Why our website looks like an operating system

by bnc319 • 10 months ago

684 487 10 months ago

cramsession• 10 months ago

That's so fun! It brings back the excitement and nostalgia of home computing in the 90s. It's also pretty useful and I buy the justification for why it's helpful.

Twey10• 10 months ago

I've always thought ‘multi-document interfaces’ as we used to call them are an anti-pattern. I have a perfectly good window manager; why does every app need its own incompatible, usually inferior window manager built in?

(Mind you on mobile I very much don't have a perfectly good window manager, and indeed can't even open multiple instances of most apps…)

cosmic_cheese2• 10 months ago

As a long time Mac user, MDI has always felt like a stopgap to make up for the OS not having the ability to manage windows on a per-application basis (so for example, being able to hide all windows belonging to a particular application or move them all to another desktop/screen).

It also feels very foreign on macOS - Photoshop suddenly gained the MDI-type UI in like CS4 or something, after having let windows and palettes roam free on macs since Photoshop’s inception. I always turn it off, feels claustrophobic somehow.

Twey10• 10 months ago

I think that's still a little too restrictive. Sometimes you really do want multiple groups of windows that may belong to the same (think multiple browser windows each with multiple tabs) or different applications (e.g. grouped by task). It's not hard to see how the application marketplace leads to every app doing everything including managing all the things it does, but it's not good for the user.

boredtofears2• 10 months ago

To throw gasoline on the fire: this how I’ve always felt about tmux. Why use an incomplete in terminal windowing system when I can just have multiple terminal windows open managed by the superior OS window system.

(That said I know tmux is sometimes the only option and then it makes sense to me)

kurisufag• 10 months ago

tmux (and screen) are incredible assets for remote sessions, both for continuity across dropped shells and multi-shell activities when the connection process is tedious (multiple jumphosts, proxies, etc.)

em-bee7• 10 months ago

because the OS window manager isn't superior. i have two dozen tmux windows in half a dozen sessions locally. i have shortcut keys to switch between sessions and between windows. i can do that while mixing the terminal with other gui apps. i have yet to find a window manager that lets me group so many terminals into sessions all on the same workspace.

MobiusHorizons• 10 months ago

I would typically not bother with tmux unless ssh is involved.

cturner• 10 months ago

I tend to run my tmux session for months at a time on my office workstation. When I remote in to that computer, I can type ‘tmux attach’ and all my context is there. I might have four long arc dev projects running at once, and my planning system, all within those windows.

On our datacentre servers, I also have tmux running. It is fast to connect to these hosts, attach tmux and continue from where I left off.

Another use case: it is common for corporates to require devs to use windows desktops, but to then give them a headless linux host in a datacentre for development work. Here, you use putty to connect to the linux host, fullscreen it, run tmux. On your desktop you have outlook and office and putty and a browser and no dev tools. You can do all your planning and dev work on the linux host, using your favourite ten thousand hours text editor and building your own tools, and this becomes your hub. You lose awareness that you are connected to this from a locked down windows host. Corporate security reboots your windows host for patching several nights in a row, and it does not cause you any hassle because your work context is in the tmux session on another host.

Twey10• 10 months ago

The difference is that tmux, with all its state, typically runs on a remote system. The graphical equivalent would be a VNC &c. session, assuming that the remote machine has the prerequisites for that (which is a pretty big ask).

Barrin92• 10 months ago

why does every app need its own incompatible, usually inferior window manager built in?

You answered your own question, because a lot of applications work across multiple platforms, and if you want to have control over the experience because you don't know what capacities the OS's window manager has you need to abstract it away.

Twey10• 10 months ago

Abstracting something away and duplicating it for yourself are two very different things! Remember Java Swing?

But I take your point, if you want to target the lowest common denominator of window managers it makes some sense to do your own window management. Mind you you could just ship both a browser and a window manager…

I wonder to what extent the pattern of applications doing their own window management masks (and therefore perpetuates) the problem of inadequate window managers.

BobbyTables2• 10 months ago

Compared to the experience of something like “Gimp”, I prefer something contained to a single window.

Otherwise two or three such apps running at the same time becomes a game of “where’s my window”. I hate the idea of a toolbar being its own window to be managed.

weare138• 10 months ago

As a long time Gimp user, I remember dealing with the same thing but they did eventually fix that. It actually runs in a single window by default now.

pta2002• 10 months ago

I mean, old photoshop versions (CS3?) also used multiple windows, so if I were to take a guess that’s where Gimp got it from.

prmoustache• 10 months ago

That is because you are used to shitty window managers / desktop that don't remember position, do not support pinning and tagging windows, etc.

That is the issue, apps have to deal with the lowest common denominator in term of desktop management but there is absolutely no good reason to build a window manager inside a website.I think that with tabs people have generally forgotten they can open multiple browser windows.

nonethewiser13• 10 months ago

Im not sure gimp being constrained to a single window would constitute a multi-document interface.

dotnet00• 10 months ago

I think the issue is partly that most OS window managers really don't seem to optimize for having a dozen small windows on your screen in the way that the custom window managers in, say, art software or CAD software, often do. Mainly in terms of how much space their title bar takes/wastes.

17186274402• 10 months ago

I thought that on MS Windows MDI is part of the operating system. There are programs that can change it at runtime. That's honestly pretty neat.

badsectoracula4• 10 months ago

I have a perfectly good window manager; why does every app need its own incompatible, usually inferior window manager built in?

Because some applications do need multiple windows in the same application context. A common example would be image editors.

It is unfortunate that almost all generic MDI implementations (Win32 and Qt basically) are incredibly barebones. I want to have multiple windows visible when i'm using Krita, for example, but Qt's MDI support (that Krita does use) is worse than what Windows 95 had.

SSLy• 10 months ago

What about Cocoa?

Twey10• 10 months ago

The ‘application context’ isn't a concept that adds value, at least for the applications I've seen. For things where the application windows do need to be treated differently (e.g. patch bays that can be connected together, or widgets that can be fused into larger widgets [1]) I have more sympathy for applications that want to do their own window management. But for something like the browser just grouping Web pages together, that's something entirely unrelated to the browser functionality that should be available in the window manager.

[1] https://wiki.haskell.org/Eros

ironmagma3• 10 months ago

Nearly every UNIX command has its own way of formatting output, be it into columns, tables, lists, files, or TTYs (and windows, à la emacs, screen, other curses-based utils...). Even `ls` has a table formatting logic to it. This keeps the UNIX native abstraction relatively simple; everything is "just text." But the ecosystem, being quite rich, actually has a lot of divergent requirements for each utility. If that was avoidable, we probably would have seen some other abstractions appear on top of "just text," but we similarly haven't.

dheerajvs• 10 months ago

Would you extend that argument to tabbed interfaces as well? Why should browsers support tabs (and an inconsistent interface by each vendor), when you can just open a new window instead?

wvbdmp• 10 months ago

One could argue that this affordance should be provided by the OS for a unified experience.

Etherlord872• 10 months ago

The tabs reuse resources of the browser, and the browser does it really well - I think it's not even arguable that browsers are more complex than the OS GUI API, this is why e.g. Windows 11 uses react.js in start menu.

So if you create a webpage that is so damn advanced that it beats the browsers OR it somehow reuses heavy resources within one webpage, I'd say this is a good justification. And IMO the OP link isn't an example of that.

