The Delta iPhone app saved my ass and let me check in right before the cut-off for flight I needed to make, while I was stuck in traffic in a cab outside the airport. However, downloading the app was preceded by ten minutes of trying desperately to check in using the Delta web site on my iPhone. I was stymied by a combination of strangely sized fonts (which forced me to zoom way in on a huge page in order to locate and click on tiny menu titles at the bottom of the page), mysteriously placed menu pop-ups (as in I clicked a button to open a menu, and then had to pan around the page trying to find where the menu had appeared), and other problems that I never figured out.
I downloaded the app out of sheer desperation to check in on time for my flight. In any other circumstance, I would have given up, gone to a competitor, and filed the company and brand name in my brain under "fuck you." (Actually, I did that last part anyway.)
Nagging me to download an app is bad enough. If you took the time to build an iOS or Android app but didn't put any effort into mobile usability for your web site, then you presumed you could make me install your app. You presumed too much.
> In any other circumstance, I would have given up, gone to a competitor, and filed the company and brand name in my brain under "fuck you." (Actually, I did that last part anyway.)
This is why I never want to own an airline: you get blamed when your customer leaves his house too late to be at the airport on time.
Why the hate? He said "check in right before the cut-off", so he was on time. This could just as well have happened at any other location any other day and be just as annoying/time-wasting. For example if you tried to check-in from a hotel where the mobile is still your only internet device the situation wouldn't change.
The situation doesn't change the fact that the UX for mobile users is/was very bad.
Checking in is rarely done in person anymore. Checking in online is the norm, and I normally do it first thing in the morning, from home, wearing my bathrobe and sipping coffee. I don't know what practical purpose it serves for the airline, but for passengers it's just a formality you have to complete by a certain time to make sure they don't cancel your reservation. It has nothing to do with being at the airport on time, except that in this particular case I had to check in using my phone because I was in a cab on the way to catching my flight.
I wouldn't be surprised if responsive/web-OK site views were budgeted away in favor of app development. They should be complementary, but this is an airline we're talking about.
Right, and the stupidity is twofold: that external access to resources (site/app) is a zero-sum game where x developers must be allocated to one or another goal without any coherence between them, which is source of the schism between app and mobileweb UXes, and that apparently nobody has spoken up to say that both products suck.
The Delta app is actually very useful - I don't categorize it as "apptrash" at all. It tells me the gate, reminds me when I'm able to check in, and even has a spot for me to record where I parked my car. :)
My only beef is that not all of their gates have scanners capable of reading the boarding pass barcode off the phone, so I end up printing the passes anyway.
I thought most airlines let you check in via a web app. But maybe I'm spoilt - Australian airlines are a lot less competitive than US ones (they aren't often bankrupt), and perhaps they can afford such niceties.
Yes, but he mentioned that it was virtually unusable on his mobile device. Instead of a download app they could have just made the website mobile-friendly.
Worst part is, most of these apps are essentially browsers. There is no additional content or interesting extra functionality being offered... just same old content, only formatted differently.
So, this concept of installing a new browser every time I visit an unfamiliar site, really is ridiculous.
This is almost as bad as "here's a mobile version of our site, opened automatically for your convenience".
If your site is designed peoperly, my iOS device can browse your "full" site just fine, thank you.
They want to have push/local notifications. It's like getting ahold of an email, but moreso. I've turned off Javascript to avoid them asking, now I constantly get "turn on your javascript" black overlays from Wordpress sites. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I certainly hope it won't last! But there isn't a large downside to angering the few of us that were just passing by.
My dream is having some AdBlock-style filters for misbehaving websites, run by tens of thousands of people. Then we could nip these practices in the bud.
There's not much stopping you from making exactly that. The main issue is that iOS devices won't allow users to install that sort of modification, and it doesn't look like newer iOS devices are going to be jailbroken any time soon. Older devices though, sure.
I completely agree. I don't want to install for every website I use. I simply would prefer fluid design or mobile site, even full site over annoying privacy threatening apps. So proper HTML5 site (even with offline features), no app, simply perfect.
+1 Right on. At least we should have something similar to a global opt out list for nagging to install apps. Most companies have become much better at making it easy to opt out of emails after you have done business with them. Web portals should learn the same lesson with nags for app installations.
