Re:Ask HN: Is it better to build intranet apps with desktop ...
by flukus on Tuesday April 18, 2017 @08:22AM
(#14138214)
Yes, way back when windows mobile was dominating and a stylus was trendy (before they became untrendy and then trendy again) ;) Certain things, like bigger buttons would be trivial, but other things like touch friendly inputs wouldn't be. MS even released a bastardised touch friendly version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile_6.5
We're talking corporate intranets though, so a PC (or occasionally mac) will be the norm because that's required for productivity apps. Most things simple enough to be a touch screen app would fit into the category of also being simple enough for a web app. As I said, web apps are a good choice for simple and/or rarely used apps.
Irrelevant side story: For my second ever paid programming job (which only lasted a few weeks for other reasons) I was handed a fairly complex windows mobile app to learn. The app loaded every table in the windows CE database into memory when it started, which took about 15 seconds. Within a couple of days I'd modified this to load on demand instead, cutting start times to zero and impressing the boss.
We're talking corporate intranets though, so a PC (or occasionally mac) will be the norm because that's required for productivity apps. Most things simple enough to be a touch screen app would fit into the category of also being simple enough for a web app. As I said, web apps are a good choice for simple and/or rarely used apps.
Irrelevant side story: For my second ever paid programming job (which only lasted a few weeks for other reasons) I was handed a fairly complex windows mobile app to learn. The app loaded every table in the windows CE database into memory when it started, which took about 15 seconds. Within a couple of days I'd modified this to load on demand instead, cutting start times to zero and impressing the boss.