Twey10• 10 months ago

Even better, WMs can (and sometimes do) support tabs!

afiori• 10 months ago

Because browsers only remember the last set of open windows reliably.

So if I were to split the 5 tabs I usually need for work in 3 windows I would routinely lose a bunch of them.

egypturnash• 10 months ago

It looks like one but it doesn't work like one, the hitbox for the right-hand window resize area completely overlaps the hitbox for the scrollbar for me.

andrenotgiant• 10 months ago

I love the website. It stands out amongst a million vanilla SaaS marketing sites all using the same section stack template.

But nobody will actually use it the way they describe in this article. Nobody is going to use the site enough to learn and remember to use your site-specific window management when they need it.

jonahx• 10 months ago

This was my reaction.

Super impressive. Fun. Does a great job selling the company ethos.

But not actually that usable. I don't think this matters too much, though.

binary132• 10 months ago

Idk, the UX seems really self-evident to me. Also it’s fun. I usually click away from this kind of product immediately but I stayed on this for provably 5-10 minutes just snooping around to see what it was all about.

computerdork• 10 months ago

Me too, think it's neat:) But it seems like the majority of the comments on HN dislikes it though.

paddw• 10 months ago

It's all marketing. But it's good marketing.

jez• 10 months ago

Very neat! I was delighted to see that "drag to side of screen" tiled the window using that half of the screen. Then I opened a new window, and I was (unreasonably) surprised to see that there wasn't a tiling window manager that put my second window in the other half of the screen.

Gualdrapo• 10 months ago

Things like this makes me think that controls for stuff like content density (line height, text width...), per-page dark mode, "scroll to top" and cookie banners should be a task of the web browser/user agent, not of each website.

csomar• 10 months ago

If anyone here is using PostHog: Is it just me or their service is ridiculously slow? Like the simplest queries can take a dozen seconds or so.

Also, I seem to be losing a lot of screen recording for non-bot like traffic. There “not found” message is also not clear why the recording failed.

It would have been much better if they focused on their core product instead of making all these gimmicks.

giveita• 10 months ago

It seems a workaround. Browsers suck so let's make a browser ... hell ... a full blown OS UI inside a web page? One that is bespoke for our site.

I prefer the semantics of deep bookmarkable urls to open things in new tabs. HATEOAS! And using my OS tiling to handle things. Choosing my browser/plugins too for better tab management (maybe Arc can help here?)

keyle2• 10 months ago

It's neat but it runs like a dog. I opened a couple of things and tried to move the window... I'd take a statically generated bunch of webpages over this. If you're going to make one of those multi window webpages looking thing, make it good.

To note, in the past, this was a big no-no because SEO was important. You had to have good SEO for search engines to index your content efficiently and show up well ranked in search results...

Now, well, that ship has sailed and sank somewhere off the west coast...

righthand• 10 months ago

SEO was about documents. Now days everyone wants to make games. How do you rank games?

keyle2• 10 months ago

I think it's about user retention. If people have fun on your website, they'll stick around and they might even read some text!

spartanatreyu2• 10 months ago

What are you using that's causing performance issues?

It runs like a dream when playing with the first window. When opening a second window and dragging it around it stutters for a second then resumes back to full speed and every window after is full speed. (I'm assuming that's the browser going: "Oh wait, they really are using those functions every frame, let me spend a moment to optimize them so they're as fast as possible for future executions)

b_e_n_t_o_n• 10 months ago

M4 MacBook Pro running safari, in general it's running at about 10 fps when dragging windows around. Chrome seems to perform better but I still get quite a few dropped frames. Most of those long frames are spent deep in the React internals so I'm guessing that's the cause.

marci• 10 months ago

Firefox?

I had the same issue then tried edge and it was smooth.

roelschroeven2• 10 months ago

I opened it in Firefox and it was perfectly smooth.

anal_reactor• 10 months ago

Opera Mobile here. Performance is bad.

NicuCalcea2• 10 months ago

It took a good 20 seconds for it to fully load in Firefox on Android.

nonethewiser13• 10 months ago

"omg mobile"

- some posthog dev waking up this morning after yesterday's release

codethief4• 10 months ago

Another FF on Android user here. Out of the many issues I've run into with this website, performance hasn't really been one of them. It's not perfect and it did lag once or twice but your average newspaper site is a lot worse.

EasyMark• 10 months ago

yeah, it's fine on desktop but it's dog on my iphone 12. I prefer the look and UI over most modern websites though. If was using the products from webhog I'd probably enjoy navigating around and interacting more than most sites.

phantomathkg• 10 months ago

This works, until you want to print the page (dead tree format or PDF format) and breaks everything.

theamk• 10 months ago

Looks neat, but also makes feels really slow in my browser. I'd take the regular windows at any time, especially since it's super simple to detach a tab from browser, check "Always on top", and put next to code editor or something.

Also there are non-removable bars on top and bottom of the page, even if window is "maximized".

aanet• 10 months ago

It's lovely. It's unique. and UX is just delightful.

For some easter eggs, click on the "Trash" icon, and click on any of the docs... Especially the "spicy.mov" :-)

Keep up the delight.

samdung• 10 months ago

I hate you.

xpe4• 10 months ago

If one witnesses the spiciness first-hand, one will understand the comment above is fitting and appropriate.

jacknews• 10 months ago

It looks great, but now we have tabs inside windows inside tabs in windows inside displays ...

This is all the job of the window manager. We need better window managers.

jackvalentine2• 10 months ago

My bank 20 years ago had an “OS like” online banking system. I remember it fondly!

ronsor2• 10 months ago

You wouldn't happen to have any (redacted) screenshots, by chance?

jackvalentine2• 10 months ago

I've occasionally looked, but I can't find it. If you can do better...!

St George Bank, Australia circa 2005

ronsor2• 10 months ago

I wish my desktop environment looked like this

terpimost• 10 months ago

Posthog you are the best but left sidebar just with icons is not great. Please expand it on hover.

ChrisArchitect• 10 months ago

This is amazing work. But you ask what are we doing/can't we figure out a better way to consume content and my feel from this is what are we doing here - building AOL? Lost in the Posthog world here, never leaving, numerous windows and even an Outlook forum (is that a UI we think ppl want to be in?). It's an immersive experience for sure. But I'm not sure being in a posthog:keywords world instead of the web is somewhere I want to be.

Nonetheless, take an upvote. It's a heap of nostalgic freshness. And I'd hire you for the effort crafting/building it over that guy earlier vibecoding a Win 95 UI to show off his design skills.

tamimio• 10 months ago

I had my blog before in similar way with windows etc. the only issue was search engines hated it and even if I look up exactly something written there it still won’t show up, but that was around 10y ago so maybe things changed now.

gedy• 10 months ago

I'd love it if you could release this as a Gnome theme!

mbirth• 10 months ago

This reminds me of those virtual desktops/virtual “PC”s that popped up like 10-15 years ago. Which were very similar and had some basic tools for writing notes, calculator, managing files, etc. - all with web technologies.

blinger• 10 months ago

all great while there is hype. once the initial hype fades, so will the conversion rates.