I am firmly in the HTML5 camp on rich web apps instead of custom apps. A tangent, but: our purpose in life is to make life better for those we love and also the world in general. Assuming that you are producing good content, do you feel like you better serve people with a universal web + mobile HTML5 web app, or some custom Android and/or iOS app?
One of my projects for the new year is to take my old cookingspace.com hack and add "AI" for suggesting alternative recipes, generating recipes based on ingredients on hand, etc. Yesterday I started to flesh out a simple UI in an Android app, basically just having fun. This morning I had one of those "what was I thinking" moments, and then saw the linked article which I agree with.
I like native apps for a lot of things. They feel and act, well… native! Maybe I just haven't seen enough well executed HTML5 apps, but every one I've used so far is a far cry from what a native app can be. It's often pretty obvious when a "native" app is just a glorified Web view.
But… I don't want to download an app to access your Web forum or read your news articles. I don't need a new app for every freaking Web site I visit. My phone has a perfectly capable Web browser, and I'm not afraid to use it. It works surprisingly well even on a lot of sites that obviously weren't designed for it.
"I do like having the option of a higher-fidelity experience if I want it. If you provide a lot of value, I’ll grab the app on my own accord and enjoy it that much more, thanks."
Exactly! For sites I access super frequently, and where the app actually makes it easier to use, I'm all for it! But with rare exceptions, I just don't spend enough time on a given news site or forum to warrant downloading an app for it, no matter how amazing that app is.
HTML5 is a fine medium for content delivery. Please get out of my face and let me browse your damn site!
(On a related note: sites pretending to be iPhone apps in the browser are… usually more irritating than useful. I know Apple did it with their iPhone manual, but I think even their attempt is kinda lame. If you look like a native app, I start expecting your UI to respond like a native app, and I'm usually very disappointed.)
I think there is a fascinating split personality to the internet these days. On the one hand, there is a big drive to move traditional desktop application functionality into the web browser (e.g. google and microsoft's office web apps, photo editing, and even some computation in the case of Wolfram Alpha.) On the other hand, there is a big drive to push traditional internet content into standalone apps, as this author outlines. Currently it seems that the vast majority of the apps in the Windows 8 store fall into this category.
The long term push is towards html5 mobile apps period. The only problem is performance (which is improving), immature javascript programming libraries/communities and poor adoption of HTML5 mobile features by the OSes (such as being able to use datepickers and other essential APIs for building apps).
That's why native apps are still important. Once the above is figured out, I highly doubt companies will want to pay to develop on 2-3 different codebases in different programming languages than their website, to support native apps.
But iOS/Android make their money from native apps so I doubt they're particularly motivated to make mobile HTML5 apps the standard.
> That's why native apps are still important. Once the above is figured out, I highly doubt companies will want to pay to develop on 2-3 different codebases in different programming languages than their website, to support native apps.
But that's the thing: we're talking about forums and news sites here. Mobile browsers are perfectly capable of rendering news, blogs and forums as fast as you'd ever need. Companies aren't building these kinds of native apps for the performance.
A better explanation is that apps are simply the fashion right now. Everybody and their brother doesn't need a web page any more than they need an app.
Another possibility is that companies think it would be easier to monetize apps than web pages.
If you take ads from a typical ad network and put them in a mobile web page, the page probably will look terrible, and a lot of people have ad blockers in their browsers anyway. (Mobile Firefox recommends AdBlock in its home screen.)
A lot of mobile apps, on the other hand, have ads that cannot be removed except by rooting your phone, and even then, many ads slip through. (I use Android with AdAway.)
Also, people are more used to paying $0.99 for apps than they are to paying for web pages.
I doubt very seriously that ad blockers diminish ad revenue significantly. Mobile Firefox is the default browser on which devices? Defaults count for a lot.
I think we're both right: companies probably do believe they'll be better able to monetize an app than a web site, but they're probably wrong, and they probably think that for faddish reasons.
Aren't forums generally all running the same software? I'll bet having a mobile app is just a feature of that suite of software. Probably because the company making the software heard from some of their customers that they wanted that as a feature.
The other ironic move I'll note is that true content is increasingly getting pushed to simpler forms such as ePub readers, Instapaper, Readability, Moon+Reader, etc.
I find it very difficult to actually read long-form material in a web browser, whether desktop/laptop, or phone/tablet, with all the competing features and distractions which are presented. HN is better than most, G+ is particularly bad, other sites fall at various places along that range.
