10 ms·

WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

174 points by t3ra 12y ago

soapdog 12y ago
Author here, will monitor this thread waiting for feedback and general comments.
- jay_kyburz 12y ago
  Love the Gifs. Perfect sentiment captured in each one.
  - soapdog 12y ago
    Thats the spirit! :D
    - azakai 12y ago
      I liked them too. Where's the first one from? It looks familiar...
      - Max_Mustermann 12y ago
        Not sure if the gif is actually from the series but the actor is one of the main characters of the famous (among geeks) IT Crowd.
- markive 12y ago
  Hate the gifs.. Made the article almost unreadable.. Just have them loop once or twice when I scroll to that part of the article.
  - soapdog 12y ago
    Thanks for the feedback. The gifs are the way I use to express my sentiments without reverting to cursing in all languages I know. I am aware that they are not every ones cup of tea but I liked them. I will consider not abusing gifs in the future (even though I love them and will probably use).
    - dzsekijo 12y ago
      I love the gifs ヽ(⌐□_□)ノ♪♬
- matt4077 12y ago
  I have mixed feelings about the gifs.
- malisper 12y ago
  You misspelled 'disappoint' in the first sentence.
  - soapdog 12y ago
    Fixed. Thanks a lot. English is not my first language.
- matthewgifford 12y ago
  I'm wondering if you're aware that WhatsApp's data store is on the phone, not on their servers. If so, how would you do away with the requirement that the phone stay online while using the web client?
  - PauloManrique 12y ago
    Not really. WhatsApp do store messages on their servers for sometime. Clean data and uninstall the app from your Android, uninstall the app and then install again. WhatsApp you ask if you want to recover some of your history.
    - matthewgifford 12y ago
      I think that's due to the app making a local backup on the device. "WhatsApp automatically makes backups every day at 4 AM and stores them in the WhatsApp folder of your Android phone." http://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/android/20887921 http://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/android/20887921
      - PauloManrique 12y ago
        You're right, I just removed Whatsapp and that folder and now it didn't ask me to recover.
kesor 12y ago
Yes. Thank you.
iamdanfox 12y ago
I would be interested to understand more about why WhatsApp made some of those decisions. The requirement to keep your phone connected to the Internet seems strange, perhaps it's using some encryption key that never leaves the device? Why do they need the Chrome-only filesystem API so much? Why has iOS been left out?
- koenigdavidmj 12y ago
  > perhaps it's using some encryption key that never leaves the device Don't they support multiple devices already (running the client on both a phone and a tablet)? Maybe they don't want to have this run on a desktop (either via API or JavaScript), because then curious people might reverse engineer it. Sort of like how Netflix has clients on locked-down Linux-based devices but doesn't support Linux desktops.
  - prteja11 12y ago
    They don't support multiple devices/sessions concurrently. You can only be logged in on one device any given time.
  - ianlevesque 12y ago
    Netflix now works in Chrome on Linux.
    - wldcordeiro 12y ago
      Which is a damn shame because only supporting Chrome is absurd. We've advanced so far, but now instead of "Works best in Internet Explorer 6 at 800x600" it's "Works in Chrome." The more things change the more they stay the same...
    - mackal 12y ago
      Thats not really Netflix's fault though. Google Chrome (not Chromium) is the only browser on Linux that supports the DRM the TV/movie studios forced upon Netflix. With Windows Silverlight works in all browsers so they have access to the DRM.
teen 12y ago
Hrmm I really like the web client. It's not great (image viewer is really small) but serves my needs perfectly
- dysoco 12y ago
  I agree, 90% of my serious daily communication (i.e. not IRC) is done via Whatsapp. I can't explain how horribly annoying is to have to pull out my cell phone and write in that tiny screen every time I want to send a message.
sumitgt 12y ago
This web client, even in it's current horrific form, is something I really needed. Many a times I find myself working on my laptop, with the phone carelessly lying somewhere else in the room. It's a pain to go find it when a new message arrives. The bottomline is, I guess WhatsApp doesn't need a Web Client to compete with other services. If you've been to India, you will realize how pervasive WhatsApp is, with or without a Web Client. This is just an added convenience feature for some power users. So it is understandable that they went this route.
- soapdog 12y ago
  They didn't needed to go these route. Telegram for example has clients for most platforms and a web client that works in every browser and doesn't require your phone to be connected to the internet for it to work.
  - rtpg 12y ago
    Telegram is a bad counter-example for various reasons. LINE has a desktop client that works well though
    - ceocoder 12y ago
      Just curious - I remember some debate here about Telegram bug bounty from a while ago, other than that haven't seen any good/bad press about it. Why is it bad counter-example?
      - rtpg 12y ago
        It's a client that explicitly about security and openness, so a lot of things are going to be "self-evidently" supported. The objective is to make a good client The objective of clients like LINE and WhatsApp are to make good chat for the masses. This can come at various technical costs, because that's not their objective, whereas Telegram is , at its core, about technology.
    - Aldo_MX 12y ago
nickik 12y ago
If all of this is true, its worse then I expected and I did not expect much. Why do all these companys wage a war against third party, even from a buissness perspective I don't get it. It creates innovation that you can copy for the offical app and its a perfect to test new features.
- pekk 12y ago
  The same reason Apple has consistently waged war against clones?
  - jshevek 12y ago
    Yes. But don't be too specific about those reasons, though, or you will be downvoted.
jshevek 12y ago
Apple has ushered in a new era in which a high level of centralized control is considered acceptable to consumers. WhatsApp is obviously trying to keep total control, like apple. This doesn't explain all of their failings here. For example, I'm sure they will eventually find ways to address their control issues and still be usable in other browsers. They might never do a web interface that runs in iOS, due to apple's own controling approach. Of course there is still the whatsapp iOS app.
- andrewchambers 12y ago