Retr0id• 10 months ago

Legally-required cookie banner
PostHog.com doesn't use third-party cookies, only a single in-house cookie

You're legally required to let me opt out of that cookie. Unless it's essential to the site functionality, in which case you don't need the banner at all.

rmunn4• 10 months ago

Considering they have a login system, I'm going to guess that the cookie includes your login (probably in JWT form), which automatically makes it essential to site functionality. Which means the banner is there just because if it was absent, someone would say "Hey, where's the cookie banner?"

In other words, it's not actually legally required in their case, but it's practically required, because it lets everyone know that the absence of the banner is not a violation of the law.

JoshTriplett• 10 months ago

It is not in any way required, and adding it just contributes to annoyance.

weird-eye-issue2• 10 months ago

it's practically required, because it lets everyone know that the absence of the banner is not a violation of the law.

Your "logic" is baffling

zejn• 10 months ago

It's not legally required in terms of law, but it is legally required in the way that the legal department will complain if the banner not there. Checklists and all that. ;)

ttiurani2• 10 months ago

Exactly. If they indeed only use the cookie for essential functionality, this kind of joke banner only makes their choice to respect visitors' privacy equally annoying.

Even worse: because it makes it seem like the EU law is just meritless pestering of people, they are actually fighting for the right for worse sites to spy on their visitors.

It's baffling.

xp849• 10 months ago

EU law is just meritless pestering of people

It is that. It has done literally nothing to improve anything whatsoever, in any country. And most of the "cookie management" scripts that people use, barely even work. Both the law and the way it's complied with in practice are a dumb solution to a problem that the EU should have forced browser vendors to solve. Only the user's browser can choose not to send back cookies, and it would be trivial for the user to be shown a dialog when they navigate to a previously-visited site in a new session saying:

  Last time you were here, the site stored information that may help them recognize you or remember your previous actions here.

  < I want to be recognized > / < Forget Everything >

  [ ] Also keep these third-party cookies <Details...>
  [x] Remember my choice and don't ask again for ycombinator.com

viccis• 10 months ago

this kind of joke banner only makes their choice to respect visitors' privacy equally annoying

Their name is "PostHog", a dirtbag left joke from years ago. If they were trying to make joyless scolds happy with their humor, their site would be very different.

pjmlp• 10 months ago

Man, I am always required to use this seatbelt even though I haven't had a car accident in decades, it takes me seconds to put it on and off, makes this pestering sound when I forget it, that gets into my nerves, another useless law that need nothing to improve security. /s /s

auggierose• 10 months ago

If the EU was a serious entity, they would just forbid cookies that are non-essential. Simple as that. Either you take your responsibility as a law maker serious, or you refrain from making laws entirely.

sylware• 10 months ago

"EU law"... you mean "regulation", that to prevent some "abuse".

Here, EU is not quite doing the right thing: the web need "noscript/basic (x)html" compatibility more than cookie regulation. Being jailed into a whatng cartel web engine does much more harm than cookie tracking (and some could use a long cryptographic URL parameter anyway).

Basically, a web "site" would be a "noscript/basic (x)html)" portal, and a web "app" would require a whatng cartel web engine (geeko/webkit/blink).

I do remember clearly a few years back, I was able to buy on amazon with the lynx browser... yep basic HTML forms can do wonders.

Al-Khwarizmi3• 10 months ago

makes it seem like the EU law is just meritless pestering of people

Which it is?

I am from the EU and I don't see what this law has accomplished apart from making the WWW worse, especially on mobile.

I remember back when Opera was a paid browser, last century, it already have options to accept all cookies, refuse them, or set fine-grained preferences per website. No need for handling it at the website level if the client can do it.

whywhywhywhy• 10 months ago

because it makes it seem like the EU law is just meritless pestering of people

The law should have been just a browser setting sites had to follow, making it a "banner" has made it meritless pestering while pretending it's for my own good and allowing the worst offenders to make convoluted UI to try and trick you every site visit.

almosthere• 10 months ago

Man it's 2025 and we still WANT to opt out of cookies visually? Why don't we just have browsers that just do that.

joquarky• 10 months ago

Seems like it should be a browser setting that controls a request header.

troupo8• 10 months ago

Ask your favorite advertising company: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45217269

Springtime• 10 months ago

If one wants full control cookies could just be disabled by default at the browser level (which also blocks local storage). I do this and just whitelist sites that actually need it (very few).

The issue is some sites won't display any content without cookies, even if it's unnecessary. The amount of React-using sites that will load the entire page only to a second later to fully blank out since the JS couldn't set local storage does get annoying (and can regularly be worked around by disabling Javascript if not used for anything substantial). A handful like this have appeared just this past week on the HN front page.

coded_monkey• 10 months ago

I’m interested to hear which country forces a cookie banner for any cookie, because the EU only requires it for tracking cookies and this website does net specify whether it’s used for that purpose.

I’ve created websites with a cookie banner “because it’s required” even though there were no cookies involved. The idea that every website needs a cookie banner is more hurtful than the cookie banners themself.

esskay• 10 months ago

I rarely if ever put a cookie notice as the sites I tend to work on are only going to have 1 cookie for user sessions which is essential functionality and thus cannot be opted out of. It doesn't collect/store/share data so it's not something that needs the opt out banner.

It's still stupid though as most of the sites I do absolutely still track certain activity, it's just done server side.

internet_points2• 10 months ago

Could it be that they actually did not know that they don't need to show a banner if there is no third party cookie?

Or that this is their way of bragging that they don't use third-party cookies?

pembrook3• 10 months ago

Ahh yes. HN’s favorite debate.

Where people who’ve never started a company or spoken to a lawyer about GDPR, the ePrivacy directive, the schrems rulings, etc but just emotionally love idea of what they think it represents (but actually doesn’t), debate with normal sane people.

All I can say is, I’m getting really tired of this one guys.

fsflover2• 10 months ago

Just like a debate on any other topic? E.g., GNU/Linux on desktop.

oliwarner3• 10 months ago

Different jurisdictions differ. Even if you collect your own and it contains identifying points, laws like GDPR will require you to attain informed consent before you collect it, along with methods for people deleting their data, and a million et als.

jeroenhd• 10 months ago

I don't see any cookies saved anywhere. I do see four variables in localStorage, though.

They also embed Youtube if you open the demo, which in turn tracks users (yes, even through the no-cookie subdomain: https://dustinwhisman.com/writing/youtube-nocookie-com-will-...).

Ursula von der Leyen would not be very proud.

Garlef2• 10 months ago

Let's see if one of these shady lawyers who make their money by finding these violations reads HN and gets into contact with them...

thecopy• 10 months ago

Unless it's essential to the site functionality, in which case you don't need the banner at all.

No, this is conflating "GDPR consent" and the ePrivacy Directive. According to ePD the banner must always be shown if the company providing the service is based in the EU

elygre3• 10 months ago

You're legally required to let me opt out of that cookie. Unless it's essential to the site functionality, in which case you don't need the banner at all.

Isn't it even simpler: Unless the cookie is used to track, you don't need the banner? For example, a cookie used to remember sort order would not require a cookie banner, I think.

(It's not about cookies. It's about tracking.)

