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Comment by luma | Hacker News Reader

I've never understood the concept of an app wrapper for a link aggregator (HN, reddit, etc). The whole goal is to provide links to external sources, and now I'm browsing the web in a limited web browser without all my extensions etc.

Am I missing some core concept here? Why would I want to browse the web in this app as opposed to a web browser?

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>The whole goal is to provide links to external sources

For many the whole goal is the comments on those links.

Sometimes I like to save the links and comments I find particularly interesting with the "favorite" button, though lately I've debated saving them somewhere else too with a more complicated setup that could also archive both the links and the comments.

You're reading the articles from here? (I kid)

Hack on iOS has a significantly more intuitive thumb friendly interface. Even just clicking a comment to collapse. Little things.

As someone who used to use native RSS readers a ton back in the day, the limited web browser usually isn't a problem for just reading a few articles.

I like native apps for things, even link aggregators, because my I want to use my OS's native window management and app management instead of just shoving everything into a browser tab, of which I already have too many. Because then it's just CMD+Tab to Chrome, and then figure out which of the 20+ tabs I'm trying to get to instead of CMD+Tab directly to that specific app.

Anyway, just a bit of old man yelling at cloud but I've always disliked the proliferation of "web app all the things." Might as well not even use a desktop OS at this point and just have a full screen browser window and call it a day.

I'm trying to understand your position here. An app with it's own way to manage multiple browser windows is better, because you have too many tabs open in your browser. If you have multiple links open, the tab management is now a problem in your desktop app instead of the browser. If you don't, then you don't have to manage tabs anyway. What does this solve that a separate browser window doesn't, except not having any way to add extensions like ad blockers or tampermonkey scripts etc?

if you read HN a lot, then it makes sense to have have native app for it

you might not be aware of how how much power is at your fingertips on a Mac with a tool like Hammerspoon plus some other utilities

obviously you can bind the app with it's own shortcut without calling my entire browser, but I can move it to any part of any of my monitors easy with my one handed shortcuts: https://gist.github.com/pazimzadeh/b1c70f5f205d0b63264e7c021... you get the gist https://github.com/peterklijn/hammerspoon-shiftit

I guess you could make a web app or app clip but I think this is a cool project. would be good to have a theme engine.

Look at NetNewsWire how good a native app of this kind can be. NNW in particular has great shortcuts, like or opening links in the native browser, and read/unread functionality

I usually don't have multiple HN articles open at a time, but I can see how that would just be replacing one problem (too many browser tabs) for a worse problem (too many, now limited, browser tabs).

It's just nice to have HN as it's own app instead of just another tab in a single app. Same reason I use mail.app vs. webmail, native music app vs the web player, etc.

PWAs also solve the problem, more or less, but it is nice to have something native.

If you want to use your native window manager, why don’t you just disable tabs and have every link open a new browser window?

On MacOS that would be an amazing poor UX, cmd+tab works on Applications, not specific windows.

Switching windows within the same Application is cmd+` ; and only works on the current workspace.

What about using AltTab?

https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos

I agree it would be a poor experience, but macOS does have an additional shortcut key for switching between windows: Command–Grave accent (`)

did…

did I not mention that?

I was severely jetlagged when I replied. Apologies for restating things. The suggestion seemed to me to be limited to browser windows

You absolutely did, but are you not aware that cmd+` allows you to switch between windows?

only with the same application, and on the same virtual desktop (which is what i said).

i am confused here now, what do you mean that i am missing?

What you are thinking about is provided by a third-party app (AltTab). It was never a part of the system.

Isn’t what a chromebook is all about? (And yes, I hate it too.)

Some people love giving up as much customization and control over their software as possible. iOS over Android. MacOS over Linux. Chrome over Firefox. App stores over installing programs yourself. Apps over websites.

There are various arguments for it (better compatibility/cohesiveness, minimalism, less debugging) but it overall seems like the opposite of the "hacker" mindset which makes how much market share MacOS has in the space very strange.

That’s not really fair in the case of a third-party app like this one. Swapping out the website’s default UI for an app is customization.

You can swap out the website’s default UI in a browser and preserve the innate customization power you get from being in a browser.

Meh. I use a native app to access HN (NetNewsWire), and this apps launches the browser for things I want to read and/or for comments.

IMHO your comment is unfair. Native apps really are, when done right, much better. Sadly they are rarely done right.

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