  Its the opposite - Whats App is storing nothing which limits what they can do.
  - jshevek 12y ago
    That hardly makes it 'the opposite', unless you presume only the most limited interpretation of the words. The fact that whatsapp stores nothing has little to do with their cease and desist orders. 3rd party clients can still be built on a system that stores nothing.
    - andrewchambers 12y ago
      Using servers paid for by whats app without compensating them is stealing.
dmix 12y ago
> Your phone needs to stay connected to the internet for our web client to work... What? Is this true? I can't think of a reason why their devs would ever need the users phone to be online.
- andrewbarba 12y ago
  WhatsApp does not store messages on their servers. It's a clean passthrough from one device to the next. They only hold onto message until all clients in the group text or one-on-one text have received the sent message. So, if you have two clients using the same phone number, the system wouldn't know when it is able to delete the message. Right now the single phone receives the message and simply passes it up to the web browser. It's a simple solution that fits into their data model. They claim that they cannot get this working on iOS which prior to iOS 7 may have been true. However, on iOS 7 and above we can run code (even async network calls) when we receive a push notification so they should have been able to work with that API to produce similar results.
  - nostrademons 12y ago
    Heh, so WhatsApp is the real SnapChat? The one that actually deletes your messages once read?
    - tedunangst 12y ago
      Did snapchat not delete messages?
      - nostrademons 12y ago
        http://rt.com/usa/157960-snapchat-deceived-users/ http://rt.com/usa/157960-snapchat-deceived-users/ http://www.bewebsmart.com/app-review/snapchat-changes-chat-stories-and-no-they-never-really-disappeared/ http://www.bewebsmart.com/app-review/snapchat-changes-chat-s...
        12y ago
myth_buster 12y ago
Wasn't Whatsapp's success attributed to their policy of inclusion (all major mobile platform/devices). This seems like coming from a different company altogether.
- wodenokoto 12y ago
  Not at all. First of, these modern messaging/social/mobile-first messaging apps we see getting popular have a fundamentally different model than what most of us desktop-first are used to. They are not centred around an account, but around a device. If you delete your Line app, all messages are gone. Hell, even if you log into Line from a new device, messages on the old one will be deleted. A friend of mine recently lost her phone and she saw no other way than to create a new account. Another friend had Docomo help her in-store to transfer all her Line messages when she upgraded her phone. I don't use WhatsApp, but reading other post here, it seems that they use a similar model (but not as extreme). Your phone is your account, and all your stuff is stored only locally on your phone (or at least only accessible locally). This explains why the web-app works so poorly. Yes, WhatsApp got big by being on all devices, but they provide the software and the software model is a "one device per user"-model. This works great in a mobile-first (or should I say mobile-only) fashion. This is SMS on steroids, not messenger for your phone.
  - azakai 12y ago
    I don't see how this explains the poor functionality of the web client? All a web client needs is persistent, large storage - which is provided by IndexedDB - and to access the network to reach the service's servers. WhatsApp should be able to make a fully-functional web client.
justicezyx 12y ago
They may certainly dont understand 3rd party devs, but saying they dont understand the web is a bold conclusion... At least the author of the post is not entitled to judge this way...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- azakai 12y ago
  Actually, IndexedDB allows you to store large amounts of data, is standardized, and is supported across practically all browsers.
  - soapdog 12y ago
    Exactly!
- soapdog 12y ago
  IndexedDB is an accepted web standard and can store images and files. If you try to store too much information the browser asks the users permission to do so. There is no need to use the local filesystem API because thats not a standard. As for not storing things, that still doesn't require the phone to be logged onto the network. The web client could just be another "device". If you're logged with the web client then the data is pushed to your browser. If you're logged with your phone then the data is pushed to your phone. This hack of making the phone talk to the web client to circumvent the limitation of only a single device per user on the whatsapp network is just silly. Telegram for example allows you to log with many devices and you can remotely disconnect other devices if you want. We have full IRC clients such as irccloud.com, we have full email web clients such as gmail.com, we have XMPP web clients. The web platform can handle instant messaging. We have desktop notifications as a web api. We have IndexedDB as storage medium. We have websockets as communication layer. There is absolutely no need for the hacks they did.
- nness 12y ago
  I stand corrected, IndexedDB would likely be a far better solution than LocalFileSystem.
shmerl 12y ago
Of course not. It's not federated and not standard compliant. It's a complete shame that they use XMPP but modified it to make it non compliant on purpose. Whatsapp is just an insult the Web and an example of the Internet's dark age mentality of walled gardens (like AOL vs Compuserve e-mail incompatibility).
- AceJohnny2 12y ago
  > It's a complete shame that they use XMPP but modified it to make it non compliant on purpose. Yes, as a (former* ) XMPP advocate, this makes me sad. But it's really WhatsApp's attitude towards 3rd party clients that have me blacklisting them for myself as well as family and friends. This is the antithesis of what XMPP was supposed to bring. It's like nega-XMPP. * XMPP as a standard and as community implementation missed to jump to mobile. Because it's open, it can eventually get there, but it makes me sad and angry how Jingle (Google's Voice & Video extension) was poorly adopted by clients for years. And now we have Hangouts...
  - shmerl 12y ago
    Yes, poor Jingle support really puzzles me. It's not new, but I barely ever manage to connect two different clients without problems for video calls. That's besides the fact that most clients don't support it at all yet... I don't have much respect for Hangouts really. If Google wanted to improve things they could propose Hangouts protocol as a replacement for XMPP. Make it an open IETF standard. They were such backers of XMPP in the past. And what did they do instead? Another walled garden and proprietary protocol. Total failure Google. That was the point when I said - you are lying about not being evil.
