WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

Today WhatsApp launched their web client in a way that is sure to upset and disappoint a lot of people.

WhatsApp is a very popular instant message solution competing on the same market as LINE, Telegram and others. Here in Brazil WhatsApp is basically ubiquitous since its cheaper to send IM messages than to send SMS.

Unfortunately while other companies embrace the web and third party clients such as Telegram which has a list of official and unofficial clients and a public API, WhatsApp is actively waging war against third-party developers and their users.

Last year they issued DMCA takedowns to all popular Github repositories hosting third-party clients and/or libraries interfacing with their API.

WhatsApp provides clients for many platforms but not for all platforms. Users of webOS, Firefox OS, Maemo, Sailfish, Ubuntu Touch had to use third-party libraries and also users of other platforms where there is an official client preferred using a third-party client because of many reasons.

After the takedowns, WhatsApp started banning users that connected to their network using third-party client, a move so evil that deserves a post in its own and the reason I stopped using their service.

Since the takedowns and the banishments people waited for the release of a web client that would enable other platforms to use their service thru the beautiful of the world wide web.

Well, they finally launched their web offerring but its such a poor offerring that one wonders if anyone at WhatsApp actually understand the power behind the web.

Lets analyse some parts of their launch post from their company blog:To connect your web browser to your WhatsApp client, simply open https://web.whatsapp.com in your Google Chrome browser. You will see a QR code --- scan the code inside of WhatsApp, and you're ready to go.

You have now paired WhatsApp on your phone with the WhatsApp web client. Your phone needs to stay connected to the internet for our web client to work, and please make sure to install the latest version of WhatsApp on your phone. Unfortunately for now, we will not be able to provide web client to our iOS users due to Apple platform limitations.
I added some emphasis to the quote above. Lets count their mistakes:
Mistake one - it only works on a single browser
WTF!?!?!? There is Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer.

All those with large user bases. I am not even counting the small browsers. And they chose to release only for Google Chrome? What year is this, 1995?


Sorry but if it works only on a single browser then its not a product, its a tech demo.

Mistake two - it requires the current WhatsApp client for Android, Blackberry or Windows Phone
and
So, to log in (pair) you need to have the current client on an Android, Blackberry or Windows Phone.

If you just have a dumb phone or another platform, you can't use the web client. The web client is not an alternative, its a toy that only works if you already have a working up to date client on a blessed platform which is not iOS.

Instead of opening to new users by allowing registrations and usage over the web, they choose to maintain their walled garden. The web client is useless if you're not already using their mobile app on Android, Windows Phone or Blackberry..

If it doesn't work as a standalone client then its not a client, its an auxiliary toy, a second screen application, some buzzword but its not a client.
Mistake three - It doesn't work if your phone is not connected to the internet.
MAJOR WTF?!!??!!? So you have your web client but it only works if your blessed mobile client is connected to the internet. We all know that battery life on a mobile device owned by a heavy user of IM tools never lasts long.

So imagine that user trying to communicate with some WhatsApp pal and her SmartPhone battery gives up, she could use her computer to keep talking to her pal but in reality she can't because the damn web client doesn't work if your phone is dead.

Its even worse, imagine that office full of metal that behaves like a Faraday cage, or that office in a bad location sitting on the shadow of 3G coverage.

Imagine all the reasons why your phone may lose connection to the internet. In all those cases, you will not be able to use the web client.

Have a dead phone and you're travelling on a train with WIFI and want to use the web client, you can't! Are you sitting on a pub with free WIFI with a dead phone and want to call up your friends on WhatsApp, you can't.

This is the most stupid decision ever to hit the web. What do we call a web client that requires a mobile app to be active on another machine for it to work? I call it a toy.
Conclusion

WhatsApp is not serious with this offerring. Their constant takedowns of third-party developers; their banishment of loyal users due to petty reasons; their crippled joke of a web client;

all that proves they don't have the best interest of their users at heart.

WhatsApp is a hostile company. It was hostile to developers, then it became hostile to the users and now is hostile to the web.

I am so glad I moved to telegram...

Bonus Mistake - using APIs that are not on the standards track

ARGHHHH!!!! Want to know one extra reason they went with Chrome-only over the rest of the connected world?

They are using a local filesystem API that is not on the standards track as we can see on the shot below:

Shot from Guillermo López

Thats a local filesystem API from Chrome that is not a web standard and is not even in the standards track. This is not the web we want.

More than once people denounced Google habit of bundling APIs into their browser that are not standards and encouraging developers to use them.

This is as much as Google fault as it is WhatsApp fault. Google is not the standard lover you think they are and WhatsApp is just evil.

So lets check the browser compatibility for requestFileSystem().

And they dare call it a "web client"...
Lets close this with a cartoon.

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Source: DZone Blog

haha! nahisi hii itakuwa ni hatua ya majaribio!

People are quick to criticize, and they say their opinions kama facts. I think whatsapp's approach is one of the best they could do. Whoever wrote that article din't factor in how whatsapp works, and why chrome is the browser of choice.

ub16 Unawatetea tu, hakuna maana kumpa mtu option ya kutumia app kwenye browser at the same time akalazimika kutumia sambamba na app ya kwenye simu at the same time.

