Web Mindset

Thursday 9 March 2023 at 19:00 CET

There’s a common complaint about apps on mobile platforms (namely iOS and Android): you have to download an app. This has led to calls for websites to stop pushing their app equivalent and just let people browse. (We’re looking at you, newspapers.) Why pull a beefy application every month or so when you can just pull the UI, content, and behaviour all at once, on demand, when you need it?

This observation is correct, and, I think, not the main reason why the web’s usability will always triumph over apps.

When I need to do something on my phone, I first think, “which app do I need to use?” For example, when I need to get directions to a restaurant, Food Place (I miss restaurants; they were lovely), I first open the Ostentatious Maps application, and then I start to search.

Doing the same thing on my computer, the app question is already answered. It’s the web browser. It’s always the web browser. (Alright, not always… sometimes it’s the terminal.) So the first question becomes, “where do I navigate to?” And then I open https://ostentatious.maps/, which is the same Ostentatious Maps application, except it’s in a browser tab.

These are the same thing, right!?

We are not the same

The app and the tab might look the same (assuming you ignore that fucking cookie “consent” notice), but they represent very different ways of thinking.

Let’s take this example a step further. I’ve found the restaurant but I want to check my reservation time. On a mobile device, I first open the Superchill Email app, and then search for “Food Place”. On my computer, I open a new tab and head to https://superchill.email/.

While I’m searching, I remember that my friend Susan recommended a specific dish, again, over email. On the mobile device, I go back and search for “Susan” instead. On the browser… I open a new tab, and conduct the search in parallel. It was baked cheese. Susan knows me well.

Here’s where they diverge. In the browser, I can use the same application twice. It doesn’t need to do anything special; it’s just a new tab.

Each browser tab represents a thought, a task, a piece of information. I collect them together, in a single window, so that they can fulfil a purpose for me: get me to dinner on time, and make sure I get the cheese. Each tab is equal; it’s at the same level. And let’s imagine what they might look like, hovering above the page:

• Food Place • Ostentatious Maps
• Your reservation at Food Place | Super…
• Try the baked cheese! | Superchill Em…

Since time immemorial (OK, let’s say 2006), website designers have known to put the content first in the page title, because when you have a few tabs open, the titles get truncated. And what’s more important, the name of your application, or the information the user is looking for?

Meanwhile, if I go back to the home screen on my phone, I just see a grid of… application names.

Everyone multitasks

We live in an age of being simultaneously far too busy and constantly bored.

We’re always doing multiple things, often with our gadgets. We’re looking up directions and train times, and we’re also checking our email or scrolling through our Mastodon timelines (seriously, get off Twitter already).

In an app-centric world, we’re doing Maps and Train Times and Email.

In a tab-centric world, it’s a bit different: we’re “figuring out how to get to the restaurant”, and we’re “scrolling because we have 20 minutes until the train”. Maps and Train Times are part of the same task, and we’re one step closer to thinking from what we need not what the device allows us to do.

In the browser, I’ll often open a separate window (or make a tree of tabs) for each task, and close it when I’m done.

In the browser, it’s about outcomes, not mechanisms.

Tasks first

Last week, I found myself wishing for multiple tabs in Apple Maps so I could look up multiple places at once. And then I found myself wishing for my computer. Apple Maps actually has tabs in the macOS version, but this misses the point. It’s still a mindset in which Maps is the focus.

I think a better focus is “going places”. I use two or three apps to do this, but my goal is offline: it’s to be somewhere else. Not to use an app.

I choose the web, because it helps me engage with the world, not with a computer.