How is that better than a web browser? Web browsers were supposed to be the “everything app”.
Comment on Please Don’t Make Me Download Another App | Our phones are being overrun
COASTER1921@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
This is why everything apps are so popular in many parts of the world. Using a mini-app from the internet running within another app is far preferable to downloading a whole app you may never need to use again. The way they do it in China is so seamless even if you’ve never visited the business before. There’s never any special account creation or entering of payment information.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
COASTER1921@lemmy.ml 11 hours ago
Web browsers don’t integrate to a single account and payment system, nor do they preemptively load entire websites before you start browsing. So you’re always waiting for actions to complete or for images to load which feels slower. Mobile websites also tend to be very bloated slowing things down further than if the same functions were done natively in an app. There’s also no consistency between websites so you never know when something will/won’t work nor how far away you are from checkout. And then to top it all off there’s browser compatibility, which is typically pretty poor for anything that isn’t Chrome/Safari.
If a web browsers could really do the same thing all these companies wouldn’t feel the need to make their own device specific apps.
HeavyRaptor@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
Us lemmings will never be comfortable with this level of centralisation.
dan@upvote.au 13 hours ago
What’s wrong with a web browser? I know it’s not as seamless, but it’s far less limiting and literally any company can create a site, regardless of their size. There’s systems like Google Pay that avoid you having to enter your credit card details on every site.
COASTER1921@lemmy.ml 13 hours ago
Even the best websites don’t feel as smooth as native UI elements, and somehow browser compatibility is still a very common issue. Signing in with Google and using gpay for checkout is kind of close, but each website has different design elements complicating the experience while giving up the same amount of your personal data as if using an everything app.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Among other things said, you lose access to push notifications / scheduling which a lot of apps are reliant on.
You could have those come in an email instead, but now it’s not personalized to the app, and if you’re like me, I actually disable alerts on my gmail because most of the things in there aren’t important and it was too disruptive.
dan@upvote.au 11 hours ago
Web apps have supported push notifications for a long time now. I think even Safari supports them now.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Those aren’t the same, they require the browser to be open.
I don’t know if that means it works with a tab in the background though if the browser is open but you aren’t on their page, but it’d make sense if it did work that way.