    - AceJohnny2 12y ago
      My understanding for poor Jingle support is that, whereas text is easy and low-bandwidth (so you can afford to send everything through a 3rd party server with easy connection semantics), voice and video are much, much much more complicated: not only do you have multiple voice and video codecs with iffy support and stability (sure, even if support library claims to support CodecFoo, it may still fail when passed data from your peer that uses this other library), but the bandwidth requirements means that you now have to deal with trying to directly connect these two clients despite any silent NAT or firewall that may be hidden around. Jingle provided its NAT-traversal algorithm, but even that required network support in the form of "superservers" for when all else failed.
bikamonki 12y ago
Closed technologies succumb. It is a lesson from history. Remember that 'default' browser that had 90% of the market and now has less than 10%? Remember that über successful smartphone company that owned the market with its propietary chat/email network? How about widely used programming languages and frameworks? Flash for cool web effects anyone? The web is open, open wins. No matter how monolithic a market leader is, if it can't figure out how to be open and make money: it will succumb.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >Closed technologies succumb. It is a lesson from history. The only lesson from history is that all tecnologies succumb at some point. General infrastructure standards (like TCP/IP or HTTP) persist longer, but that doesn't say much for application level technologies. >Remember that 'default' browser that had 90% of the market and now has less than 10%? If anything that's a counter-example. Netscape, that "now has less than 10%" is the open source version. It had that 90% when it was proprietary. Besides, the current 2 big players that trump Firefox in users (Chrome and IE) are proprietary too. >Remember that über successful smartphone company that owned the market with its propietary chat/email network? Yeah, it got pwned by Apple and Android. Of which Apple, which is proprietary, has most of the smartphone profits, and Android has a lot of the share, mostly in lower cost phones. Not really about open vs closed. Meebo, a totally open phone never got anywhere, and neither did Mozilla's phone attempts. >Flash for cool web effects anyone? What about it? It dominated its niche of the market for like 15 years. If it dies its mostly because of general incompetence by Adobe. They never managed to create a mobile version that doesn't suck donkey's balls for one. They also died because a proprietary platform make a decision not to include it (iOS), which is not really about "open" winning.
  - bikamonki 12y ago
    The fact that a given closed tech is winning does in fact support my argument: open wins, eventually. And the fact that protocols and standards prevail is precisely because they need to be open to become protocols and standards.
coldtea 12y ago
So? Why should WhatsApp "understand" the web?
- soapdog 12y ago
  Because they are claiming that they released a "web client" that doesn't actually work on the web but only on a single browser and is not independent (it requires a mobile app running on a phone connected to the internet). People release crippled software on the web because they don't understand what it is all about. The day we lose interoperability between browsers it will all be doomed. The fact that most of the websites work well on the top browsers is a victory that only those that lived thru the 90s will appreciate in its full glory. ;-)
  - coldtea 12y ago
    That would be a problem for them only if it hurts their main business, which is their mobile clients. I'd say a functional web client might be more of an issue for them than a broken one.
bazookajoes 12y ago
The linked article could have been titled "andre garzia does not understand that mobile messaging is not the web" jajaja ;) I am not going to comment on the chrome only and non standard API complaints. The key insight behind modern mobile messaging that allows them to scale cheaply is that for most consumers the phone is persistent enough that the server does not need to store messages. Ask a 19 year old if they need their old whatsapp messages. Most will say no. In fact, many proactively delete them. Turning a mobile messaging into a CPU and bandwidth only problem is a clever hack instead of it also being a disk and indexing problem. This is hard thing for a lot of us to understand because we come from a world where our business has message retention and surveillance requirements. We want to run quantized self and sentiment analysis reports for the last 10 years. But most people either don't know that might even want that. The other key insight is that knowing the user's identity can be more important than the user themselves.
- soapdog 12y ago
  author here. I don't think you understood what I am complaining about. I am complaining exactly about chrome only and usage of non-standard api. As for storage, the web client is requesting non-standard file system permission exactly to store things. I am saying they should use a standard API such as IndexedDB for that kind of thing. I do understand a thing or two about IM having worked on more than a client before. There is no need whatsoever for the hacks they did... As for surveillance, thats another can of worms that is not protected by what they are doing. Traffic is intercepted at other vulnerable spots such as the carrier itself or ISP.
  - bazookajoes 12y ago
    I do understand. One of your complaints is "Mistake three - It doesn't work if your phone is not connected to the internet." That is not a mistake. It is a direct result of the fundamental insight that enabled whatsapp to become what is is - being stateless. Your first two complaints are technical, but the third is a business decision that optimizes their product to fit the needs of the market. This is a by the by, but surveillence in the context of business requirements means something different. For example, financial companies need to surveil their employee's messages for illegal activity.
fiatjaf 12y ago
>Here in Brazil WhatsApp is basically ubiquitous since its cheaper to send IM messages than to send SMS. From this I conclude that OP has fallen for the bizarre nonsense argument I've heard in Brazil a lot of times when WhatsApp was gaining traction: "You must use it! It's free SMS!" What? No, it is not "free SMS", it is internet messaging. Internet messaging has existed since... since there was internet. Yeah, it is "free" as long as you have unlimited internet, but if that qualifies for "free SMS" email was free SMS much before WhatsApp.