Etherlord872• 10 months ago

It's about being "essential" or not, not about tracking. Also keep in mind with enough preferences you could have unique or near-unique fingerprint of preferences which could be used for tracking.

lucideer3• 10 months ago

I love this website but yeah that banner really bothered me. 100% appreciate the effort to reduce cookies & the commitment to avoid 3rd-party, the tongue-in-cheek "legally required" flies completely in the face of all that effort - especially given it's misinformed & not in fact legally required at all.

nine_k3• 10 months ago

So, in short, this is because window management under macOS sucks big time (and under Windows, still leaves much to be desired), and because tabs in Chrome become indistinguishable if you open a couple dozen, since they are on top, instead of on the side (Firefox only recently gained an option to put tabs on the side). Watch legacy UI concepts that are so ingrained that people often don't notice how counterproductive they are.

The PostHog interface tries to somehow alleviate that, but still follows the Windows model a bit too faithfully. Also, bookmarking becomes... interesting.

xp849• 10 months ago

Edge has had side tabs (aka Vertical Tabs) for years now. I don't personally see a single reason to use Chrome over Edge. And I spend most of my time in MacOS.

rglynn• 10 months ago

I doubt many on HN actually use Chrome. Instead preferring Firefox or one of the many Chromium browsers (Brave, Arc etc).

I agree that there isn't a reason to use Chrome when Chromium exists, although which Chromium flavour and whether to use a different engine entirely, is the question.

euLh7SM5HDFY• 10 months ago

Firefox only recently gained an option to put tabs on the side

regained. And I don't think it was a long break at all. tree organization for those side tabs, now that took a lot of time to regain, after they ripped API used by TreeStyleTabs extension.

nine_k3• 10 months ago

If they indeed adopted Tree Style Tab, that is, allowed tabs to form a tree, that would be wonderful. Alas, I sill have to run TST and hide native tabs.

kccqzy• 10 months ago

This is because people are so used to tabs that they forgot they can open new browser windows. For a long time I configured my browser not to use tabs, because most of the time when I open two or more pages I want to see them simultaneously.

nine_k3• 10 months ago

Yes, this is sort of weird, but understandable. The thought of separating contexts this way for some reason takes a bit of conscious effort.

I have 7-8 Firefox windows across 3 virtual desktops, all named using the Window Titler extension [1]. Every name starts with an emoji to make it easy to tell them apart just by color.

Truth be told, many windows may be confusing to navigate via alt-tab-like interface; I additionally run rofi [2] for quick switching by name / title.

[1] https://github.com/tpamula/webextension-window-titler

[2] https://github.com/davatorium/rofi

lantry• 10 months ago

arrgggh, my affordances!!!

copypaper• 10 months ago

I'm curious how well this will do. Marketing websites are extremely important for first impressions (unless you're Berkshire Hathaway [1]). Although this is impressive and unique, it took me a minute to get over the "learning curve".

Reminds me of Jakob's Law, "Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know" [2].

But given your target audience is developers, this might actually do well.

[1] https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ [2] https://lawsofux.com/jakobs-law/

internetter• 10 months ago

unless you're Berkshire Hathaway

conversely, Berkshire Hathaway's website gives a great first impression

number6• 10 months ago

I wonder what the ad costs and why it's there in the first place

Klonoar• 10 months ago

I wonder how much, if anything, Geico pays to advertise on that page.

valleyer• 10 months ago

Zero, as Geico is owned by Berkshire.

miiiiiike2• 10 months ago

I just click off whenever I see a site like that.

spartanatreyu2• 10 months ago

Ok, but if they have a bog-standard site like everyone else then they're not going to look any different than everyone else, which would cause users to leave.

This, this is memorable.

leftnode• 10 months ago

I think the opposite is true. Sure, it's technically impressive, but users have been trained for decades at this point to understand how a basic marketing page should look and this isn't it. These kinds of sites are best left as portfolio pages for designers to show off their skills, not for B2B SaaS landing pages.

miiiiiike2• 10 months ago

It stopped being memorable when it became a trend. I see 1-2 portfolio sites like this every week.

It’s slow. It’s janky. It’s buggy (random x/y overflow issues on mobile, reader view came up blank a few times.) It takes an enormous effort to maintain and update. Too clever.

bigyabai• 10 months ago

Sadly, me too. We must share the fun-hating gene, or somesuch.

It's not a bad website either, the layout is really well done and it sells the branding. I just don't trust it to be accessible, as I only ever click through sites to find text content. Something about it feels like putting a Christmas tree in your bathroom for the sake of branding.

alberth• 10 months ago

I’m really curious from the marketer angle on does this help or hurt convert to sales.

My gut is it’ll dramatically hurt. Since the call to action is way more challenging for users to find.

twalichiewicz• 10 months ago

If you leave the page idle long enough you'll even see a screensaver.

paulmooreparks• 10 months ago

It doesn't look like an "operating system." It looks like a graphical shell. I guess those terms have become a bit interchangeable, and I'm being pedantic.

65• 10 months ago

The slight x overflow on the content container on mobile is maddening.

webprofusion• 10 months ago

It looks awesome but I clicked several bits and pieces and still have no idea what they do or what their product is.

aabhay• 10 months ago

But at least you clicked

baddash2• 10 months ago

That's how most company websites are XD

piceas• 10 months ago

Yeah. I found pictures of feet before I found their products.

I guess they assume visitors usually arrive at the home page rather than a blog post. A quick note/link in the blog post might be helpful for those of us stumbling around.

Kwpolska• 10 months ago

I went to their main page and I still don’t know what they’re really doing. "We’re building every tool for product engineers to build successful products." is an entirely meaningless sentence.

chain0304• 10 months ago

Haha I love that. I literally wrote this post...

"This sounds like an expensive solution to a marketing problem re. the product. And if one digs even further, perhaps an issue with your product line - the benefits of it aren't immediately presentable in a simplified way to the extent it is differentiated relative to the competitors."

AaronAPU• 10 months ago

Yeah I liked the aesthetic but left the site having no idea what I was even looking at or why I would care.

shakesbeard• 10 months ago

Same. Clicked around. Was annoyed that a single click on an icon opened the window and not a double click. Used the navigation a bit and left.

No idea what they do.

resonious• 10 months ago

Man if you did open-in-new-window instead of open-in-new-tab, you would get all of this "for free".

willgax• 10 months ago

this is one one of the most unique web design i have come across

Evidlo• 10 months ago

Easter egg: Trash > Employee feet pics

DoctorOW• 10 months ago

Curiosity got the best of me, opened it, pictures of feet.

"I'm not sure what I expected"

subtlesoftware• 10 months ago

An operating system UI solves a specific problem: presenting all of your files and applications in a GUI that's flexible enough to support a wide range of fundamental activities.

A company landing page basically has two jobs: (1) sell the product and (2) let existing users access the product.

Applying the OS UI to a company landing page applies the wrong tool to the wrong problem.

The author writes:

You can multitask, open a few articles simultaneously, and move them around as you please.
You can be reading the latest newsletter from Product for Engineers while watching a demo video in the corner and also playing Hedgehog Mode, the game.

My browser has tabs – I can open multiple blog posts and read them separately. I don't want to read them while playing a random novelty video game on a SaaS company website.

I commend the author of this website because it is cool and well-designed, but this is not an effective product.

The caveat to this is that the design is thought-provoking. So maybe Posthog gets some buzz and leads because of the discussion among technical people about its new website.

cyberjunkie• 10 months ago

Someone needs to make a KDE, XFCE theme of this.

ggnore7452• 10 months ago

so immersive i actually hit ctrl+w and closed the whole tab.

xp849• 10 months ago

I really like this. Side note: It has real BeOS vibes in my opinion, and that's a compliment.

