomy, I guess.
    - efreak 1y ago
      Unfortunately, it's getting harder and harder to hold your phone like this and see any useable amount of information. I'd love to have a 3:2 desktop monitor to replace my 16:10, but even 16:10 isn't available for phones. My current phone is 9:19, and I think I've seen 9:21. The wider the phone is, the larger percentage of precious screen space the system UI uses up when horizontal. I can see half a paragraph on my phone in landscape mode, and if it was any wider I'd never even try. As soon as I want to type something, I have to switch to portrait or I lose my view of what I'm looking at. There are terminal apps I simply cannot use because portrait mode isn't wide enough (unless I shrink the font so small I can't read it) and landscape mode I can't see anything at all. This affects some websites as well, due to their insistence on removing UI elements entirely when the device is too narrow (instead of moving them to the bottom) and others that set a ridiculously large minimum width. I far prefer tethering my phone to my tablet for this reason, which I'm lucky enough to have in 16:10 form factor.
- proverbialbunny 1y ago
  Caching and loading times mostly. I'm on old.reddit.com too and I use the mobile app (including the 3rd party ones back when they existed) for one primary reason: Two windows I can quickly switch back and forth on. On my phone I use Reddit to look up things. I can have a Reddit thread on one window and a Google search on the other and go back and forth. In a browser switching tabs back and forth is painful, often reloading pages, losing the spot in the browser, having this url bar and top bar taking up tons of screen space.
Gigachad 1y ago
How does an app for Reddit make sense? It’s an image and text platform. There’s no weird hardware apis required. Native apps make sense when you need to tap in to platform specific features like the Lidar api and such. They don’t make any sense for most websites.
- hammock 1y ago
  We’ve forgotten what an “app” was
- galangalalgol 1y ago
  There isn't even a need for JavaScript for reddit though it does seem to require it. I posted this without JavaScript enabled so it obviously would be fine for reddit too. Using an app for reddit doesn't make any sense to me at all. Banking apps make sense, they are doing some crazy device finger-printing to avoid id theft. But when the goal is to convey information use html and css. If you are taking payments then yeah maybe some JS. If it is a game, try wasm. Apps are for things that need access to hardware that the browser doesn't allow, which these days is a short list.
  - chasing0entropy 1y ago
    Reddit is in full in AI data hoarding mode. Try to load their website with fingerprinting entirely mitigated and you'll be greeted by impossible are you a robot validation
    - Barbing 1y ago
      >fingerprinting entirely mitigated This is an interest of mine, but I’m still fingerprinted per a recent comment. May I ask: How?
      - chasing0entropy 1y ago
        Chromium with autogenerate device resolution and client agent id with only simple JavaScript enabled(no rtc or gdi data) is enough to wall you from Reddit login script unless you're already validated by cookie
teaearlgraycold 1y ago
I use HN+Tildes instead. I left a couple years before the API fiasco because I was sick of the ragebait and toxic culture.
WatchDog 1y ago
Some of the third party apps were quite good, certainly better than the reddit mobile site, but that's mostly because the reddit mobile site is just so deliberately awful. There aren't really any major technical reasons why the mobile site couldn't be as good.
twelvechairs 1y ago
Redreader is still around as a good 3rd party app.
Dylan16807 1y ago
> Some of the 3rd party Reddit apps were great. Because they were competently designed. But you could put that same design into a web page and it would work fine.
linhns 1y ago
Yeah but if you want some restricted content the app is the only way
- spauldo 1y ago
  That was part of the 3rd party app purge. Before then, the 3rd party apps could see NSFW content just fine.

xtracto 1y ago

This is so funny. For me, it was as if the "monkey's paw" had played me. Back in the early 2000s, I loved desktop applications. My thinking was that there's no way a web app could do what a desktop application could. I loathed slow, proprietary, online-requiring, HTML based web apps . 25 years have passed, and now we DO have some "native" device apps... but they are just HTML web elements bubdled in a freaking custom browser. Edit: anyone remember the "PortableApps" wave? I loved having that in a usb drive.

reactordev 1y ago
You never experienced the horror that is XAML. Not HTML, not native control either, it’s a weird middle ground of platform lock-in that you couldn’t escape until recently. What I miss are the days where one could Win32 call a window up, and it looked like every other. Not sugar for me and none for thee. I cut my teeth programming GUIs, I still like making GUIs - immediate mode guis, event based guis, animated guis and informational guis. I left front-end web dev when every 6 months there was a new framework, a new new, and everyone dropped everything for it. I understand why React ate the world at the time but it’s gotten to the point where it’s no longer standards driven, its ecosystem driven, and even then it’s leaking. What I love about these hybrid apps though is that from Apache Cordova (PhoneGap) onwards, they’ve all looked really really good. Proving that a normal user can’t tell the difference. Which makes solo-dev or small-dev dev easier. Go with what you know. No need to learn flutter, or SwiftUI, or Kotlin.
- notpushkin 1y ago
  Svelte’s been pretty great in terms of “just use web standards where it makes sense” so far.

notpushkin 1y ago

Speaking of apps that are just wrappers around websites – it’s possible to do that in just 50 kb: https://f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.maps https://f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.maps

blensor 1y ago

The most annoying thing is repeat questions ( reddit, linkedin, facebook, ... ). If I already told the site 10 times that I don't want to use the mobile app, stop asking me. That's even worse than cookie consent banners, at least those stay away

sprior 1y ago

Your comment got me a bit curious and so I spent time playing around creating a simple Android app using webView for my personal website and got it working, the only permission I added was INTERNET. So what's the next level of awfulness - do I add additional permissions and then additional information can be presented to my website server, or would I actually have to implement an additional path to collect the kind of info these apps are trying for?