dlgn13 ยท 193 points ยท Posted at 04:39:32 on June 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When you try to reblog a post on mobile, either you can use the app or you can bypass it by clicking "Waah, I don't wanna". Talk about being disrespectful to their userbase. Especially given that I tried and the app didn't open up, you assholes.
That's actually worse than the "NO, I DON'T CARE ABOUT SAVING MONEY AND/OR BEING AMAZING AT EVERYTHING" crap that every third website out there tries to pull with those obnoxious email blast signup modals that intentionally pop up fifteen seconds after the page is fully loaded and you're already reading the article.
crosph ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 12:11:12 on June 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Local energy company does this if you end up on their call list. "are you sure you don't want to save money?" like maybe, but I'm not gonna be pressured into doing so in a phone call I was never prepared for.
Even worse is that it's inconsistent. On dashboard I can reblog without issue except that it reloads the whole dash and the mobile dash forces infinite-scroll, so I usually have to hold it and select "open in new tab".
It only shows the Waah popup when I'm on someone's blog, and only when I tap reblog, if I try to hold it it doesn't respond at all. But it only shows the popup once per session, so after I'm through that I can hold and open in new tab again. BUT that's only for the one blog, so if I look at 2 blogs in the same session I have to go through that twice, EXCEPT if the second blog has the same theme as the first, in which case no popup.
Tumblr's code is a hot mess and staff has admitted that it has no idea how any of it works anymore, they just throw more and more code on top and hope it works with the mystery-code underneath.
Are you suggesting they do maintenance on their site? Don't be absurd now, they have important work to do like deciding if they want to shift the background color by 2%.
Half the "random feature changes" they used to do were done exclusively to break xkit, because the fucks couldn't accept that someone was actually trying to make their site usable and understanding their site better than they did themselves.
Actually this only occurs when it's an nsfw-flagged blog, so only logged in users can see. The way the site handles this is shitty, but this specific message isn't IMO
Well. I never thought of that comment to be serious. I would have made the same comment for every other site that has an attraction for weird cutting edge people (pun intended :p ).
Anyway, it was fun to see people trying to counter my comment. But they can't read between the lines of a troll.
[deleted] ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 21:59:19 on June 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We've got a subreddit for that though, /r/TumblrGifs. I wouldn't call them nice though.
(I'm joking, I know Tumblr has a lot of good gifs too)
b4ux1t3 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 00:29:08 on June 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, this isn't really asshole design. Think of it this way:
Every time you go to a website that you use often, you download what is likely a fairly large blob of JavaScript. Sometimes this can be dozens of megabytes. If you visit that site often on your mobile phone, you're likely downloading hundreds of megabytes in JavaScript.
Or, you could get the app, download it one time, and then the only thing the app has to download whenever you visit the site (since all of the client-side logic is in the app) is the content.
Sites that have mobile apps aren't trying to get you to use their app for no reason. They're specifically trying to save both you and them money in bandwidth. And the thing is, it doesn't save them a whole hell of a lot compared to what it saves their users. Most big sites use a CDN to distribute their JavaScript, so it doesn't really cost them anything for people to access their site. And on an un-metered home internet connection, repeatedly visiting the site isn't going to matter. But mobile users do often need to be concerned about their data usage. And even if you have an unlimited plan, 4G is still not as fast as loading a bit of code from a phone's local storage would be.
You could argue that they're doing it to get around mobile ad blockers, but, honestly, that hasn't really been a popular feature on most phone browsers until recently, and mobile apps for popular websites have been around since before smartphones were as ubiquitous.
tl;dr:
If you visit a site a couple times a day or even a few times a week, it's usually worth downloading their app.
My only complaint is that there is no button or control that allows you to not download the app. But, meh, Tumblr is likely very JavaScript-heavy site, so it makes sense for them to encourage people to download the app.
Fun Fact: Google and a few other big web technology companies are working on a system that lets users and developers have their cake and eat it too, by building common features included in JavaScript frameworks into the HTML spec. This would let devs build "progressive" apps.
That's an interesting rationalisation, but it's not true.
First, caching is ubiquitous on the internet. When the website sends the user JavaScript for the first time, it attaches a Cache-Control header and suddenly the user won't have to download that script again until it's updated, or until the user clears their cache. This also works with css and images.