Yaani ukitaka kutumia kwenye simu utatumia app moja lakini ukitaka kutumia kwenye browser unatumia app mbili ya kwenye simu na ya kwenye PC. Nani atakubali kutumia app mbili wakati anaweza kutumia app moja?

Mistake ya kipuuzi waliyoifanya ni kutengeneza app ambayo haina kundi la watumiaji. Web app ilistaili kuwa altenative ya mob app, hakuna maana kabisa ya walichokifanya.

Msamiati said:

ub16 Unawatetea tu, hakuna maana kumpa mtu option ya kutumia app kwenye browser at the same time akalazimika kutumia sambamba na app ya kwenye simu at the same time.

Yaani ukitaka kutumia kwenye simu utatumia app moja lakini ukitaka kutumia kwenye browser unatumia app mbili ya kwenye simu na ya kwenye PC. Nani atakubali kutumia app mbili wakati anaweza kutumia app moja?

Mistake ya kipuuzi waliyoifanya ni kutengeneza app ambayo haina kundi la watumiaji. Web app ilistaili kuwa altenative ya mob app, hakuna maana kabisa ya walichokifanya.

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Siwatetei and I gain nothing even if they were on the wrong and I continued kuwatetea. Whatsapp sends messages to the device, the device relays the message to the web client. Whatsapp sends messages to the device, only that device receives and stores your conversation because they don't store your conversation on their servers.

If they stored your conversation on their servers, an account approach and a stand-alone client would be the best way to go and you could log in and use it anywhere, but let's be real almost all services using this approach are flawed, they are either slow, notification syncing is just bad i.e Hangouts, Skype, Viber they are all noticeably slower than whatsapp;

at least from my experience, and it now has end-to-end encryption which "maybe" could be another overhead to why they didn't go for a stand-alone client.

The client is more for people who are on their computers most of the time and they have to stop often kujibu messages, it makes it easier, it is better than nothing. And about chrome, yes chrome is a culprit in many cases(power, ram etc) but it is a proven browser in so many other cases, and no wonder why many developers use it as a browser of choice for their applications.

Very poor implementation agree 100%

ub16

Unamaana gani hawastore msg? Haimake sense ukiangalia inavyofanya kazi ukituma msg kwa mtu ambaye simu iko offline unapata tick moja kuwa msg sent hii ina maana msg hiyo lazima ishikiliwe na server za whatsapp mpaka unayemtumia atakapokuja online unapata tick ya pili hii ni msg delivered, then akiisoma msg unapata blue ticks ambazo ni msg read, hapa sasa ndo wanaweza kudelete msg katika server yao.

In fact WhatsApp wanashikilia msg hadi siku 30 for delivery na baada ya hapo ndo wanazifuta.

the undelivered message is held in WhatsApp's server until it can be delivered. If the message is undelivered for thirty (30) days, the undelivered message is deleted from our servers.

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WhatsApp :: Legal

Kang said:

Unamaana gani hawastore msg? Haimake sense ukiangalia inavyofanya kazi ukituma msg kwa mtu ambaye simu iko offline unapata tick moja kuwa msg sent hii ina maana msg hiyo lazima ishikiliwe na server za whatsapp mpaka unayemtumia atakapokuja online unapata tick ya pili hii ni msg delivered, then akiisoma msg unapata blue ticks ambazo ni msg read, hapa sasa ndo wanaweza kudelete msg katika server yao.

In fact WhatsApp wanashikilia msg hadi siku 30 for delivery na baada ya hapo ndo wanazifuta.



WhatsApp :: Legal

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You are still missing the point, it clearly says undelivered text is kept for 30days. For them to have a standalone client they must keep your convo even after it's delivered so that they can retrieve your conversation when you are on a different client, but since they maintain to not keep your convo this is one of the best implementation.
And all of you are ignoring how all other approaches are flawed as well.

ub16 said:

You are still missing the point, it clearly says undelivered text is kept for 30days. For them to have a standalone client they must keep your convo even after it's delivered so that they can retrieve your conversation when you are on a different client, but since they maintain to not keep your convo this is one of the best implementation.
And all of you are ignoring how all other approaches are flawed as well.

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Yes they must keep it after it has been delivered for some time, lets say 1-10 days what is the problem there?
They already have the capability to keep the msgs all they have to do is increase the time between the msg being received and deleting the msg.

That would have been a much better solution than what they have done here, they are sticking to immediately deleting the msgs for no good reason here.

ub16 whatssap wana store msg kwenye sever zao bana

Paul S.S said:

ub16 whatssap wana store msg kwenye sever zao bana

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nop wanazihifadhi kwenye simu na ndio moja ya sababu kwanini whatsapp inapendwa kuliko im nyengine. nchi nyingi utaskia wanaban skype, viber na wengineo lakini hawaban whatsap sababu haihifadhi message zako kwenye server.

mfano mimi simu yangu database ya message naiona kila siku nikitumia file manager


kama whatsapp wanataka watoe client ya pc watoe kwa win 8/10 kama metro app, ndio sehemu pekee ambapo security ni kubwa ila mbali na hapo hii implementation waliyofanya ndio nzuri kulingana na philisophy zao