Reedit: “A minimalist, elastic and read-only Reddit web-app client, that lets you create custom ‘Channels’ with up to 3 subreddits each.” Probably the first web application I’ve used that doesn’t make me long for something native. Fantastic work.
Reedit: “A minimalist, elastic and read-only Reddit web-app client, that lets you create custom ‘Channels’ with up to 3 subreddits each.” Probably the first web application I’ve used that doesn’t make me long for something native. Fantastic work.
Very nice!
There are some problems though, it seems to be chopping off the head of the pictures.
e.g. http://img.nux.ro/3Kv-reedit.png
(opened an issue with the developer)
I’d LOVE something similar for youtube that could present me with the mp4/webm file and no crappy ads!
Edited 2013-01-05 18:18 UTC
“Gee look at the random reddit app my buddy made” qualifies for OSnews news how?
Edited 2013-01-05 18:31 UTC
I don’t know the guy.
You are free to skip this item. Nobody is forcing you to read it.
Or you could look past the surface of his comment and look at what he is really saying. This post feels odd, out of place. It isn’t a review, it isn’t an op-ed, it isn’t an overview of webapps, it isn’t some musing on how webapps could improve, etc.
Instead it is sort of “hey take a look at this, it doesn’t suck…” Which I suppose is true, though I have little personal interest in Reddit. There are lots of very good webapps (I like to think that list includes my own app, but I am not here to shill) out there, the one you singled out isn’t the one I might, or most people might. Thus it feels like an odd duck.
The question of the viability of web applications is an important one in the context of OSNews given that a lot of mobile OSes are using HTML5 as their application platform.
Yeah but there is a huge difference between writing a html5 app that will be served over http to a variety of web browsers versus a html5 app that is only run by the os’ html renderer.
I think general the techniques for achieving performance are pretty much the same. For example, on Windows 8 which uses HTML5/JS as an option for app development, a lot of the Windows-isms are built on existing HTML5 solutions. Async built ontop of JS promises, view state swapping on top of Media Queries, etc.
Honestly, I think we need a better framework than HTML5 that is designed from the ground up to run apps. Thus, you keep HTML5 for web pages and content, and a different framework for apps. Either that, or find a way to make scripting for HTML5 on the client side language agnostic, instead of all these janky wrappers for Javascript we have now.
I agree. I like something like TypeScript and a QML like markup language with 1st class data binding and async baked into the language.
Is ECMA Script really written as part of the HTML 5 standard?
I thought the script tag was language agnostic ie
<script language=’foo’> was acceptable syntax and would work if the browser had implemented a scripting language named ‘foo’.
I think there was perlscript and of course vbscript, which I used once or twice.
http://docs.activestate.com/activeperl/5.8/Components/Windows/PerlS…
Edited 2013-01-07 22:12 UTC
I don’t think the main argument wasn’t that it was impossible, it certainly is possible to engineer usable enough web apps. The problem people have boils down to a few things:
1) Given a set amount of resources, using HTML5 mean less productivity in certain scenarios.
HTML5 is a rather disjointed mash up of a bunch of technology, and the tooling around it is poor. The language (JS) isn’t easily scalable to medium sized solutions and the performance takes a lot of extra work.
2) Integration with the host platform
It is harder to integrate with the underlying OS in a meaningful way. It’s more difficult to appear native when you need to support a lowest common denominator of UI constructs. It leads to apps that look and feel foreign on every platform
3) The web is still in flux
There are various implementations of various states of emerging standards in every browser. Some browsers implement the Working Draft, some implement the Candidate Recommendation, etc. which lead to pretty subtle and some not so subtle differences in syntax and behavior.
This means there are complex feature matrixes to consider when deciding on which technologies to use. This makes it harder to utilize more modern layout models, for example.
… lets create websites that do not automatically suck on mobile devices!
I can see where this could be useful for some users, especially on the desktop where there’s more real estate. Alternatively, anyone interested in custom channels might consider this method instead:
https://pay.reddit.com/r/movies+horror+scifi+TrueFilm+NetflixBestOf+…
Just bookmark your custom categories and go.
Note: Sorted by newest first. If you check into a custom category a few times during the day, you’ll have the chance to ‘catch-up’ on the latest posts without missing anything. You don’t need to subscribe or log-in either.
Also… RES (Reddit Enhancement Suite).
Mobile web apps for touch do not need to suck at all. A lot of them fail because they don’t even use JS touch events and CSS3 animations. You will never get a web app to feel native then. Of course, for that to work properly you really need iOS 5+ or Android 4.1+. If you want to make a web app that works on Android 2.2 and older you must make huge sacrifices.
I found that the web application doesn’t work properly on IE 10 and Opera 12.12, the console reported some errors, here are the screen captures for your reference:
http://i.imgur.com/I3eZF.png
http://i.imgur.com/g47X6.png
(For IE 10 I tried to switch off tracking protection (which prevents downloading tracking scripts such as those from Google Analytics) but it didn’t help.)
While the author did explicitly state on Github page that the web application works properly on WebKit-based browsers, I am quite sad about the current state of web application development: many of them are tested against a specific rendering engine only(WebKit, in this case). Yes, I know many developers hate IE, but I also find that those developers ignored Opera too.
I agree, there’s a developer tendency towards Webkit nowadays which is quite annoying.
I opened an issue on github for the problem I encountered and the developer fixed it even though it was about my “ancient” Centos 6 Firefox version. I recommend you do the same.
Really it’s just not the sort of application I would use — reddit and it’s ilk just ain’t my bag — but that said it is TRULY an amazing piece of work; and it proves something I’ve said for ages — if you’re going to build a web application, do NOT sleaze it out with some crappy off the shelf framework.
The whole thing relies on a mere 82k of javascript that is served compressed as well under 26k. (an additional 36k of google analytics crap compressed to 15k craps all over what I’d consider a good site).
In the age of people barfing up multi-megabyte monstrosities of JavaScript train wrecks with idiotic bloated frameworks like jQuery and Mootools on the table — this type of clean, minimalist well deployed code is a truly refreshing change of pace. Most such libraries by themselves being larger than this entire application.
Were that more web developers had the talent, skill and work ethic to build web applications this way — then web apps wouldn’t have the reputation for being absolute crap that makes Java/Swing look good.