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Comment by ed25519FUUU | Hacker News Reader

These types of exploits are exactly why I just prefer to use the browser version of everything. The browser is superior (both mobile and desktop). It’s safer, typically faster and less resource intensive, and it has reliable and consistent controls. For example, “going back” means something different to every app, but in safari it’s always just a click away.

And most importantly in the browser I can have full ad blocking/tracking protections enabled.

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I hear your security concerns.

In case of Discord, there are three key causes for preferring the desktop version - and I don't see any easy workaround to them without adding explicit support to web standards:

1) custom audio codecs & filters; Discord is primarily a gaming VC app and the codecs available on the desktop version are superior for purpose of cancelling echo, noise etc. at low latency,

2) ability to capture any keyboard & mouse shortcuts for VC activation

3) ability to use voice & keyboard shortcut while the browser window is not focused (in particular while in game)

Incidentally adding general support for those to general browsers would lead to subtle security bugs & gotchas.

You can do custom codecs and filters in the browser too (eg audio worklets).

Why would a custom audio codec be noticeably better than browser supported ones?

After a web search it sounds like a common perception is that discord does some audio processing to make speech sound clearer than just plain recording. So this probably has little to do with the codec that's used for data compression. This speech clarity effect could be done in audio worklets too.

>2) ability to capture any keyboard & mouse shortcuts for VC activation

This is extremely important because otherwise I don't think I'd be able to play a game in VM like Hyper-V and still talk to friends via Discord.

The only problem is that I have to run as admin the discord.exe that's hidden in its folder instead of that default Discord icon (updater.exe I guess?)

you hear (and ignore) security concerns. Discord and security do not touch in a Venn diagram, since Discord is proprietary.

Yeah I noticed recently that I actually prefer browser apps from a UX point of view - creating tabs of content and jumping between them is something I do a lot, and it's baked in very nicely to the browser. (As is sending a link to share the exact screen i'm on, back button as u mention etc etc)

If the browser is your OS, it makes a lot of sense.

In contrast, I often organize my browser tabs onto multiple separate windows (even when I don't have that many open), because opening programs in windows and jumping between them is something I do a lot, and it's baked in very nicely to my window manager :)

To avoid misinterpretation since text is horrible this way: I am NOT disparaging or even really disagreeing with the parent comment. They're just two different workflows, and while I appreciate the advantages of the browser, apps work better in mine.

Chrome's Webpage-to-App feature is best experience for me. I wish Firefox had similar feature.

Do you mean PWA's? Because firefox has had that for a long time.

I guess they mean launching webapps with --app=, which launces the page in a chromeless window.

Firefox recently learned --ssb (after you enable that in about:config), but it's use is much more limited, geared towards kiosks. Things like right mouse button and extensions are disabled, and you cannot open external links.

"Open as windows" is the feature what I love. It seems that the feature was gone in the past but now it revived.

https://superuser.com/questions/101395/is-it-possible-to-hav...

https://www.howtogeek.com/403399/how-to-make-chrome-open-as-...

Chrome has something called Desktop PWA that allows a PWA (that meets some additional requirements) to be installed as a native app. On macos it has its own .app bundle that can be launched by user and participates in the app switching as a separate app, but underneath shares process tree as the user's chrome instance.

So it's like having an Electron app with stricter sandboxing, less memory usage, and an easier installation / upgrade process.

This is why I prefer the cli/tui version of everything... but discord specifically fights against that. I think discord is one of the worst things to happen to chat in a long time, and it makes me sad so many people jumped ship to it so fast without realizing all the issues, and now after having plenty of time to know those issues, staying there. I watched whole active communities dissolve because of this.

Also I just generally hate electron.

The browser version has a lot more friction with getting audio inputs working for me as well as not supporting screen streaming I think.

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