- soapdog 12y ago
  Actually there are carriers in Brazil that allow free connection to WhatsApp server even if you have a limited connection plan... People say that it is free SMS because of some reasons such as the fact that WhatsApp transfer your whole list of contacts to their server and thus populates the application contact list to the point that it is as convenient to use as SMS. Emails require email addresses. WhatsApp contacts are matched by phone number which are already on your phone address book anyway. Its about perception. People here tend to place SMS, WhatsApp, LINE, Telegram all in the same collection because they are used to exchange small instant messages. Email is usually used for longer text that doesn't require immediate action.
  - slig 12y ago
    > Its about perception It's not just about perception. In their early days, they used to advertise themselves as a "Free SMS" service, at least in Portuguese. > Actually there are carriers in Brazil that allow free connection to WhatsApp server even if you have a limited connection plan... This is very recent, after they got massive.
PauloManrique 12y ago
One more update to your article: several mobiles can't use that, because it seens de animation on the QR Code Scan screen is not responsive. My phone is a example, I just can't scan the QR Code: http://i.imgur.com/QTmTdJ4.jpg http://i.imgur.com/QTmTdJ4.jpg
- Genmutant 12y ago
  I think your screen is to small for the message window. There is a button below it which dismisses the white window and enables the scanning.
antbbn 12y ago
Can it be a money issue? Remembering that WhatsApp is not free, the 1$ for a year of service should be how they make money (I think they did a very good job there because no one that I know remembers that). Maybe the on-line phone solution suits them technically and economically, because they don't want to provide you with an alternative client that you might use for free. As they say this is simply and extension of the phone client.
- rnmjr 12y ago
  I don't think it's that no-one remembers that, but I don't think WhatsApp actually enforces this seriously. I have never paid for the service and each time the deadline for doing so approached, it had been extended.
  - ultrafez 12y ago
    I've paid for it once, but before that I had at least two extensions, and since I paid I've had one extension.
jwilliams85 12y ago
whatever happened to chatrooms btw?
hmans 12y ago
The web doesn't understand WhatsApp.
teknologist 12y ago
It also works in Opera, fyi.
- tdkl 12y ago
  Operas browser user agent is basically the same as Chromes. Firefox also works if you spoof it, which makes the point of OPs article even more prominent.
  - teknologist 12y ago
    Opera is the same browser for all intents and purposes now anyway
iopq 12y ago
I've been using XMPP on my phone just fine. Why do I need WhatsApp which is not open? It offers me nothing new other than having to verify my phone number. But I can just use Google Voice if I wanted to message someone who knows my phone number. If I'm talking with someone in India there is no reason why I shouldn't just use XMPP.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "Why do I need WhatsApp which is not open? It offers me nothing new other than having to verify my phone number." The common answer: because al my friends are using it. I don't understand why people don't use SMS when most smartphone contracts come with unlimited messages now. Why send your info through ANOTHER third party? But my friends are using it for the group feature so unless I don't want to be left out of the loop I have to as well.
  - shalinmangar 12y ago
    Whatsapp is hugely popular in India where phone contracts are not popular and most people use pay-as-you-go prepaid mobile services. Very few, if any, of them come with unlimited messages. Unlimited messages are a US-only thing I guess.
    - k-mcgrady 12y ago
      I'm in the UK. That doesn't change my point though. Despite the unlimited text messages in UK/US people still use Whatsapp.
      - jhasse 12y ago
        WhatsApp has lots of features which SMS don't.
      - daledavies 12y ago
        My 2 cents... Group text via SMS is a PITA. The main reason why I use WhatsApp for certain messaging tasks. Having Wifi but no phone signal - WhatsApp gets used again. WhatsApp also lets you see when a message has been received and also when it has been read. Spooky, but useful.
robinhood 12y ago
I don't understand why you think the biggest SMS system in the world (which it is in practice) should open its API or use non-proprietary system. Moreover you have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever on their technical infrastructure or their constraints as a business and a technology company. Making this kind of blog post, based on arguments made out of thin air, is the same as putting a redesign of Amazon on Dribbble and bitch about their current design.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dzamo_norton 12y ago
Standards defiance notwithstanding, the web client appears to work as advertised and will surely save many a neck and thumb from premature aging. It's interesting at this point to think about identity and authentication in WhatsApp. They've never had a username or password and their use of your mobile phone number as your identity seems to have been key to their success (the other factor I'd cite is good cross-platform support). WhatsApp authn on mobile consists of a once-off SMS verification to confirm you are running WhatsApp on the mobile device hosting the SIM card corresponding to the phone number identity you've claimed for yourself. That said, I recently saw a case of someone using a temporary pre-paid SIM card while she was traveling here in South Africa yet her WhatsApp messages from that phone still appeared to come from her New Zealand number. Not sure how that passed the authn. The lack of username and password, I believe, is what has led to some of the unnaturalness of the WhatsApp web app. I don't think that their remarks of "the web browser mirrors conversations and messages from your mobile device -- this means all of your messages still live on your phone." reveal all of what guided their design choices. I also doubt that they "don't get the web". Instead I think they need the phone there and online because they have no username and password (or other device-independent authn) and they have thought quite carefully about protecting what got them ahead of the myriads of other perfectly functional IM apps out there in the first place.