I remember seeing another submission from PostHog on here a while ago, I think it was about transparent pricing? Anyway, I would definitely want to use them if I was founding a startup.

Razengan• 10 months ago

An operating system running on an operating system to view a mockup of an operating system

RadiozRadioz• 10 months ago

This must have taken them a really long time. That worries me, don't they have other things to do? If engineers have so much free time that they can work on nice & fun things like this that aren't totally necessary, they must have overhired (which is wasteful and a sign of impending layoffs) or they don't have enough actual work to do (which is a sign the company is stagnating).

Or the time and money required to do this is coming out of a very large advertising bucket. In which case my gut is still not cool with it, but I don't know enough about advertising to make a judgment on if this is a waste of money.

WD-42• 10 months ago

Can we just appreciate cool things please.

EatFlamingDeath• 10 months ago

This is why we can't have nice things...

forgetbook• 10 months ago

I'm still junior, as in I spend more time reading docs than writing code because most code I have to write is stuff I haven't written before.

IMO, first impression? This is just a straight-up better way to show docs to me. To quote the landing page: "Often times, I’ll want to refer to different pages at the same time. So I’ll CMD + click “a couple times” while browsing around and before I know it, I have 12 new tabs open – all indistinguishable from each other because they share the same favicon."

Wow. They fixed it. First of it's kind, at least in my career so far. If you're got an example from DOS then yeah, I missed out, and agree that something important was lost along the way.

wcfrobert• 10 months ago

I disagree. I think it might even be a positive signal, especially for startups.

Imagine a startup with an engineering team that has this much creative energy, ingenuity, and vision unencumbered by bureaucratic processes, committees, and all-day meetings.

A sense of "play" is so important in creating fantastic software. Some of the best products are the result of engineers having full creative control and the liberty to "play". See, for example, Google's "20% time policy" in the early 2000s which birthed Gmail, or 3M's "permitted bootlegging" policy which birthed Post-it notes.

ZaoLahma• 10 months ago

Oof...! A lot of innovation originates in engineers' "boredom".

I've been at a company that mandated innovation by having a mandatory annual innovation day, and full productivity for the rest of the year. "Be innovative for 8 hours, damn it!". That never worked. Not once. Never ever. Innovation was limited to evolution, and evolution was so slow that our customers had started implementing what we provided in house instead. Stagnation, as you call it.

I've also been at a company where people got... bored (didn't have enough to do). A guy single handedly re-wrote the firmware for a neat little hardware box that ended up saving the company an absolute ridiculous amount of money as they no longer needed to buy another much, much more expensive proprietary box.

So in my opinion having bored engineers around could very well be a sign of great success.

w-ll• 10 months ago

i can agree, but this doesnt seem like engineer boredom, more like manager or higher

corywatilo2• 10 months ago

Hi, OP here. I was employee #13 at PostHog, joining as a designer (who now moonlights as a design engineer). I'm responsible for the website. I've been part of crafting the brand for 4.5 years – joined when the company just started monetizing.

There are only two of us who work on the website, myself and a front end engineer. (He was hired to work on the website and doesn't directly work in the product.)

We've spent roughly half of the last six months on this site. Other than our incredible graphic designer, no other resources were brought in.

A lot of our time is spent on brand-related side quests – they're consistently a net positive for the brand. You can see some examples under "Some things we've shipped" at https://posthog.com/teams/brand

This was a passion project of mine. I'm the one who ultimately chose to spend time I did on it. I think what we built is really cool, and I hope it serves as inspiration for other designers to think outside the box when it comes to solving their unique challenges.

Every company operates differently. Yes, many companies do have employees with too much time on their hands. Others do waste a lot of money in advertising. And a lot of companies are stagnating.

But I can assure you, PostHog is none of those.

thinkingemote• 10 months ago

The teams window seems to be broken for me, on a non latest version of Firefox. However the blog posts window in the submission works flawlessly.

In the teams window, The first page doesn't load the images but does the content, clicking another item in the menu does show the expected page but again with no images. At some point, clicking the menu items does not load the correct page. At some point after that the images load in, however the correct link to the correct post does not appear. I have to click about 6 times on the same menu link to see a cycling of different posts (possibly the ones I was clicking before) to see the expected post.

spacedcowboy• 10 months ago

I threw a (much more limited) version of a "desktop" website together in about a couple of hours.

http://xgpu.net/ is about an ongoing project for an external gpu for the Atari range of 16-bit (and actually I even have plans to make it work on the 8-bit range) computers. It's somewhat in limbo at the moment because I just moved continent and most of my stuff is on a ship in the Atlantic. Once that arrives, and we start to settle in, I'll get back to it.

chain0304• 10 months ago

If I was an investor I would not be happy with my money being poured into this pointless project.

AfterHIA• 10 months ago

Love, love, love it. You didn't need to do this but you did and it reminds me of the days when, "you needed to make things this way."

Godspeed you black emperors.

DustinBrett• 10 months ago

As someone with a personal website which looks like an operating system, I support this trend!

This interface is very well done, great job!

carlosbf1• 10 months ago

dream for a front end dev

albertmz2• 10 months ago

Serious question. Could one not write a whole desktop environment in a lisp (clojurescript) and serve it as a website?

baddash2• 10 months ago

How come you're asking that? Just curious

albertmz2• 10 months ago

I want to find a good use for clojurescript. It would be cool to build a personal site with an OS theme. Additionally with enough extensibility it could become like emacs.

pnathan• 10 months ago

The critique of modern websites is on point.

Yet, I'm not convinced that Windows 95 is the right vibe.

But it's better than many others. There's a lot of damage done by the GUI & design 'experts' who keep up with the 'good looking things' that change routinely.

agnishom• 10 months ago

This is satire, right?

jaequery• 10 months ago

i hope this doesn't become a trend.

rogermungo• 10 months ago

Really cool. Great idea

henrikschroder• 10 months ago

People have been making websites exactly like this since the 90's.

Every single one of them have ultimately been massive failures, because you are re-inventing the wheel and putting a window system that you control to sidestep the window system that I control.

I had a lot of fun in building it

Yeah, me too! But I learned my lesson.

xpe4• 10 months ago

Reminds me of some often-repeated suggestions that take the form of "every developer should build their own X" where X might be: blog, ORM, key-value store, database, OS, distributed computation framework, neural network, decentralized currency. But the one that you really have to be afraid of, in terms of time-spent followed by a new life-long obsession is "your own keyboard".

catlifeonmars2• 10 months ago

Cute idea, but super janky on mobile.

17186274402• 10 months ago

They made the effort, that the menu is accessible by the keyboard, but then forgot to let it trigger the hover effect, so that it is like navigating blindly.

davedx• 10 months ago

I love PostHog. The feature set, the listening to the community, the positioning and pricing, and then things like this where they're truly creative about their user interface design.