The specific mode of advertising website-based apps via pop-up interstitials is typical of what I find really, really annoying about sites (persistent header, footer, or sidebar elements in particular).
When TBL's original WWW documents were posted to HN some months back, I was particularly impressed with how readable the pages were, largely due to the bare minimalism of their markup. For actually presenting information (which was, it turns out, what he was hoping to accomplish), the original HTML markup remains surprisingly good.
The irritating part is that, even if I decide I want the app, I still have to use the website to see the particular piece of content I was linked to. Most sites just tell you to get their app, they don't deep link into the app when you do have it.
Even worse: I can't recall the number of times I've clicked 'No thanks' on a 'Download our app'-page, only to get redirected to the homepage, instead of the page I was originally supposed to view.
Server attention span is still terrible, as explained by XKCD: http://xkcd.com/869/
He hates unitaskers in the kitchen because they take up finite space and money. These don't really apply to tiny free apps. It's like complaining about an extra key in a keyring you never use in a drawer you never open.
There is a 100x difference in size between different apps. If apps do little, they are often tiny.
A huge app that does nothing, that's a very different thing.
I'm an iOS developer. I have over 500 apps in iTunes ("Can you check this out please and tell me how much a menu like theirs would cost"), mostly not on my devices.
Unitask tools of the Alton Brown stripe are leaf nodes, not pipe nodes. They're roach motels, not highways. You check in, you don't check out. Design is typically monolithic, not atomic.
The Unix philosophy is for small, atomic, pipeable utilities that do a single task (more properly, subtask) in conjunction with other tools.
There are exceptions. including, say, web browsers. But where a browser is one level of monolithic app, it's generalized to that particular information purpose. A site-dedicated application is worlds worse.
No, he's articulating the Unix philosophy: tools should do one thing (knives are for cutting), and their user should be able to use that one thing for many different purposes, in conjunction with other tools.
I avoid this problem by instantly boycotting any site that does this. They clearly have absolutely no interest in serving me content or helping me do what I want to do, and there is always an alternative.
I understand the frustration w/the manner in which some mobile apps are advertised, but wrt this statement in particular ...
They clearly have absolutely no interest in serving me content or helping me do what I want to do
... coming from the site owner side of things, I'll offer a friendly counter argument (which has been rephrased in light of down votes): site owners are interested in serving you content, or helping you do what you want to do ... just in a better way.
I agree ads or prompts can be annoying, but to say site owners go through the trouble of developing a mobile app and advertising it b/c they have no interest in serving content or helping the user experience doesn't quite fit. To me, a site that offers a mobile app says the exact opposite.
Oh definitely. The mobile app is almost always a better experience than using the site. But that's not the point. The point is that I'm on my phone with limited time on a slow internet connection, I have requested content from a site and that site has chosen to not show me the content that was expected, but instead display an advertisement. This is unacceptable to me, and rather than deal with it I usually just leave and never come back.
A link at the top would suffice. Or the bottom. Or anywhere, really, that doesn't prevent me from viewing the content I was trying to view.
Edit: In case it's not clear, I think the article is written about full screen overlays that I'm describing. If not, I'm all wrong here and my posts probably don't make sense. I'm totally cool with a site mentioning that they have an app and that I should get it. What I'm not okay with is when you are prevented from accessing the site until you agree or disagree to get their app.
Let's say you're walking along and you want to find an XYZ franchise (and don't use Google/X Maps)? You could visit XYZ's site and get a simplified mobile interface, tap in your zip and go. Or, like the aforementioned sites, you could find their app in the app store/market. Wait for it to download and install (hope you're on 3G). Launch the app. Wait while it gets a GPS fix and shows you banners, and then finally find a location.
I've experienced this a number of times. The UX is more than just the App. It is how people get your app and more.
I see, thanks for elaborating. I suppose I took your comment ...
They clearly have absolutely no interest in serving me content or helping me do what I want to do
... too literally. I believe the trouble of developing and offering a mobile app supplements their motivation to serve content, in a better way.
But your point was well stated, and it's clear you're not against a better mobile experience, but rather the manner in which it's advertised. In which case I agree ... shoving a full screen ad down a user's throat is frustrating.
There is really no alternative to Linked In - there is other software that does the same thing but since no one in my network uses it, that would be worthless to me.
