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0 pointshorsawlarway3y ago0 comments

Developing "essentially a website" is my full time job - if you genuinely don't think there are differences between platforms, you aren't paying attention.

The browser is wired into the OS in real ways, and they matter. Everything from "How does the os manage passwords" or "how are system notifications presented" or "How much screen real estate do I have have on a given window size (scrollbars...)" to subtle differences in how the network stack behaves, or how windows are rendered.

Hell, I can list about 20 differences just off the top of my head - and a damn good part of that is because I've been forced to pay attention to each of those platforms. Which clearly you have not...

I read your comment as "I only use a mac, and I don't understand".

0 comments

salzig3y ago

Have you been using Gitlab lately? I don't think they have any interest in nuances, as they still have problems with basic stuff.

Overall i'm pretty sure that "list about 20 differences" is relevant in some cases/procucts/websites, but not for gitlab - they just proved that by disallowing working on Windows (which wouldn't disallow testing on a VM).

jdmg943y ago

I've been making software for almost 10 years and password manager/notifications/responsiveness is not dependent on the platform that's why we have web standards.

dingleberry4203y ago

You clearly haven't been paying attention, then. It's easy to spend decades making crappy software.

KronisLV3y ago

> It's easy to spend decades making crappy software.

But here's the important question: are the problems that are caused by ignoring the aforementioned differences enough to prevent people from being able to use your software? Or, conversely, are they enough to weigh more heavily than the functionality that you provide for your users?

Because somehow even Electron based software is pretty popular in the desktop, oftentimes looking and feeling rather different from most of the native software. But apart from nitpicks and rightfully complaining about those annoying inconsistencies, does it really matter enough to spend resources towards fixing them?

I can't think of that many inconsistencies that caused web applications to be unusable across different platforms altogether, apart from IE not supporting certain JavaScript functionality back in the day and non-transpiled (to say, ES5) codebases breaking altogether. But look and feel related things have hardly been as important.

mmcnl3y ago

You are absolutely right.

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