I honestly can't think of anything I don't like. I'm a very happy user.

aitchnyu• 10 months ago

First paragraph made me think, does any app declare diffent favicons based on page type (settings, projects) and status (new project, project in red alert) etc?

popcorncowboy2• 10 months ago

When I checked, these were the top comments. Can't do anything these days ;)

- Menu is accessible but done badly, like navigating blind. - Badly implemented cookie banner (let me opt out or don't use this) - Why build an inferior multi-document interfaces (which are an anti-pattern) - Waste of money - don't devs have better things to do - Neat but runs like a dog. Give me SSG pages, otherwise make it good - Nice website but no-one will use it the way they describe - It's lovely <- followed up by: "I hate you" - Websites like this have ultimately all been massive failures - Awesome, but I have no idea what they do or what their product is - Love it - blah blah blah

swinglock• 10 months ago

Yet both ctrl+click and vimium mostly work as expected. That's good.

voodooEntity• 10 months ago

Im struggling to find the words but ill try:

Sir : you did a fantastic job.

As someone who worked many years in web development and always was annoyed by bad UIs, this one is outstandingly good. And im not just talking about the "lookalike" itself, which is very clean and structured. Also the usability and how it "feels" to use the website is the closest to any "browser fake os" page i've ever tried (and i tried many...) - literally the only thing i was missing (and thats nitpicking on the highest level) - was when i right clicked the background that the context menu didn't have a "refresh" that i could click which sure would have no usefull effect but it would have my "using a desktop" feeling 100% round :D

So basically: great job, great website !

corywatilo2• 10 months ago

I'll consider a refresh button just for you. Thanks for the kind words.

ebcode• 10 months ago

That'd be great if I could navigate the in-browser browser with my pgup/pgn or arrow keys, but I can't. If you're going to go this route, you really should do comprehensive accessibility testing.

hliyan5• 10 months ago

Why this feels so incredibly appealing compared to prevailing designs is probably something for a psychologist / cognitive scientist / neurologist (?) to answer -- there is certainly something here that warrants better study than what we in the software industry do in rushed blog posts.

But I can personally speak to at least one aspect, having worked for a company that does high end web sites and strategy for large SaaS products, and also being the target audience for such websites (director or VP Eng): the speed and ease with which I can find what I want (as a potential customer) using that top navigation menu is superior to anything I've seen done so far.

I could see immediately they have 34 products under 7 categories; 5 are popular, 4 are new. If I want to try out one: Docs > Product OS > Integration > Install and configure > Install PostHog.

And if I wanted to learn a bit about their engineering: Company > Handbook > Engineering > Internal Processes > Bug prioritization.

Pricing: Pricing calculator > select product > set usage, select addons.

Each of these interactions took only seconds. And I could switch between the product overview page I opened earlier and the pricing page I just opened, without waiting for any entire website to reload (or having to right click, open in new tab, and then scroll).

As I said, there is something here beyond just aesthetics. And one of the conclusions may be that our current UI/UX philosophy has inadvertantly become user-hostile.

knuckleheads2• 10 months ago

If I recall right, they have most everything in the same CMS, in particular their discussion/help forum is integrated into their main site. To me, that's what the difference is, having done similar work in the past. They have a unified and singular control over the content on their front page. It's not a dozen groups obviously jockeying for control of who gets to be higher on the page or featured more prominently, or just a portal for taking you to subdomains of each department. I don't think you can build a website like this if you don't have that CMS behind it unifying everything together, and I don't you can have a CMS like that unless you insist on it very deliberately organizationally, as the tendency in every org is towards sprawling feudal estates ruled by vp's.

hliyan5• 10 months ago

Yes. That reminds me of another thing: no landing pages for each level of menu. If I go to Docs > Surveys, I can skip the overview and go directly to Features > Conditional questions. I dont' need to load an entire page with a giant banner of people smiling, and a call to action button that wants me to contact them before I have read through the functionality.

ironmagma3• 10 months ago

This is definitely a surprising opinion to find on HN. Usually the prevailing thought is that anything that is even remotely heavy on JavaScript is bad design and therefore inherently unusable, unportable, etc. Whereas this is essentially JavaScript maximalism.

hliyan5• 10 months ago

I write a lot of code myself and am usually against indiscriminate use of JS (so much so that I now recommend old fashioned server side templates over SPAs unless there is a good reason). But for this comment, I was donning my other hat: that of an executive with whom the decision to adopt (and pay for) a product usually rests. The bulk of a SaaS company's marketing budget goes to attracting and retaining the attention of such people, and ultimately getting them to pay. I feel this site does a good job of that without wasting my time.

Tor33• 10 months ago

Part of it is that so many sites are JS heavy in a way which brings basically nothing to the table.. it's just JS for JS' sake, and sometimes a static web site would work just as well for the user.

alternatex• 10 months ago

Perhaps the amount of JavaScript used in a website is not a contributing factor into how usable a person finds it /s.

Honestly, you don't judge a back-end by how much code it's built with or what platform it's hosted on. I don't get the obsession people have with JavaScript used on websites. Websites with terrible UX often abuse JavaScript yes, but correlation != causation.

diggan2• 10 months ago

I think it depends. I basically see the web as two parts, "web documents" (usually called "websites") and "web apps" (usually just called apps), and it makes sense that web apps that require lots of interactivity (think drag and drop) would use lots of JavaScript, I don't people have a problem with image editors or map viewers being made more simple by the use of JS for example.

The friction occurs when people building a website for web documents think they should be building a web app, so you end up with a scaffolding that requires heavy JS just to serve what essentially is just text + maybe one or two images. The additional JS doesn't really save the user any time or pain, it just makes everything larger and harder to consume.

f1shy• 10 months ago

You are jumping from a discussion about UI design to one about technology and implementation.

BrenBarn• 10 months ago

the speed and ease with which I can find what I want (as a potential customer) using that top navigation menu is superior to anything I've seen done so far.

The web catches up to the past again. :-) Despite all the modern attempts at simplified "delightful" interfaces, a well-structured menu bar is hard to beat.

skydhash• 10 months ago

Pet peeve of mine: Huge headers on webpages that is sticky for no reason (looking at you, ACM Digital Library)

stavros• 10 months ago

While I visually like the design, what's so innovative about a menu?

nonethewiser13• 10 months ago

That observation seems wild to me as well. He just described every nav menu.

maksimur• 10 months ago

I would be more cautious in generalizing this feeling. To me that interface feels daunting and cognitively taxing, compared to a CLI or command palette.

Nevermark2• 10 months ago

I am trying to re-imagine the site as a beautiful CLI.

If anybody could do it, I expects its Posthog.

james_impliu• 10 months ago

i can remember a discussion with Cory (who built this with Eli, the front end eng) on the topic of "why do all websites consist of a collection of long scroll-y pages / is that appropriate for our business?" and we concluded it wasn't optimal.

at the time, we were trying to figure out how to add more products in without it becoming messy, and we concluded we're trying to do a lot more than just what would work well for a 1 product company (we have very extensive content for example) - we feel quite multidimensional. thus a flatter design was proving hard to do. we wanted something that could enable us to offer a very wide variety of things (like 10+ products, handbook, job board, newsletter etc)

a lot of existing websites are trying to convey what they do in <3 seconds, and all of the internet is going for that. our company doesn't fit into 3 seconds, or if it does it's annoyingly vague "a whole bunch of devtools"...! so we thought hey we'll do something that means people _will_ explore and learn what we do better. it will mean _some_ people bounce and that's ok, because those that stick will (sometimes!) love it.

as a project, it looked fun and we knew it'd stand out a lot as a way to justify it. it's much nicer and more cost effective for us to ship something 10/10 cool than go down the outbound-y sales route. we run at a 3 month cac payback period if you're into startup stats. the proviso is that only works if you go _really_ deep, so that your work actually stands out.

chain0304• 10 months ago

This sounds like an expensive solution to a marketing problem re. the product. And if one digs even further, perhaps an issue with your product line - the benefits of it aren't immediately presentable in a simplified way to the extent it is differentiated relative to the competitors.

jve• 10 months ago

so we thought hey we'll do something that means people _will_ explore and learn what we do bette

Meh, currently doing just that. Trying to figure out what posthog is about, try to store some keywords in my brain if I ever need to return this product in future where it fits and just try to enjoy the site :) And I'm one of the folks that try to determine in seconds/minute whether this is worth digging in or not and whether I understand the offering.