Since I moved to Android and saw the permissions their app wants (access to my phone calls and calendar, among others), I've found a great alternative: they can wait until I get to my desktop, if I bother remembering.
Yelp app seems like a tough one compared to their site on a mobile browser - they cache previously viewed places, your location, some graphics, embedded native maps, more streamlined search, and just overall offer a better experience.
But yeah, they're in 1% of the world where app is more useful than the site.
I realized that a lot of apps that I get prompted to download have effectively one-off usage patterns and I'd delete them immediately after downloading and using them. This app would've essentially just allowed for very basic functionality for layouts, buttons, and form input from however many companies built these basic interfaces. That way I wouldn't have to download any more super-special apps, I could just load up the interface and work with that.
As I started thinking about this app more, I realized it was called a "web browser." I wish more companies put stronger emphasis on their mobile site.
I find this an unnecessary flame. That’s why Apple introduced Smart App Banners for iOS and they work just fine. The problem is just with those redirect you to a separate app download page. http://david-smith.org/blog/2012/09/20/implementing-smart-ap...
Flame of whom? The problem is being nagged, popovered, redirected, or otherwise bothered to install something that does nothing to enhance the content but takes time to install and wastes space on your phone. Apple has indeed recently introduced a partial solution, but as many have pointed out few have adopted it yet.
When I visit the Call of Duty Elite website there's a smart banner telling me to download the app. I went to the website because their iOS app is limited. When I click on the "x" to close it it takes me to the iOS app instead of removing the banner. I lose real estate like you mentioned. Real annoying.
smart banners have made things both better and worse. it's good when sites use them instead of a javascript alert or a full-screen nag, but it's encouraged so many more websites to start nagging you to install their app.
The worst for me was a site (forget which one) which asked me to download the app, and then redirected me to their homepage when I declined (as opposed to the article I was trying to read). That was an unfortunate user experience.
My theory is that organizational politics are what's driving many media companies to push their 'app' over their website.
Building native apps means that new people with new training need to be hired, a new team with a new manager needs to be formed. And once the budget is there for the new shiny; it must be spent, to do otherwise would be wasteful!
Never underestimate the power of a bureaucracy to make things more complex so that actors on the inside can justify their existence.
Building native apps means that new people with new training need to be hired, a new team with a new manager needs to be formed.
I think it's more that existing employees want to amp up their resumes, and/or Mortgage-Driven Development. That the apps (and their CTAs) routinely suck tells me it's Mr. Learned-Rails-In-24hrs doing tech-lead.
Man that's so painful to see. I imagine most here on HN are "ahead of the curve", but I envy those who work in an environment where that's more common. I worked at a news station and when we finally opened a Facebook page my boss couldn't understand when I asked why we were put entire stories on Facebook, rather than just linking and using Facebook login or the likes.
"Well the consultants recommend this way."
Of course it changed eventually, but man it's weird to see. Of course, the we often joked that a consultant's job was to say do B while we were doing A, then come back in six months and ask why we were doing B? A was obviously the way to go!
Yes, a hundred times, yes. I've watched a company build a Flex app two years ago. "Why not use Web tech". Then they (several years late) decided they needed to jump on the iOS bandwagon (this, at the point that their target market was surely starting to tip to Android majority), and within the last 4 months have started working on a web app to get Android, iOS and Windows 8. So, so, so much duplicated effort. I've watched a very similar pattern play out at a local startup company as well. Even more painfully they designed their own awkward middle-layer to try to abstract out differences between iOS and Android.
The problem is with higher-ups that are on the backside of trends but also think it needs to be a priority to do it soon... Okay.
I feel the same way about sites with special iPad interfaces. Every time I visit one I start to see/read the content as it loads and then the site goes blank while some heavy and slow annoying swipe theme finally comes up. when this happens I just leave.
Just an example of people thinking profit-first and value-to-users-second. Unfortunately very common, and while in many cases it could be justified, I still think many products would improve if their authors thought a little bit more about maximizing user value before their own profit.
I think Apple has recognised the problem and they are now supporting some HTML-meta-tag that will simply insert an App-Store banner when you visit a site that has it with iPhone's Safari.
I think the big reason for this is to unlock the engagement goldmine that is push notifications. I bet they've crunched the numbers and would prefer a few users having push notifications to more users not having them.
