Tell HN: Have to quit Quora because of mobile get app screen | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Have to quit Quora because of mobile get app screen

38 pointsmark_l_watson27 comments

I enjoy Quora but now it is unusable on mobile.

Why do companies do this?

This is also one of the reasons I refuse to use Reddit’s mobile site, and instead choose to zoom and pan the desktop site on my phone. I’d imagine mobile is more profitable, seeing as users cannot use an ad-blocker within the native apps.

It helps the reddit desktop site is 3x faster than the mobile site/app on mobile.

I love how they show a pop-up every single time you use the mobile web site, listing things the app can do, and every one is something I don’t want.

If you go to a nsfw subreddit first, you can switch to desktop without the popup (on the 18+ page) and then browse the rest at leisure.

i turned it off. google indicates it was in the hamburger menu in the top right on the mobile site, but i dont have the option to turn it on/off now, not sure if its because i turned it off already.

Wow, I didn't believe you, and had to try it myself. You are totally right. Checking the "Request desktop site" checkbox, reddit loads a lot faster on my phone. That is really sad.

I never downloaded the reddit mobile app, and have always just stuck with mobile web whenever I wanted to browse it. But now I'll be sure to just request desktop site.

Worth trying out the third party reddit apps, like Alien Blue (before it was acquired by Reddit and ruined).

They should make a PWA version. Although i akready add the site icon to my home screen. Opens in chrome. But an optimized PWA would be nice. I read a WIRED story about a redesign, hope it doesn't slow it more.

Auto playing videos is the worst thing. I don’t play videos because my data plan and Reddit seems to auto play on the detail page of a post.

About ready to give that one up for good.

You can actually block in-app advertising on Android with apps that block DNS servers. These apps aren't on Google Play because they violate the TOS, so you'll find them with all of the wonderful open source Android apps that violate Google Play's TOS in the F-droid repository. DNS66 (Block ads/hosts via DNS) - https://f-droid.org/app/org.jak_linux.dns66

i.reddit.com is still up, probably more lightweight, ad-free, and better UX than the desktop site on mobile. Worth giving it a shot if you haven't yet.

You can on Android.

http://blokada.org/

It would bother me less if the banners were accurate. Any app ad that says it offers a better experience than can be had browsing in Chrome on Android is an obvious lie. Reddit's Android app that promises faster speeds is inferior in every way to simply navigating to Reddit.com in Chrome or Chromium on Android.

Going through same feelings. I enjoyed Quora so much, now suddenly I see ads, now more ads than content, on top of that quality of content going so low. Everybody wants to show off writing skill and end up posting motivational quotes, pictures and what now. It ruined a genuinely good platform.

Besides the irony of mobile apps not really offering better/faster experience in most cases.

Also ironically - many companies just buy into "best practices" (hype) without actually checking conversion rate/ROI between the mobile apps, mobile site (non-responsive) and responsive.

At which point we're also probably talking about corporate politics and sinking costs - where I don't find it hard to imagine someone needs to prove investment into apps was not a mistake ...

Though everything I just said is nothing more than my impression looking from the outside.

Place where I work at www.booking.com has both mobile apps and mobile website (request desktop website functionality works). And my general industry impression is based on things I know from most of my time here being in mobile web teams.

My guess is that most companies decide to cut the cost of maintaining responsive web apps since they are already paying developers to maintain native mobile and desktop web. Because, in their minds "who wouldn't just use the app"?

To get around it, there are a few lesser known mobile browsers that allow you to modify the "User-Agent" header, in which case you can bypass by masking yourself as viewing on a desktop browser. Sleipnir is one.

Chrome and Safari on iOS have a “view desktop site” that, IIRC, work by sending a desktop User-Agent

“Responsive” sites do not work with that sadly. Something that has always bugged me.

Probably because it's same group of people that defined standards like media queries and wrote "best practices" ...

Technically browser would need to report different pixel density or resolution (check what https://www.whatismyscreenresolution.com gives you) to get "desktop looking" site.

Though in reality it's one/same site - so I'm not sure how much would you get with that...

The worst is when some consultant designer does some journey mapping exercise, dropping half the functionality of the site and disappearing.

My bank recently did this, they decided that “complex” workflows like seeing how much interest you paid or transferring money wasn’t in their top 10 transactions that were journey mapped. The consultant probably took the fancy post it notes with him.

I never used Quora to begin with because of their constant pushing to sign up/log in to read past the first page.

I dismiss Quora links the same way I do with ads or any kind of sponsored content.

I specifically don’t visit the site for that very reason now. Not only does it make it unusable on phone without the app (why any company wants to make that decision is beyond me) but it has also built resentment against the brand. Overall, a stupid decision and plenty of other similar sites I can visit instead.

The link to expand the content is right above the get app button but it’s grey so it’s hard to see.

Really annoying but still technically usable. I’d still quit for them doing that.

After looking, it seems it’s only like that on your feed. Once you get into a topic then the normal continue reading buttons are there.

A: ... quotas and roots. Milton Friedman's book: Free to Choose, explains "self-interest", the Economic Man, and his search for the better life. I'm pretty sure it's in the DNA.

Also quit using quora, deleted app, because of this.

Bad QA :(.

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