Currently I enjoy the site alot. Not sure if that is the OS thing about it or just the way that information is presented and layout.

switchbak• 10 months ago

“as a project, it looked fun” - if that’s the rationale, I think it’s fine. The rest of it feels like a post-hoc rationalization though.

I’m not a super fan of this, and I kind of hated windows 3.x, so I might not be the target market. But I also hate many of the trends in modern website design, so maybe I’m just an old crank.

There could be a subset of this that is accessible, compatible, and doesn’t reinvent a browser in a browser. I might end up liking that better than the status quo - so I appreciate the experimental spirit!

akagusu• 10 months ago

the speed and ease with which I can find what I want (as a potential customer) using that top navigation menu is superior to anything I've seen done so far.

The menu bar is one of the most effective and proved UI pattern. Unfortunately, on Linux we have an entire desktop environment that ditched the menu bar for hamburger menus, which are one of the most ineffective UI pattern.

dogleash• 10 months ago

probably something for a psychologist / cognitive scientist / neurologist (?) to answer -- there is certainly something here that warrants better study than what we in the software industry do in rushed blog posts

Very little here that isn't explained by age-old HCI concepts on design.

And one of the conclusions may be that our current UI/UX philosophy has inadvertantly become user-hostile

Nope. You see the "X" stands for experience. And nothing ever betrays it's own name. You're just a computer nerd that nerds too hard to get it. You've probably even used a terminal without bellyaching for the next few days. What could you know about what normies want? *cough*

BoorishBears• 10 months ago

I don't think Don Norman would like this at all based on his rules for good web design. (someone should ask him fhough)

The top level comment is confusing marketing success with UI/UX success: it tickles their brain because they're the target audience. To everyone else this is weird and overwhelming if you're looking for something and suddenly run into it.

Might still be fun/whimsical if you're not looking for something and just stumble upon it, or get shown that

ezst• 10 months ago

As I said, there is something here beyond just aesthetics. And one of the conclusions may be that our current UI/UX philosophy has inadvertantly become user-hostile.

It's almost like, "marketing", itself, as a concept, is user hostile. Most sites' purpose isn't to be efficient, or informative. It's to give the impression that they are "making a statement" (we matter because XYZ), while looking dependable and professional enough to compel calling sales for more.

Commercial transparency goes against that goal (why would I call if I have all the price details I need?). Technical transparency goes against that goal (why would I call if I can tell precisely how this compares to market leaders and competitors?).

So, in many (mostly despicable) aspects, this site is terrible. Unfortunately.

nonethewiser13• 10 months ago

Is this satire?

yojo• 10 months ago

I think it’s the other end of the consumer web vs power user design spectrum.

Using an OS requires familiarity and cognitive effort. Tapping oversized buttons… less so.

There’s been a long trend (definitely as far back as the first iPhone release, maybe further) of every product release adding more white space, bigger elements, and overall reducing information density.

If your target is consumer web, the “don’t make me think” approach is probably still correct. But anyone who’s ever looked at a Bloomberg terminal knows there are still times when you designing for the lowest common denominator is the wrong play.

A company with a large suite of technical-ish products might be a place to experiment with alternative paradigms. That said, I poked at the site for a few minutes, then had to ask an LLM what PostHog actually does.

coliveira• 10 months ago

This only goes to show how badly designed are most websites. They're almost created like you don't have a computer, needing to resign yourself to paper-look-alike technologies with just a little bit of annoying effects that don't add anything to the experience.

__padding• 10 months ago

This is a pet peeve of mine - but with a phone with a small display (eg iPhone 12 mini) it feels like 1/3rd of the screen is taken up with ‘menu bars/banners’ between browser url bar/site nav bars/bottom banner i can’t dismiss about talking to an AI

This is even worse on pages like the about page where it feels like only 1/3rd of the screen is available for scrolling/reading text; it just feel totally hostile to browse.

“Please won’t someone think of the children” s/children/those of us with small hands and correspondingly small phone screens/

acka• 10 months ago

- I open the link in a mobile browser.

- A cookie banner fills 95% of the screen.

- No accept, deny, customize, or close button in sight, and no, I am not going to switch to desktop mode or adjust my text size to something submicroscopic just to dismiss a stupid cookie banner.

Sorry guys, but that means a hard pass from me. Let the downvotes rain, but it is what it is.

internet_points2• 10 months ago

ok the https://posthog.com/sparks-joy/dictator-or-tech-bro was pretty funny :-D

ochrist• 10 months ago

Why can't I use my keyboard (e.g. spacebar) to scroll on you website? Apparently I have to use a mouse all the time, and that's annoying. Most OS's have accessibility options (even a lot of websites do this).

nayuki2• 10 months ago

I agree with this complaint. The first thing I noticed about the page - other than the excessive and unnecessary UI - is that even when focused on the page interior text, hitting Up/Down/Space/Shift+Space/PgUp/PgDn does not scroll the interior page content at all. This is how I read most articles, and it is massively disrespectful for their website to disable the keyboard-based movement that I'm used to by default.

Garlef2• 10 months ago

Neat.

But the text on the sidebar moves by a few px when you hover the mouse over it.

Very annoying.

est• 10 months ago

yes I am getting tired of the "scroll documents" design. The navigation is clear and useful. I feel easy browsing all the functionalities of your website. Kudos!

One thing I feed inconvenient is how to close all windows and start from the desktop again. The dinosaur is cool!

goo• 10 months ago

Almost perfect. Inspirational.

It just needed to create a little box you can drag around when you click on nothing, like OS desktops have.

So here's the snippet to do that, toss this in the console and live the dream:

(() => { let startX, startY, box, dragging = false;

  const style = document.createElement('style');
  style.textContent = `
    .___selection-box {
      position: absolute;
      pointer-events: none;
      border: 1px dashed #2b76d6;
      background: rgba(43,118,214,0.12);
      z-index: 999999;
    }
  `;
  document.head.appendChild(style);

  function onDown(e) {
    if (e.button !== 0) return; // left click only
    startX = e.pageX;
    startY = e.pageY;
    dragging = true;

    box = document.createElement('div');
    box.className = '___selection-box';
    box.style.left = startX + 'px';
    box.style.top = startY + 'px';
    document.body.appendChild(box);

    e.preventDefault();
  }

  function onMove(e) {
    if (!dragging) return;
    const x = e.pageX, y = e.pageY;
    const left = Math.min(x, startX);
    const top = Math.min(y, startY);
    const width = Math.abs(x - startX);
    const height = Math.abs(y - startY);
    Object.assign(box.style, {
      left: left + 'px',
      top: top + 'px',
      width: width + 'px',
      height: height + 'px'
    });
  }

  function onUp(e) {
    if (!dragging) return;
    dragging = false;
    console.log('Selection rect:', box.getBoundingClientRect());
    box.remove();
    box = null;
  }

  window.addEventListener('mousedown', onDown);
  window.addEventListener('mousemove', onMove);
  window.addEventListener('mouseup', onUp);

  console.log(" Selection enabled. Drag with left mouse button. Check console for rect.");

})();

pimlottc• 10 months ago

I just wanted to say, this is a very nice example of clean vanilla JavaScript. Well done!

nonethewiser13• 10 months ago

Did you write this yourself?

vander_elst• 10 months ago

Nice idea, awesome implementation, but please no. I now need to learn a new UI and UX, I have to to organize windows inside my windows. I want websites to be more like a block of text rather than a super fancy interface.

jon-wood• 10 months ago

Very much this. I already have an operating system, and it's very good at managing windows, I spent quite a lot of time setting it up so that it would do so in exactly the manner I want it to.