Second, HTML5 takes this one step further and allows for developing offline apps.
You're correct that it costs the company practically nothing to serve up the static content, but it also costs the user pratically nothing. The JS files are likely to be a few hundred KB or less, and combined with the caching this means they have negligible impact on internet usage.
So what's the real reason? I'm not sure. It could be to do with ad-blocking as you mentioned, but I doubt it. There's a few nefarious possibilities, such as wanting to increase the official app's popularity to drive out competing client apps, but I doubt that too. I think maybe Tumblr genuinely believe that their app provides a better experience than the website for mobile users and wants to encourage people to use that.
Anyway, all this is besides the point. Whatever Tumblr's reasons for driving people towards the mobile app, even if they are the purest of reasons, the text on the button is still hostile towards their users and I don't think that's excusable. It seems to me that it's an attempt at humour, and who knows, maybe it works for the majority of Tumblr users, but many people (myself included) find it distasteful.
b4ux1t3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:04:16 on June 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
While I feel the need to apologize for not also mentioning cached images and CSS (though it further supports my point), and while you're correct that most mobile browsers support caching these days, I disagree that it solves the problem that dedicated apps try to solve.
The first thing that is cleared out in phones when people start running out of space is cached content in apps. (Okay, maybe it's the second, after unused apps, but that doesn't sound as convincing!) It's the first thing checked by every crappy (and not so crappy) "Clean your phone!" app that every less-than-power user installs on their phone. It's the first thing that I, a relatively advanced user, clear when I can't install a new app.
You can't rely on cached content on mobile devices. That's half the reason the Google initiative I linked to exists. Some people don't have the bandwidth to download a bunch of JS all the time, and those same people also likely don't have super-high-end phones with plenty of space to store cached content. Those people are who these apps are targeted at.
There are even a bunch of other really good features of these apps that I didn't mention, like support for on-the-fly compression and decompression that might not be supported by a phone's browser, but leads to even more bandwidth saved. Seriously, mobile developers have been fighting with bandwidth forever. For a long time, before 4G became so ubiquitous, it was one of their biggest priorities. Even today, with data caps being what they are, devs are trying to find new ways to keep the costs for everyone down.
There's really no other good reason to force an app like this on your users. It may be a case of "We know what you need better than you do", but, honestly, that is very often true. Your average smartphone user doesn't know what JS is, much less that clearing their cache to install the new Candy Crush game will make them have to download a bunch of new JS the next time they check Facebook. That's why Facebook encourages them to use an app. (Obviously there are a bunch of problems with Facebook's app that have nothing to do with this. But that's neither here nor there, have you seen how much JS is downloaded with a clear cache?)
I'm not sure what about the text in the button is so bad. It's telling you "Get the app", as in "This button has the app behind it, click it". It doesn't come across as funny, or demeaning, or anything. It's matter-of-fact. And if that's the main focus of this thread, then I don't get it.
I disagree with your comments about "Clean your phone!" apps causing problems with caching, as users typically run them infrequently (or scheduled ones only run once per day or less, which amounts to < 9MB per month even for a very bloated website).
Great point about compression, as I remember reading a fantastic write-up on how Facebook deliver decent looking banner images to their mobile users in only a few KB, which made heavy use of functionality only practical on native apps.
I still don't see this as a compelling case to force users to download the app though, and I believe even if it is a factor, it's a small one.
Regarding my final paragraph, I got confused. I was talking about the button mentioned in this comment which I have personally seen before. That was my bad, I forgot where I was commenting. The button in the main post is not too bad, but it's still more pushy than it should be. It should have small text saying "I don't want the app, take me to the site" and at least give users a choice, but it's certainly not offensive.
b4ux1t3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:40:11 on June 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One other upside of developing an app as opposed to a website is that youknow what your app can do, while you can never know for sure what various browsers will be able to do. The support story is much cleaner, too. But in the end, no one has all the answers, least of all me.
Honestly, most of the "average" users I know run their cleaner apps multiple times a day, complaining that their phone is being slow. But then, most of my direct experience is with my parents and brothers, none of whom are "computer people".