Yes! This frustrates me to no end. A surprising culprit is (or was, I stopped using them because of this) Hipmunk. I would think that a new, web-savvy company would have a reasonable web site. But they don't. Their web site is complete garbage on a mobile device and the solution is to download their app. Sorry guys, not gonna happen.
I blogged about that a while back. It's particularly bad on iOS since it seems more sites have iPhone apps. And many of them don't even just put a small link. Many, like Techcrunch, put a full page modal ad. Then there's sites who don't even ask you and redirect to an AppStore link. Stupid.
This is not just about a single purpose app by any website. I think the problem is that apps in general have been isolated silos. That's one other area where windows phone kicks ass IMO. It has neat app contracts that lets one app talk to other thus making it more connected and hence more useful
Hacker News is usable on mobile Safari, but it's not as good as it could be. Try using Alien Blue to browse reddit on an iPhone (and especially an iPad). It is a superior experience to using the plain web site (even m.reddit.com). I very much wish there was an equivalent for Hacker News.
Which is ironic because Web bookmarks/caches are one class of apps that are explicitly banned from the Apple app store, because the web bookmark feature exists. That's why my game, cross platform on ios, android, and web, is not published on App Store. So iOS users can't play my game on an airplane.
Where does it say that web apps are banned from the app store? Apple (unfortunately) does seem to allow apps that are just WebView wrappers. Of course, they aren't very popular though.
Also, if you set up local caching properly, your game should be fully available in offline mode as well, if the user saves your site to their home screen.
I noticed that coincidentally maybe to this, google news has stopped nagging me to save to the home screen with an annoying nag.
I'd like to say I would boycott a site for its a noting nag screens but I don't think that's a very mature way to handle it and all it hurts is me.
For me the most annoying thing is that sometimes I already do have the app and there's no good hand off. For example, I have the yelp app, but when google takes me to a yelp review and the nag screen says install the app, I would expect it to transition my current page view to th app equivalent. Sadly this is not the case. Ditto for LinkedIn
I don't think the easy answer is "all such things suck". You spend the time and money developing an app, and you want your visitors to know about the app. The prime candidates are those who visit your site on that device. So, the targeting is right, but the execution is what typically sucks.
From my own personal experience, if I'm visiting a specific article on the site, my immediate interest is getting the information from the article. Downloading an app is not going to take priority, even if I do ultimately want the app.
We had mocked up a "email me a link to this app" link for our site, in order to give the reader an option to email themselves an iTunes link for later, without taking them outside of the scope of reading the specific article they are looking at. In the end, we switched over to Apple's HTML banner thingy, which gives the opporutnity for people who have already installed the app the ability to open the specific article in the app itself.
> You spend the time and money developing an app, and you want your visitors to know about the app
The problem is that you're thinking about what you want, not what your users want. Your users want to view whatever content they came to your webpage to view. stop getting in the way of that with your wants. the answer really is that all such things suck, your position just seems to be that you don't care how much they suck because you have an agenda to push.
Here you are just projecting your own underinfomed feelings about it on everyone else.
Is there no situation where you see an app as being superior to the website?
For AppShopper.com, yes the app is the superior experience to the mobile web. There were overwhelming requests for an app. We made the app to serve our users. Our goals and user goals are not always mutually exclusive.
If you maintain an app that offers the same core functionality as the website, and the user can accomplish their Immediate goal on the website, adding the unnecessary step of transferring over to the app is never a superior experience. Simple as that. The only valid case for prompting a user to open your app is when their goal can't be accomplished on the web. Anything else is promotion serving your goals, not the user's.
Don't accuse parent of projecting for taking your words at face value. You stated development budget as a reason for wanting users to download your app. That has no relevance to any user's needs.
Not really. It was a pratically throwaway phrase that people can't seem to get past to read the point of my message.
If i say that you spend time and money on your startup, and you want people to see it, it does not mean that the reason I want people to use my startup is primarily for budgetary reasons.
In retrospect I should have left the word money out of it because it gets people worked up.
> You spend the time and money developing an app, and you want your visitors to know about the app
These popovers/nags/redirects are typically annoying because the apps do little to nothing to add to the content or user experience. Just because the company spent time and money developing them doesn't make them useful. Why burden users with the company's poor decision?
Of course there are scenarios where the app could be better. That's not the point. The point is that nag screens suck, people strongly dislike them, and if you actually do have a mobile app that's much better than the web app, there are better ways of promoting it.