174 points by t3ra 12y ago

soapdog 12y ago

Author here, will monitor this thread waiting for feedback and general comments.

jay_kyburz 12y ago
Love the Gifs. Perfect sentiment captured in each one.
- soapdog 12y ago
  Thats the spirit! :D
  - azakai 12y ago
    I liked them too. Where's the first one from? It looks familiar...
    - Max_Mustermann 12y ago
      Not sure if the gif is actually from the series but the actor is one of the main characters of the famous (among geeks) IT Crowd.
markive 12y ago
Hate the gifs.. Made the article almost unreadable.. Just have them loop once or twice when I scroll to that part of the article.
- soapdog 12y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. The gifs are the way I use to express my sentiments without reverting to cursing in all languages I know. I am aware that they are not every ones cup of tea but I liked them. I will consider not abusing gifs in the future (even though I love them and will probably use).
  - dzsekijo 12y ago
    I love the gifs ヽ(⌐□_□)ノ♪♬
matt4077 12y ago
I have mixed feelings about the gifs.
malisper 12y ago
You misspelled 'disappoint' in the first sentence.
- soapdog 12y ago
  Fixed. Thanks a lot. English is not my first language.
matthewgifford 12y ago
I'm wondering if you're aware that WhatsApp's data store is on the phone, not on their servers. If so, how would you do away with the requirement that the phone stay online while using the web client?
- PauloManrique 12y ago
  Not really. WhatsApp do store messages on their servers for sometime. Clean data and uninstall the app from your Android, uninstall the app and then install again. WhatsApp you ask if you want to recover some of your history.
  - matthewgifford 12y ago
    I think that's due to the app making a local backup on the device. "WhatsApp automatically makes backups every day at 4 AM and stores them in the WhatsApp folder of your Android phone." http://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/android/20887921 http://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/android/20887921
    - PauloManrique 12y ago
      You're right, I just removed Whatsapp and that folder and now it didn't ask me to recover.

kesor 12y ago

Yes. Thank you.

iamdanfox 12y ago

I would be interested to understand more about why WhatsApp made some of those decisions. The requirement to keep your phone connected to the Internet seems strange, perhaps it's using some encryption key that never leaves the device? Why do they need the Chrome-only filesystem API so much? Why has iOS been left out?

koenigdavidmj 12y ago
> perhaps it's using some encryption key that never leaves the device Don't they support multiple devices already (running the client on both a phone and a tablet)? Maybe they don't want to have this run on a desktop (either via API or JavaScript), because then curious people might reverse engineer it. Sort of like how Netflix has clients on locked-down Linux-based devices but doesn't support Linux desktops.
- prteja11 12y ago
  They don't support multiple devices/sessions concurrently. You can only be logged in on one device any given time.
- ianlevesque 12y ago
  Netflix now works in Chrome on Linux.
  - wldcordeiro 12y ago
    Which is a damn shame because only supporting Chrome is absurd. We've advanced so far, but now instead of "Works best in Internet Explorer 6 at 800x600" it's "Works in Chrome." The more things change the more they stay the same...
  - mackal 12y ago
    Thats not really Netflix's fault though. Google Chrome (not Chromium) is the only browser on Linux that supports the DRM the TV/movie studios forced upon Netflix. With Windows Silverlight works in all browsers so they have access to the DRM.

teen 12y ago

Hrmm I really like the web client. It's not great (image viewer is really small) but serves my needs perfectly

dysoco 12y ago
I agree, 90% of my serious daily communication (i.e. not IRC) is done via Whatsapp. I can't explain how horribly annoying is to have to pull out my cell phone and write in that tiny screen every time I want to send a message.

sumitgt 12y ago

This web client, even in it's current horrific form, is something I really needed. Many a times I find myself working on my laptop, with the phone carelessly lying somewhere else in the room. It's a pain to go find it when a new message arrives. The bottomline is, I guess WhatsApp doesn't need a Web Client to compete with other services. If you've been to India, you will realize how pervasive WhatsApp is, with or without a Web Client. This is just an added convenience feature for some power users. So it is understandable that they went this route.

soapdog 12y ago
They didn't needed to go these route. Telegram for example has clients for most platforms and a web client that works in every browser and doesn't require your phone to be connected to the internet for it to work.
- rtpg 12y ago
  Telegram is a bad counter-example for various reasons. LINE has a desktop client that works well though
  - ceocoder 12y ago
    Just curious - I remember some debate here about Telegram bug bounty from a while ago, other than that haven't seen any good/bad press about it. Why is it bad counter-example?
    - rtpg 12y ago
      It's a client that explicitly about security and openness, so a lot of things are going to be "self-evidently" supported. The objective is to make a good client The objective of clients like LINE and WhatsApp are to make good chat for the masses. This can come at various technical costs, because that's not their objective, whereas Telegram is , at its core, about technology.
  - Aldo_MX 12y ago

nickik 12y ago

If all of this is true, its worse then I expected and I did not expect much. Why do all these companys wage a war against third party, even from a buissness perspective I don't get it. It creates innovation that you can copy for the offical app and its a perfect to test new features.

pekk 12y ago
The same reason Apple has consistently waged war against clones?
- jshevek 12y ago
  Yes. But don't be too specific about those reasons, though, or you will be downvoted.