Oh god, running a cleaner app multiple times a day is terrible. You run into a similar issue there, which is that the phone OS generally keeps recently used applications cached in memory in-case they are opened again. (Even if the application has been closed fully, not just backgrounded)
Cleaner apps remove this cache and require the phone to open the app fully from non-volatile storage every time.
b4ux1t3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:45:53 on June 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah. I didn't think that was the norm, but I figured a lot of people ran the apps pretty regularly.
I've been considering writing a placebo app that just tells them it did something, just to see if they'd notice.
My Umi Zero came with an app called "Super Cleaner" that's actually pretty decent. It basically just asks me if I'd like to delete .apk files after installing an app, which is useful. It doesn't seem to do any of the stupid stuff.
Saved comment
dlgn13 ยท 193 points ยท Posted at 04:39:32 on June 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
When you try to reblog a post on mobile, either you can use the app or you can bypass it by clicking "Waah, I don't wanna". Talk about being disrespectful to their userbase. Especially given that I tried and the app didn't open up, you assholes.
system_of_a_clown ยท 87 points ยท Posted at 05:33:58 on June 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's actually worse than the "NO, I DON'T CARE ABOUT SAVING MONEY AND/OR BEING AMAZING AT EVERYTHING" crap that every third website out there tries to pull with those obnoxious email blast signup modals that intentionally pop up fifteen seconds after the page is fully loaded and you're already reading the article.
crosph ยท 23 points ยท Posted at 12:11:12 on June 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Local energy company does this if you end up on their call list. "are you sure you don't want to save money?" like maybe, but I'm not gonna be pressured into doing so in a phone call I was never prepared for.
SinkTube ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 14:22:38 on June 20, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Even worse is that it's inconsistent. On dashboard I can reblog without issue except that it reloads the whole dash and the mobile dash forces infinite-scroll, so I usually have to hold it and select "open in new tab".
It only shows the Waah popup when I'm on someone's blog, and only when I tap reblog, if I try to hold it it doesn't respond at all. But it only shows the popup once per session, so after I'm through that I can hold and open in new tab again. BUT that's only for the one blog, so if I look at 2 blogs in the same session I have to go through that twice, EXCEPT if the second blog has the same theme as the first, in which case no popup.
Tumblr's code is a hot mess and staff has admitted that it has no idea how any of it works anymore, they just throw more and more code on top and hope it works with the mystery-code underneath.
wertercatt ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:25:40 on June 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)*
Sounds like someone needs to refactor that mess.
SinkTube ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 20:58:28 on June 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Are you suggesting they do maintenance on their site? Don't be absurd now, they have important work to do like deciding if they want to shift the background color by 2%.
wertercatt ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:00:50 on June 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Or remove/change features that don't need to be changed, pissing their userbase off. They're a lot like YouTube in that way.
SinkTube ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:09:36 on June 21, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Half the "random feature changes" they used to do were done exclusively to break xkit, because the fucks couldn't accept that someone was actually trying to make their site usable and understanding their site better than they did themselves.
SuperNanoCat ยท 43 points ยท Posted at 06:27:07 on June 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Ugh, why is there a period at the end of the first blurb and none anywhere else?
calebsfreakingsick ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 13:33:08 on June 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So tumblr
VaatiXIII ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:13:53 on July 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Crappyassholedesign?
FayeBlooded ยท 37 points ยท Posted at 21:07:25 on June 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
What if I told you the app comes with a free pink fringe dye starter kit?
rbemrose ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 03:36:55 on June 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
But the frogurt is also cursed.
Eiovas ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 04:48:26 on June 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Who the hell do you think you are determining your own needs?
EuterpeZonker ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 01:50:50 on July 12, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
And once you get the app they'll still give you hell for using the mobile site.
TerkRockerfeller ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:56:22 on December 7, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Actually this only occurs when it's an nsfw-flagged blog, so only logged in users can see. The way the site handles this is shitty, but this specific message isn't IMO
ILoveToEatLobster ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:08:21 on September 9, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Why would you be looking at tumblr to begin with?
JackDarrah ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 22:26:59 on September 25, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Because it's a good site
[deleted] ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 15:17:00 on October 16, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
noooo, it has le spooky feminazi sjws on it, and those are my trigger :'(
muarauder12 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 19:05:46 on October 29, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Porn?