Because here's the thing: when people see a pop up of any kind, they reflexively think "fuck you". And it doesn't take a marketing genius to realize that priming people in this fashion isn't the best opening move. It's like stroking a cat backwards; the simple rule is "Don't do this."
The correct approach is to start by provide people with what they want, the the form they request, without interruptions, redirects, etc. Make them happy before you try to sell them anything. Not until they're satisfied should you insert a plug for your mobile app. Knowing that you'll be taking up valuable screen space, make sure the app really is much better than the web app. Then tell people that it's much better, and that you think they'll really like it for this reason. And that's it.
Give people what they want, don't be a dick, and you're golden.
We aren't disagreeing. I agree, current execution sucks. READ my original post.
I was just calling out dpe82's absurd absolute statement that they suck because all apps "do little to nothing to add to the content or user experience"... Implying that if they the app did offer substantially more, then it would all somehow be acceptable.
Not if the content is standard text/images/video and the app gets in the way of consuming the content - which is what a user wants to do when they click on a link to an article.
Can an app be superior because it allows other types of content that can't be done well via web technologies? Perhaps. Can an app help with content discovery? Perhaps. But when a user clicks on a link to standard text/images/video they're not looking for either of those.
If you want to advertise your app because it provides other features that a user may find valuable, that's fine. Advertise it like any other product that runs against your content. If nobody uses it there's likely a good reason. Don't force it on them.
My point being is that your original opinion seems entirely predicated on the fact that Apps are worse experiences than mobile web. I think this is clearly wrong. For web-apps, I think native-apps can function much better. I guess we'll never ever see a Vidmaker app?
But that's all beside the point... you are so quick to argue against me, you don't even see that we agree. Re-read my original post. As I said, the execution sucks. You want to inform your audience that there's an app option, but most of the implementations suck and are too intrusive.
You're right, I shouldn't be so absolutist. Most of my strong reaction is to sites that abuse users by getting in the way and pushing them into an app that doesn't add anything. I guess I'm crabby about it. Don't take it personally.
Sadly this is probably a business decision and not a user experience decision. If I know I'm going to have my website there every time you tap to your homescreen or do a search on your phone I know that I'm probably more likely to convert you.
For as long as interstitial and modal app-begging has been going on, I've wondered if they're measuring their bounce rates. Something tells me maybe the people in charge of the business decision are the same people reporting the technique's efficacy, and they're hiding the numbers that would get the plug pulled on this garbage.
On Android, my personal pet peeve are apps that don't bother to handle their own links. Fine. You've made a special mobile app for your site and "convinced" (i.e. nagged) me to download it. If your app is so gosh-darn wonderful, why the fsck can't I use it whenever I'm using your site? Third-party app Twitter apps can figure this out. Why not you? Hint: The answer probably is that your app isn't nearly as wonderful as you think it is.
Bhe, Github handles all the github.com links. Yet, when it's not something supported by their app (like 95% of the links I stumble upon), they simply redirect the handling to a browser.
The result is:
- Click github link.
- Prompt menu : which application do you wish to use? List of browsers and the github app.
- Click on github.
- Github loads, then...
- Prompt menu : which application do you wish to use? List of browsers.
I could use the 'Always' option, but then the github app wouldn't recognize the links it actually handles.
This is a problem in Android OS. App have to handle all URLs with a certain prefix (or maybe for a while domain?), not a regex pattern they want. Google itself got burned by this, and they didn't even bother building a workaround like github did. It was just mostly impossible to shop for a Nexus device on a Nexus device, since Play hijacked all play.google.com links and then failed to actually show content, since Nexus devices weren't in the native Play Store
Believe it or not but there are heavy user on all of those websites who probably love those apps. They are the target audience for those apps (even if the app publishes don't realize that). Only because those websites are less famous than e.g. reddit or HN, it doesn't mean that they shouldn't offer their own app.
The real issue here is how they inform you about this app. The less intrusive and obnoxious they do this, the better, obviously.
I usually just switch my user agent on my Android Phone to be a desktop one permanently. Though, that requires a browser that can do it from the Android Market or using a ROM with it like Cyanogen (or modding the AOSP browser and recompiling it with the feature). Many cases, you can just pull the browser from Cyanogen and stick it in /system/app if rooted (though I think the feature was only added with ICS).
