For apps that have rich clients for both web and desktop (e.g. Slack, Teams, Zoom, Discord, Notion, Outlook, Spotify, etc.), when/why do you choose to use one vs. the other? For example, do you prefer desktop clients because of feature superiority? Do you generally prefer web clients when you're performing an ad-hoc task and/or need on-to-go/quick access to something?
I'm really curious to learn more about folks workflows and how they incorporate web vs. desktop clients into it effectively. If you've already written about this, feel free to share a link. Thanks!
Oldest comments (8)
The biggest reason I choose desktop clients is that there is a little more space for the devs to maximize distribution of taskbars, icons and really take advantage of the full screen.
I use web clients because they are faster in my case; they don't need to update every other day like discord, don't hang hang up like spotify and don't eat my ram in the background.
For me, web clients undoubtedly. I love the portability and no need for any dependency installation. Finally, it's nice to use a relatable environment as a web dev.
As long as it's not a chromium desktop client, I will install it or else I prefer website
Generally it depends on how often I use the application. If I use it almost daily I will prefer a desktop application since it will be easier to find on the Dock instead of searching for the tab in my browser.
Desktop for the native experience and not having an open tab in your web browser to access that application. Plus it drains less battery IF its truly native and not just a web wrapper.
Web. For me it's political. The web is (sort of) an open standard (which unfortunately allowed EME into itself). The desktop clients are proprietary binary blobs, and based on that alone I feel confident in assuming the antifeature superiority outweighs the feature superiority.
I'm even more militant about website vs. mobile app. Few things lower my opinion of a business more than a practice of aggressively steering me from their website to their app (I'm looking at you, Reddit). ALL closed source mobile apps are malware, as far as I'm concerned.
Since we're on the subject, I think Aral Balkan deserves a signal boost:
How to use the Zoom malware safely on Linux if you absolutely have to