Th3Shad0wOfDeath ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 21:41:18 on June 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
why are you visiting tumblr in the first place?
๐๏ธ Enitoni ยท 85 points ยท Posted at 21:43:03 on June 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
coughPorncough
Evan1474 ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 19:14:32 on June 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Honesty though
c3534l ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 18:17:33 on June 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Stop visiting sites I don't visit!
eversaur ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 04:37:05 on August 2, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
DAE tumblr is le WORST place full of sjw tumblrina NAZIS???? XDDDDDDD
AMasonJar ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 00:27:49 on June 25, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
If you think it's just SJWs everywhere you go, it's not. If it were like that, then /r/The_Donald would be all over /r/all... oh.
Th3Shad0wOfDeath ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:35:08 on June 25, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Well. I never thought of that comment to be serious. I would have made the same comment for every other site that has an attraction for weird cutting edge people (pun intended :p ).
Anyway, it was fun to see people trying to counter my comment. But they can't read between the lines of a troll.
[deleted] ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 21:59:19 on June 17, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Their selection of animated gifs is nice.
DenaunMan ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 06:04:03 on June 18, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
especially porn ones?
YM_Industries ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:11:48 on June 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
We've got a subreddit for that though, /r/TumblrGifs. I wouldn't call them nice though.
(I'm joking, I know Tumblr has a lot of good gifs too)
b4ux1t3 ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 00:29:08 on June 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
So, this isn't really asshole design. Think of it this way:
Every time you go to a website that you use often, you download what is likely a fairly large blob of JavaScript. Sometimes this can be dozens of megabytes. If you visit that site often on your mobile phone, you're likely downloading hundreds of megabytes in JavaScript.
Or, you could get the app, download it one time, and then the only thing the app has to download whenever you visit the site (since all of the client-side logic is in the app) is the content.
Sites that have mobile apps aren't trying to get you to use their app for no reason. They're specifically trying to save both you and them money in bandwidth. And the thing is, it doesn't save them a whole hell of a lot compared to what it saves their users. Most big sites use a CDN to distribute their JavaScript, so it doesn't really cost them anything for people to access their site. And on an un-metered home internet connection, repeatedly visiting the site isn't going to matter. But mobile users do often need to be concerned about their data usage. And even if you have an unlimited plan, 4G is still not as fast as loading a bit of code from a phone's local storage would be.
You could argue that they're doing it to get around mobile ad blockers, but, honestly, that hasn't really been a popular feature on most phone browsers until recently, and mobile apps for popular websites have been around since before smartphones were as ubiquitous.
tl;dr:
If you visit a site a couple times a day or even a few times a week, it's usually worth downloading their app.
My only complaint is that there is no button or control that allows you to not download the app. But, meh, Tumblr is likely very JavaScript-heavy site, so it makes sense for them to encourage people to download the app.
Fun Fact: Google and a few other big web technology companies are working on a system that lets users and developers have their cake and eat it too, by building common features included in JavaScript frameworks into the HTML spec. This would let devs build "progressive" apps.
YM_Industries ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 02:11:00 on June 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
That's an interesting rationalisation, but it's not true.
First, caching is ubiquitous on the internet. When the website sends the user JavaScript for the first time, it attaches a Cache-Control header and suddenly the user won't have to download that script again until it's updated, or until the user clears their cache. This also works with css and images.
Second, HTML5 takes this one step further and allows for developing offline apps.
You're correct that it costs the company practically nothing to serve up the static content, but it also costs the user pratically nothing. The JS files are likely to be a few hundred KB or less, and combined with the caching this means they have negligible impact on internet usage.
So what's the real reason? I'm not sure. It could be to do with ad-blocking as you mentioned, but I doubt it. There's a few nefarious possibilities, such as wanting to increase the official app's popularity to drive out competing client apps, but I doubt that too. I think maybe Tumblr genuinely believe that their app provides a better experience than the website for mobile users and wants to encourage people to use that.