jshevek 12y ago

Apple has ushered in a new era in which a high level of centralized control is considered acceptable to consumers. WhatsApp is obviously trying to keep total control, like apple. This doesn't explain all of their failings here. For example, I'm sure they will eventually find ways to address their control issues and still be usable in other browsers. They might never do a web interface that runs in iOS, due to apple's own controling approach. Of course there is still the whatsapp iOS app.

andrewchambers 12y ago
Its the opposite - Whats App is storing nothing which limits what they can do.
- jshevek 12y ago
  That hardly makes it 'the opposite', unless you presume only the most limited interpretation of the words. The fact that whatsapp stores nothing has little to do with their cease and desist orders. 3rd party clients can still be built on a system that stores nothing.
  - andrewchambers 12y ago
    Using servers paid for by whats app without compensating them is stealing.

dmix 12y ago

> Your phone needs to stay connected to the internet for our web client to work... What? Is this true? I can't think of a reason why their devs would ever need the users phone to be online.

andrewbarba 12y ago
WhatsApp does not store messages on their servers. It's a clean passthrough from one device to the next. They only hold onto message until all clients in the group text or one-on-one text have received the sent message. So, if you have two clients using the same phone number, the system wouldn't know when it is able to delete the message. Right now the single phone receives the message and simply passes it up to the web browser. It's a simple solution that fits into their data model. They claim that they cannot get this working on iOS which prior to iOS 7 may have been true. However, on iOS 7 and above we can run code (even async network calls) when we receive a push notification so they should have been able to work with that API to produce similar results.
- nostrademons 12y ago
  Heh, so WhatsApp is the real SnapChat? The one that actually deletes your messages once read?
  - tedunangst 12y ago
    Did snapchat not delete messages?
    - nostrademons 12y ago
      http://rt.com/usa/157960-snapchat-deceived-users/ http://rt.com/usa/157960-snapchat-deceived-users/ http://www.bewebsmart.com/app-review/snapchat-changes-chat-stories-and-no-they-never-really-disappeared/ http://www.bewebsmart.com/app-review/snapchat-changes-chat-s...
      - 12y ago

myth_buster 12y ago

Wasn't Whatsapp's success attributed to their policy of inclusion (all major mobile platform/devices). This seems like coming from a different company altogether.

wodenokoto 12y ago
Not at all. First of, these modern messaging/social/mobile-first messaging apps we see getting popular have a fundamentally different model than what most of us desktop-first are used to. They are not centred around an account, but around a device. If you delete your Line app, all messages are gone. Hell, even if you log into Line from a new device, messages on the old one will be deleted. A friend of mine recently lost her phone and she saw no other way than to create a new account. Another friend had Docomo help her in-store to transfer all her Line messages when she upgraded her phone. I don't use WhatsApp, but reading other post here, it seems that they use a similar model (but not as extreme). Your phone is your account, and all your stuff is stored only locally on your phone (or at least only accessible locally). This explains why the web-app works so poorly. Yes, WhatsApp got big by being on all devices, but they provide the software and the software model is a "one device per user"-model. This works great in a mobile-first (or should I say mobile-only) fashion. This is SMS on steroids, not messenger for your phone.
- azakai 12y ago
  I don't see how this explains the poor functionality of the web client? All a web client needs is persistent, large storage - which is provided by IndexedDB - and to access the network to reach the service's servers. WhatsApp should be able to make a fully-functional web client.

justicezyx 12y ago

They may certainly dont understand 3rd party devs, but saying they dont understand the web is a bold conclusion... At least the author of the post is not entitled to judge this way...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

azakai 12y ago
Actually, IndexedDB allows you to store large amounts of data, is standardized, and is supported across practically all browsers.
- soapdog 12y ago
  Exactly!
soapdog 12y ago
IndexedDB is an accepted web standard and can store images and files. If you try to store too much information the browser asks the users permission to do so. There is no need to use the local filesystem API because thats not a standard. As for not storing things, that still doesn't require the phone to be logged onto the network. The web client could just be another "device". If you're logged with the web client then the data is pushed to your browser. If you're logged with your phone then the data is pushed to your phone. This hack of making the phone talk to the web client to circumvent the limitation of only a single device per user on the whatsapp network is just silly. Telegram for example allows you to log with many devices and you can remotely disconnect other devices if you want. We have full IRC clients such as irccloud.com, we have full email web clients such as gmail.com, we have XMPP web clients. The web platform can handle instant messaging. We have desktop notifications as a web api. We have IndexedDB as storage medium. We have websockets as communication layer. There is absolutely no need for the hacks they did.
nness 12y ago
I stand corrected, IndexedDB would likely be a far better solution than LocalFileSystem.

shmerl 12y ago

Of course not. It's not federated and not standard compliant. It's a complete shame that they use XMPP but modified it to make it non compliant on purpose. Whatsapp is just an insult the Web and an example of the Internet's dark age mentality of walled gardens (like AOL vs Compuserve e-mail incompatibility).

