Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2024 April 12

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April 12

Firefox bookmarks sidebar

After Firefox on my Fedora Linux system updated to Firefox 120.0.1, the "bookmarks sidebar" button suddenly changed to "sidebars". When I click it I get a sidebar with multiple options, such as "history" and "bookmarks". This is otherwise all OK, but it always opens with "history" as the default. How can I make it open with "bookmarks" as the default? JIP | Talk 17:18, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Web Applications

I want to categorize types of Web Applications based upon what framework and architecture might be best suited for making a type of site as effective as possible.

By effective, I mean nondeveloper content creation, SEO, community experience, rapid development, load time, responsiveness, ease of deployment, etc.

So far I have a loose list:

brochure - such as https://valleyendodontic.com/ notice, no sign in… no portal

subscription - medium.com, NetFlix, etc notice “subscribe to read more” prompts or sign up to watch whatever you want

store - chewy.com where you can do almost everything as a guest but can also sign in for user specific resources

community - facebook, etc where experience is distinctly different and more diverse for a member compared to a guest

community generated content - wikipedia, the community is mostly focused on creating content for guest visitors

portal - has user tracking but not much interacting and members are generally siloed to their own data

Anybody got any other suggestions for something I might have missed? Usulix (talk) 23:33, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

This does not appear an easy exercise, both because the diversity is large and because many web apps combine a mix of functionalities. The distinction between web apps and web sites is nebulous. Although in practice there is a correlation, from a logical viewpoint there is in most cases no necessary connection between the functionalities offered and possibly attendant requirements for accessing these, such as having subscribed or registered.

Here are a few types to consider:

• In what category should we place news apps (some of which require paying, others merely registration, while yet others are freely accessible)?
• I also don't know where Q&A sits, categorywise. In some case this is a side function (like Wikipedia's Reference desk), in other cases (Quora, Stack Exchange) it is the core function.
• Then there is groupware, ideally an integrated collection of online tools for managing collaborative projects. They can be designed with "group" as the central concept, where a group (e.g. a corporation) can have many projects, or with "project" as the central concept. In a sense, Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc., are instances of the latter; it is not uncommon to speak of Wikipedia as a project. In the Wikimedia examples the generated content is also meant to be consumed by users, but this is not in general the case for online collaborative projects – more often than not they are inaccessible to outsiders.
• What about educationware, apps through which users can follow courses, do exercises, etc.? How does that fit?

I suspect that there are many more types.  --Lambiam 22:34, 13 April 2024 (UTC)