Anyway, all this is besides the point. Whatever Tumblr's reasons for driving people towards the mobile app, even if they are the purest of reasons, the text on the button is still hostile towards their users and I don't think that's excusable. It seems to me that it's an attempt at humour, and who knows, maybe it works for the majority of Tumblr users, but many people (myself included) find it distasteful.
b4ux1t3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:04:16 on June 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
While I feel the need to apologize for not also mentioning cached images and CSS (though it further supports my point), and while you're correct that most mobile browsers support caching these days, I disagree that it solves the problem that dedicated apps try to solve.
The first thing that is cleared out in phones when people start running out of space is cached content in apps. (Okay, maybe it's the second, after unused apps, but that doesn't sound as convincing!) It's the first thing checked by every crappy (and not so crappy) "Clean your phone!" app that every less-than-power user installs on their phone. It's the first thing that I, a relatively advanced user, clear when I can't install a new app.
You can't rely on cached content on mobile devices. That's half the reason the Google initiative I linked to exists. Some people don't have the bandwidth to download a bunch of JS all the time, and those same people also likely don't have super-high-end phones with plenty of space to store cached content. Those people are who these apps are targeted at.
There are even a bunch of other really good features of these apps that I didn't mention, like support for on-the-fly compression and decompression that might not be supported by a phone's browser, but leads to even more bandwidth saved. Seriously, mobile developers have been fighting with bandwidth forever. For a long time, before 4G became so ubiquitous, it was one of their biggest priorities. Even today, with data caps being what they are, devs are trying to find new ways to keep the costs for everyone down.
There's really no other good reason to force an app like this on your users. It may be a case of "We know what you need better than you do", but, honestly, that is very often true. Your average smartphone user doesn't know what JS is, much less that clearing their cache to install the new Candy Crush game will make them have to download a bunch of new JS the next time they check Facebook. That's why Facebook encourages them to use an app. (Obviously there are a bunch of problems with Facebook's app that have nothing to do with this. But that's neither here nor there, have you seen how much JS is downloaded with a clear cache?)
I'm not sure what about the text in the button is so bad. It's telling you "Get the app", as in "This button has the app behind it, click it". It doesn't come across as funny, or demeaning, or anything. It's matter-of-fact. And if that's the main focus of this thread, then I don't get it.
YM_Industries ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:28:48 on June 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
I disagree with your comments about "Clean your phone!" apps causing problems with caching, as users typically run them infrequently (or scheduled ones only run once per day or less, which amounts to < 9MB per month even for a very bloated website).
Great point about compression, as I remember reading a fantastic write-up on how Facebook deliver decent looking banner images to their mobile users in only a few KB, which made heavy use of functionality only practical on native apps.
I still don't see this as a compelling case to force users to download the app though, and I believe even if it is a factor, it's a small one.
Regarding my final paragraph, I got confused. I was talking about the button mentioned in this comment which I have personally seen before. That was my bad, I forgot where I was commenting. The button in the main post is not too bad, but it's still more pushy than it should be. It should have small text saying "I don't want the app, take me to the site" and at least give users a choice, but it's certainly not offensive.
b4ux1t3 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:40:11 on June 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
One other upside of developing an app as opposed to a website is that youknow what your app can do, while you can never know for sure what various browsers will be able to do. The support story is much cleaner, too. But in the end, no one has all the answers, least of all me.
Honestly, most of the "average" users I know run their cleaner apps multiple times a day, complaining that their phone is being slow. But then, most of my direct experience is with my parents and brothers, none of whom are "computer people".
YM_Industries ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:42:55 on June 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Oh god, running a cleaner app multiple times a day is terrible. You run into a similar issue there, which is that the phone OS generally keeps recently used applications cached in memory in-case they are opened again. (Even if the application has been closed fully, not just backgrounded)
Cleaner apps remove this cache and require the phone to open the app fully from non-volatile storage every time.
b4ux1t3 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:45:53 on June 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah. I didn't think that was the norm, but I figured a lot of people ran the apps pretty regularly.
I've been considering writing a placebo app that just tells them it did something, just to see if they'd notice.
YM_Industries ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:47:09 on June 22, 2016 ยท (Permalink)
Good idea, I approve.
My Umi Zero came with an app called "Super Cleaner" that's actually pretty decent. It basically just asks me if I'd like to delete .apk files after installing an app, which is useful. It doesn't seem to do any of the stupid stuff.