AceJohnny2 12y ago
> It's a complete shame that they use XMPP but modified it to make it non compliant on purpose. Yes, as a (former* ) XMPP advocate, this makes me sad. But it's really WhatsApp's attitude towards 3rd party clients that have me blacklisting them for myself as well as family and friends. This is the antithesis of what XMPP was supposed to bring. It's like nega-XMPP. * XMPP as a standard and as community implementation missed to jump to mobile. Because it's open, it can eventually get there, but it makes me sad and angry how Jingle (Google's Voice & Video extension) was poorly adopted by clients for years. And now we have Hangouts...
- shmerl 12y ago
  Yes, poor Jingle support really puzzles me. It's not new, but I barely ever manage to connect two different clients without problems for video calls. That's besides the fact that most clients don't support it at all yet... I don't have much respect for Hangouts really. If Google wanted to improve things they could propose Hangouts protocol as a replacement for XMPP. Make it an open IETF standard. They were such backers of XMPP in the past. And what did they do instead? Another walled garden and proprietary protocol. Total failure Google. That was the point when I said - you are lying about not being evil.
  - AceJohnny2 12y ago
    My understanding for poor Jingle support is that, whereas text is easy and low-bandwidth (so you can afford to send everything through a 3rd party server with easy connection semantics), voice and video are much, much much more complicated: not only do you have multiple voice and video codecs with iffy support and stability (sure, even if support library claims to support CodecFoo, it may still fail when passed data from your peer that uses this other library), but the bandwidth requirements means that you now have to deal with trying to directly connect these two clients despite any silent NAT or firewall that may be hidden around. Jingle provided its NAT-traversal algorithm, but even that required network support in the form of "superservers" for when all else failed.

bikamonki 12y ago

Closed technologies succumb. It is a lesson from history. Remember that 'default' browser that had 90% of the market and now has less than 10%? Remember that über successful smartphone company that owned the market with its propietary chat/email network? How about widely used programming languages and frameworks? Flash for cool web effects anyone? The web is open, open wins. No matter how monolithic a market leader is, if it can't figure out how to be open and make money: it will succumb.

coldtea 12y ago
>Closed technologies succumb. It is a lesson from history. The only lesson from history is that all tecnologies succumb at some point. General infrastructure standards (like TCP/IP or HTTP) persist longer, but that doesn't say much for application level technologies. >Remember that 'default' browser that had 90% of the market and now has less than 10%? If anything that's a counter-example. Netscape, that "now has less than 10%" is the open source version. It had that 90% when it was proprietary. Besides, the current 2 big players that trump Firefox in users (Chrome and IE) are proprietary too. >Remember that über successful smartphone company that owned the market with its propietary chat/email network? Yeah, it got pwned by Apple and Android. Of which Apple, which is proprietary, has most of the smartphone profits, and Android has a lot of the share, mostly in lower cost phones. Not really about open vs closed. Meebo, a totally open phone never got anywhere, and neither did Mozilla's phone attempts. >Flash for cool web effects anyone? What about it? It dominated its niche of the market for like 15 years. If it dies its mostly because of general incompetence by Adobe. They never managed to create a mobile version that doesn't suck donkey's balls for one. They also died because a proprietary platform make a decision not to include it (iOS), which is not really about "open" winning.
- bikamonki 12y ago
  The fact that a given closed tech is winning does in fact support my argument: open wins, eventually. And the fact that protocols and standards prevail is precisely because they need to be open to become protocols and standards.

coldtea 12y ago

So? Why should WhatsApp "understand" the web?

soapdog 12y ago
Because they are claiming that they released a "web client" that doesn't actually work on the web but only on a single browser and is not independent (it requires a mobile app running on a phone connected to the internet). People release crippled software on the web because they don't understand what it is all about. The day we lose interoperability between browsers it will all be doomed. The fact that most of the websites work well on the top browsers is a victory that only those that lived thru the 90s will appreciate in its full glory. ;-)
- coldtea 12y ago
  That would be a problem for them only if it hurts their main business, which is their mobile clients. I'd say a functional web client might be more of an issue for them than a broken one.

bazookajoes 12y ago

The linked article could have been titled "andre garzia does not understand that mobile messaging is not the web" jajaja ;) I am not going to comment on the chrome only and non standard API complaints. The key insight behind modern mobile messaging that allows them to scale cheaply is that for most consumers the phone is persistent enough that the server does not need to store messages. Ask a 19 year old if they need their old whatsapp messages. Most will say no. In fact, many proactively delete them. Turning a mobile messaging into a CPU and bandwidth only problem is a clever hack instead of it also being a disk and indexing problem. This is hard thing for a lot of us to understand because we come from a world where our business has message retention and surveillance requirements. We want to run quantized self and sentiment analysis reports for the last 10 years. But most people either don't know that might even want that. The other key insight is that knowing the user's identity can be more important than the user themselves.

soapdog 12y ago
author here. I don't think you understood what I am complaining about. I am complaining exactly about chrome only and usage of non-standard api. As for storage, the web client is requesting non-standard file system permission exactly to store things. I am saying they should use a standard API such as IndexedDB for that kind of thing. I do understand a thing or two about IM having worked on more than a client before. There is no need whatsoever for the hacks they did... As for surveillance, thats another can of worms that is not protected by what they are doing. Traffic is intercepted at other vulnerable spots such as the carrier itself or ISP.
- bazookajoes 12y ago
  I do understand. One of your complaints is "Mistake three - It doesn't work if your phone is not connected to the internet." That is not a mistake. It is a direct result of the fundamental insight that enabled whatsapp to become what is is - being stateless. Your first two complaints are technical, but the third is a business decision that optimizes their product to fit the needs of the market. This is a by the by, but surveillence in the context of business requirements means something different. For example, financial companies need to surveil their employee's messages for illegal activity.

