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Comment by cryptica | Hacker News Reader

I think that the mobile trend was blown way out of proportion. I very often find myself clicking on the 'Browse desktop version' button when browsing a so-called 'mobile-friendly' version of a site. Is the look of the website really more important than the content and functionality? For me, it's not. This is just another example of a big tech monopoly imposing their highly opinionated ideas on billions of people.

Also, I hate it when a mobile site keeps reminding me to install the app. This is extremely mobile-unfriendly. Google ought to punish those sites.

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Ironically, when Apple first launched the iPhone, full-size desktop viewing of websites was a major feature. It's strange that the world has reverted back into making an entirely separate mobile internet.

> I think that the mobile trend was blown way out of proportion

This is an extraordinarily location-specific sentiment. In the country I'm in right now, less than 25% of the population have desktop PCs. Everyone has a smartphone, if not two. Most of the world is like this, especially the developing countries with the most future growth potential.

I think the parent's point is that desktop sites are often good enough even on mobile. Mobile sites, on the other hand, seem to often lack in functionality.

But most purely desktop sites, are in fact, not anywhere close to good on mobile.

A good test is: do you need to zoom in and then pan horizontally to be able to read the content?

Personally, I don't even mind panning around across both axes and zooming in but I may be a minority in that respect. Probably a large minority nonetheless.

On Android/Chrome, the experience is not bad. When you load the desktop site, it looks very small but you see the whole thing. Then you can zoom in and pan using your fingers... Not so different from how you use Google maps. It's just a tiny bit slower than on desktop; but everything on mobile is slower than on desktop anyway including typing.

If you're already loosely familiar with the site's UI, it's not difficult to use. Even if you have big finger, you can just zoom in first and then click. It's a quick two-step gesture which is easy to master.

You are an outlier. Most people will not pan around to read an article - they'll just switch to an app instead of the web.

As another "outlier" who doesn't mind panning around to read an article (though i do prefer if i don't have to), do you have a source about the behavior of those fabled "most people"?

Are you sure?

Content monitizers are heavily incentivized to switch users from web to app.

So is this user-orginated or owner-pressured?

Even if it is owner-pressured, over time people grow accustomed to the linear presentation that's dominant in apps. People like when new stuff works like stuff they already know.

> Personally, I

There's your problem

Reddit is the main site I use on my phone and I certainly use it in desktop mode all the time. I even use Google in desktop mode very often, because desktop mode lets me select arbitrary dates in results, whereas the mobile page gives me a limited selection.

They need you to install their app so they have better control over your device without those pesky browsers with their plugins blocking adds or privacy infringements.

The worst is the "mobile-first" approach which makes the desktop version suffers. Reddit's new redesign looks terrible on a 21:9 screen. Most content is centered on 1/3 on the screen. So much wasted horizontal space.

I'd say the redesign actually makes Reddit usable on a 21:9 screen not the other way around. I mostly browse text based subreddits so entire paragraphs becoming one long line which to read you have to move your head is more annoying. The redesign makes the site usable on more than a 5:4 or 4:3 monitor for which the original version was designed for.

I dont even think people complained about mobile articles being slow. Sure , there are many bad cases where sites autoplay videos etc. but it’s equally bad in their desktop version (where s the amp there?). A few seconds to load an article on mobile is normal, considering that reading the article will take entire minutes. The probability of needing 1-2 seconds per page applies only when someone is skimming through multiple pages for research. The possibility of doing that on mobile is small, and these are users you dont want visiting your site anyway. Imho google built a honeytrap and is going to get away with murder because, when they will be fined for this, it will be already too late.

I hope developers wake up to this reality. Since that is not going to happen, i hope they abuse amp as bad as they abused html , rendering it useless

Not a trend, they rank AMP sites higher

Yet another HN user talking about their use case. 99% of people are not your typical HN user.

So, 99% of people care more about aesthetics than about than content? Got anything to back that up?

It's also about UX, accessibility, readability etc which often become a mess if you browse the desktop version on mobile. I also resort to the desktop version sometimes but it's very seldom the mobile version is actually missing content. Besides, I think most people have no idea that "Browse desktop version" even exists.

> I also resort to the desktop version sometimes but it's very seldom the mobile version is actually missing content.

Lol. I don't remember the last time I came across an AMP page that wasn't missing content.

Do you have any examples? I think it's a separate topic though (AMP compared to mobile sites in general).

Basically (since most people won't use the features of the desktop version and would be severely slowed down by it on mobile): Yes.

I'm surely still not in the 99% but honestly there's hardly any content that individually actually matters to me, it's almost all info-tainment. If it's hard to read then I won't bother at all.

There's exceptions like restaurant menus at specific places that I'm considering, but certainly there's no mainstream news article that's worth me staining my eyes over: if it loads a desktop site on my mobile phone I'll definitely just hit back and move on regardless of the content.

It's sort of like saying 99% of cattle prefer the chute that brings them most efficiently to the killing grate. It isn't really about what they want, just about how they behave.

Exactly. Privacy and revenue-leeching issues aside, as an end user, I love AMP. Near-instant loading of articles with all the horrible bullshit and clutter removed? What's not to love?

I constantly find myself closing pages on mobile within the first second if they're taking too long to render or if they become fucked up from all the ads and comments and social media button, each one dislocating other elements and moving them around as it renders, or just because they were poorly designed for mobile.

There's a huge chunk of content I never bother to see because it's too much of a pain in the ass to actually read on my phone. If I have to adjust the zoom or scroll to a different part of the page to see any text, you've probably already lost me, unless it's content I went out of my way to seek out.

99% of the people who don't care about the content are more important than the 1% who do? What if it were 51%? How is it supposed to move, if the standards-setters don't move the passive consumers?

I just tried to browse while not logged into HN. The issue persists.

for example the mobile version of facebook, doesn't let you see messages. The desktop one does and works fine.

I've been able to see/send messages from the mobile site recently actually.

I might finally be able to remove the Messenger app from my phone as well.

Me too. I think I was using fb with the mbasic.facebook.com URL.

> Is the look of the website really more important than the content and functionality?

If 99% of people don't agree with this, then why are we wasting time with AMP? AMP's primary sales-pitch to end-users when it first came out was that pages would be faster and content would be more uniform, because site operators wouldn't be allowed to add custom styles and flashy controls or widgets.

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