I can't stand that popup either though and have a severe dislike for tapatalk. From my experience with administering a forum, they charge quite a bit for their software and then charge quite a bit more on top for small bug fixes they won't fix otherwise :(
One example is tapatalk users not being aware you're part of the forum staff when you're attempting to calm down some users and they go off on you. Though that works two ways I suppose, since they can't see you're part of the staff and go off on you as well and gives you an excuse to give them a couple day vacation :)
ah, i use firefox as my browser on android, which may also be mitigating some of this. Anybody who uses an alternate browser on iOS want to let us know what your experience is with the nag screens?
This is especially problematic with companies like Quora, which coerce you into downloading their app. They literally obfuscate all answers and tell you to download the app, which is absurd.
But Quora has also had a douchey attitude wtr to login and things like that. If you are logged out you almost get coerced to log back in. And it does not behave the same if you were never logged in.
Are there any web templates, frameworks, libraries, or whatever that are carefully crafted to look exactly like the native app UIs on major phone platforms? If more developers used them, more users might develop a preference for web apps over native apps as a default policy.
Most of the time I just visit a site from my phone because somebody posted a link on Twitter. I visit the site for the very first time and won't see it again. Why bothering me?
Make an ad in the sidebar but don't open a fucking confirm window!
Fscking Tapatalk. I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever install your app, even if it scratches my back. Ever; just because of your incessant, annoying spam on every god damn forum I ever go to. Give me a global opt-out.
I can't wait to get over this hard-on for native apps.
ABC, you too, for god's sake, I clicked on a random news story, I don't need your app.
Then change it to 'Sent from my phone.' - changing it is a couple clicks, and anybody advertising a product in every message they send deserves any derision they get.
Derision? Do you also deride people wearing shirts with a crocodile on them? People driving cars with a little lightning bolt in a circle? Businesses issuing paper invoices with the supplier's name printed on the invoice form? (Practices may vary by country.)
Leaving this one line unchanged says ~= zero about a person.
Knowing which device they are on helps me in small ways I don't even consciously remember. For example if someone replied and I knew they are on an iPad this moment, I know that I probably can't expect them to easily sign the PDF agreement I'm about to send and if I really want it. Ack urgently, I should provide an iPad-friendly method to sign and return.
This becomes crucial when you are doing back and forth between potential customers.
If knowing the user agent is seriously crucial for you, you shouldn't rely on "Sent from <user agent>" messages that can be disabled. Instead, you should use an email client that provides functionality similar to the Display Mail User Agent extension for Thunderbird:
i suppose this opinion would vary by recipient. more importantly, already addressed, is the context it provides around the time spent on a response. in most cases, when responding on a mobile device, you simply can't put the same time into a response. i think it's considerate.
I agree. I change it to say "Sent from a mobile device". There are cases where a message mandates a reply but a mobile device isn't to an ideal platform. iPhone only recently allowed file attachments beyond 1, and that was if you remembered to attach it first. I don't think you could even attach to replies.
Many emails do necessitate a reply but you aren't going to be able to spellcheck and put the time into it as you would on a desktop. Afterall, you are mobile.
Stating so in the signature lets the recipient know you are giving them your full attention as much as the technology and situation will allow. I've always felt it was a good thing when users noted this.
And of course, as someone has mentioned, it is the default on iOS devices. Then again, users unable to edit their default signature probably aren't giving you their full attention and the reply will amount to yes/no or worse, not answer a single question with any sort of detail. Not that if the user were on a desktop that would change a bit. I'm not sure how these people are employed as I would fire so many people over the way they handle email.
Tapatalk's actually pretty good. The UI is far superior to most old PHPBB and vBulletin forums and it's well worth the small one-off purchase price if you visit these types of forums regularly.
Funfact:
If you disable cookies, this occurs every single time a forumpost is loaded, regardless of whether you've visited the site before.
I register this functionality, which removes you from the browser for a popup-box, as essentially a security vulnerability which is being exploited by malware.
I downloaded the app out of sheer desperation to check in on time for my flight. In any other circumstance, I would have given up, gone to a competitor, and filed the company and brand name in my brain under "fuck you." (Actually, I did that last part anyway.)
Nagging me to download an app is bad enough. If you took the time to build an iOS or Android app but didn't put any effort into mobile usability for your web site, then you presumed you could make me install your app. You presumed too much.