fiatjaf 12y ago

>Here in Brazil WhatsApp is basically ubiquitous since its cheaper to send IM messages than to send SMS. From this I conclude that OP has fallen for the bizarre nonsense argument I've heard in Brazil a lot of times when WhatsApp was gaining traction: "You must use it! It's free SMS!" What? No, it is not "free SMS", it is internet messaging. Internet messaging has existed since... since there was internet. Yeah, it is "free" as long as you have unlimited internet, but if that qualifies for "free SMS" email was free SMS much before WhatsApp.

soapdog 12y ago
Actually there are carriers in Brazil that allow free connection to WhatsApp server even if you have a limited connection plan... People say that it is free SMS because of some reasons such as the fact that WhatsApp transfer your whole list of contacts to their server and thus populates the application contact list to the point that it is as convenient to use as SMS. Emails require email addresses. WhatsApp contacts are matched by phone number which are already on your phone address book anyway. Its about perception. People here tend to place SMS, WhatsApp, LINE, Telegram all in the same collection because they are used to exchange small instant messages. Email is usually used for longer text that doesn't require immediate action.
- slig 12y ago
  > Its about perception It's not just about perception. In their early days, they used to advertise themselves as a "Free SMS" service, at least in Portuguese. > Actually there are carriers in Brazil that allow free connection to WhatsApp server even if you have a limited connection plan... This is very recent, after they got massive.

PauloManrique 12y ago

One more update to your article: several mobiles can't use that, because it seens de animation on the QR Code Scan screen is not responsive. My phone is a example, I just can't scan the QR Code: http://i.imgur.com/QTmTdJ4.jpg http://i.imgur.com/QTmTdJ4.jpg

Genmutant 12y ago
I think your screen is to small for the message window. There is a button below it which dismisses the white window and enables the scanning.

antbbn 12y ago

Can it be a money issue? Remembering that WhatsApp is not free, the 1$ for a year of service should be how they make money (I think they did a very good job there because no one that I know remembers that). Maybe the on-line phone solution suits them technically and economically, because they don't want to provide you with an alternative client that you might use for free. As they say this is simply and extension of the phone client.

rnmjr 12y ago
I don't think it's that no-one remembers that, but I don't think WhatsApp actually enforces this seriously. I have never paid for the service and each time the deadline for doing so approached, it had been extended.
- ultrafez 12y ago
  I've paid for it once, but before that I had at least two extensions, and since I paid I've had one extension.

jwilliams85 12y ago

whatever happened to chatrooms btw?

hmans 12y ago

The web doesn't understand WhatsApp.

teknologist 12y ago

It also works in Opera, fyi.

tdkl 12y ago
Operas browser user agent is basically the same as Chromes. Firefox also works if you spoof it, which makes the point of OPs article even more prominent.
- teknologist 12y ago
  Opera is the same browser for all intents and purposes now anyway

iopq 12y ago

I've been using XMPP on my phone just fine. Why do I need WhatsApp which is not open? It offers me nothing new other than having to verify my phone number. But I can just use Google Voice if I wanted to message someone who knows my phone number. If I'm talking with someone in India there is no reason why I shouldn't just use XMPP.

k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "Why do I need WhatsApp which is not open? It offers me nothing new other than having to verify my phone number." The common answer: because al my friends are using it. I don't understand why people don't use SMS when most smartphone contracts come with unlimited messages now. Why send your info through ANOTHER third party? But my friends are using it for the group feature so unless I don't want to be left out of the loop I have to as well.
- shalinmangar 12y ago
  Whatsapp is hugely popular in India where phone contracts are not popular and most people use pay-as-you-go prepaid mobile services. Very few, if any, of them come with unlimited messages. Unlimited messages are a US-only thing I guess.
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    I'm in the UK. That doesn't change my point though. Despite the unlimited text messages in UK/US people still use Whatsapp.
    - jhasse 12y ago
      WhatsApp has lots of features which SMS don't.
    - daledavies 12y ago
      My 2 cents... Group text via SMS is a PITA. The main reason why I use WhatsApp for certain messaging tasks. Having Wifi but no phone signal - WhatsApp gets used again. WhatsApp also lets you see when a message has been received and also when it has been read. Spooky, but useful.

robinhood 12y ago

I don't understand why you think the biggest SMS system in the world (which it is in practice) should open its API or use non-proprietary system. Moreover you have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever on their technical infrastructure or their constraints as a business and a technology company. Making this kind of blog post, based on arguments made out of thin air, is the same as putting a redesign of Amazon on Dribbble and bitch about their current design.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

dzamo_norton 12y ago

Standards defiance notwithstanding, the web client appears to work as advertised and will surely save many a neck and thumb from premature aging. It's interesting at this point to think about identity and authentication in WhatsApp. They've never had a username or password and their use of your mobile phone number as your identity seems to have been key to their success (the other factor I'd cite is good cross-platform support). WhatsApp authn on mobile consists of a once-off SMS verification to confirm you are running WhatsApp on the mobile device hosting the SIM card corresponding to the phone number identity you've claimed for yourself. That said, I recently saw a case of someone using a temporary pre-paid SIM card while she was traveling here in South Africa yet her WhatsApp messages from that phone still appeared to come from her New Zealand number. Not sure how that passed the authn. The lack of username and password, I believe, is what has led to some of the unnaturalness of the WhatsApp web app. I don't think that their remarks of "the web browser mirrors conversations and messages from your mobile device -- this means all of your messages still live on your phone." reveal all of what guided their design choices. I also doubt that they "don't get the web". Instead I think they need the phone there and online because they have no username and password (or other device-independent authn) and they have thought quite carefully about protecting what got them ahead of the myriads of other perfectly functional IM apps out there in the first place.