Sammi• 10 months ago

It would be one impressively long block of text if you tried to put all of this page's content in it.

ivanjermakov• 10 months ago

Agreed. Closer the website to the single chunk of text, easier it is to customize for the user agent (think reader mode, dark mode, accessibility). This won't apply to every website, but this is what I expect from blogs - block of text.

nonethewiser13• 10 months ago

It adds a ton of overhead in general. Perhaps there is a subset of the website that could be a single page app or apps. But the entire website? yuck.

zoomastigophore• 10 months ago

Where is Doom?

ponyous• 10 months ago

I wonder if they already ran the A/B tests or are they still running it. If they did and this proves to be more successful than what they had before, then it changes a lot how I think about website design.

greatgib• 10 months ago

I had to look at their website to find doc recently and I found that highly stupid and frustrating. It didn't pushed me to want to use their service.

Sure, the os-like interface is really very impressive and sleek. That impressed me. But it was awful to use when you just wanted a simple doc page.

Ar the same time, their doc sucks...

So my immediate reaction was to think that they probably spent a lot of time on developing this website instead of improving their product and it's documentation...

hexo• 10 months ago

do not do this. ever. it is NOT cool or nice in any way AND i cant scroll using keyboard arrows. meh

nektro• 10 months ago

i hope this is a gimmick and not something that'll stay long term

lordgrenville• 10 months ago

More correctly, "our website looks like a desktop environment".

xpe4• 10 months ago

Spot on.

There are cases of companies providing something very close to a full OS for the focused use cases such as the Bloomberg Terminal.

But imagine if such a thing existed purely for marketing and informational purposes. "Curious about Hooli GAN Labs? Just download our Docker image to run our bespoke informational kiosk software..."

jfengel• 10 months ago

I spent a few minutes trying to figure out what looked like an operating system. The desktop isn't the OS. Windows and Mac only allow one desktop on their OS, but Linux makes the separation clear.

criddell• 10 months ago

If I open my text editor and type:

    C:\>

I can make my editor look like an operating system.

jabwd• 10 months ago

While cute, that cookie banner isn't actually required if you aren't doing any tracking. This is the common misconception a lot of people have with the cookie banners -- its not required, it is a confession from a website.

iiyama3• 10 months ago

Surely they have consulted a layer before putting words "legally required" on their from page, right?

nikobama• 10 months ago

This reminds me of how the web was decade(s?) ago. Reminds me of Jeffrey Zeldman's work. Love it

zapzupnz• 10 months ago

That’s the idea behind the new PostHog.com. You can multitask, open a few articles simultaneously, and move them around as you please.

No, I can't, because the way I please is to use Swish (https://highlyopinionated.co/swish/) to move windows around with trackpad gestures. Can't do that on your website.

lionkor• 10 months ago

Looks like a timeout for me, at the moment.

metalman• 10 months ago

So smooth, stable, easy on the head, instantly relaxing, but contains just enough pointy puns and dorky humor to function as hater repelent

junon• 10 months ago

I didn't like working with posthog when I had to because the level of analytics they do goes against my personal ethics viewpoint but I do have to say they do very good technical work. The landing page is a good reflection of the skill they have even in the product itself. Very neat landing page, and I chuckled at their "cookie banner".

vasuadari• 10 months ago

Their https://posthog.com/404 is blue screen of death :)

palmfacehn• 10 months ago

After closing the window, which is an approximation of a page, the back button does not return me to the previous page in Firefox. I can see that the address bar is changed but the content doesn't change back to that page. After clicking through to another view I can use the back button to achieve this basic functionality.

This is a cute way to build a lander. It may result in more sales because it invites the user to interact and experiment with the novel layout.

xkbarkar• 10 months ago

First ( and maybe only time ) I approve of usage of cookie bannner.

Chuckles…

tonyhart7• 10 months ago

must be new because few months back, it looks like every SaaS tool in existance

mgaunard• 10 months ago

You can just use your native windowing system to achieve what you want, instead of implementing a poor version of one with clear accessibility issues within a browser window.

dewey2• 10 months ago

I'm not sure I would be brave enough to do experiments like that with my landing page. I wonder how it converts.

While it's a fun experiment for a personal website seems a bit impractical for a marketing page for a tool that is not always bought by engineers.

xpe4• 10 months ago

Well, it does look a lot like Windows, macOS, and many Linux desktop environments. Yes, it might feel unfamiliar to people who have only used tablets or phones.

dewey2• 10 months ago

I understand that, but it behaves very differently to what's usually expected of such a website where you can maybe search by Cmd + F, or more importantly have it correctly indexed by search engines. The latter is probably not that straight forward with such a page structure.

urbandw311er• 10 months ago

On the Posthog dashboard, you can activate a chatbot 'hog' which walks around the screen, but you can control it with WASD, and even jump up onto 'ledges' that correspond with the divs of the page you're on. There's a hidden "party mode" where you can see/chat to your other team members' hogs!

sceptic123• 10 months ago

The solution to long scrollable web pages is a website that pretends to be an OS that has lots of long scrollable web pages inside a non-scrollable webpage.

phgn• 10 months ago

Very cool. I guess the website worked, I just bought a nice mug from their store :D

gibsonsmog• 10 months ago

I love this. Internet UIs have completely degraded over the last decade and seeing an actual company decide to try something different is beautiful. I barely see devs or designers try anything new. This team even added a screen saver if you leave the tab open and inactive for a bit! Wonderful.

ViorelMocanu• 10 months ago

Please fix JS dependence (load more on server side, especially at first load, since your site doesn't render anything with JS disabled), accessibility, INP, security headers and structured data, and you'll then have a perfect, optimized marketing site for tech nerds. :) Love your brand, keep up the great work!

mixedbit• 10 months ago

The UX problem with emulating windows within web pages is that if you do it convincingly enough (like this website does), the users will unconsciously use windows shortcuts, like alt+F4 to close the window, which closes the whole browser.

repeekad• 10 months ago

If you tap an item in the merch store on mobile there’s no indication it’s loading, and then over a second later finally loads, but at least it looks good? Ugh

sujesh• 10 months ago

This looks good. Hope to see in the future, like bookmarking, etc, in the dashboard

tempodox• 10 months ago

I minimized ( _ ) the window on that page, and now I can’t find it any more. I expected some obvious place where you can un-minimize a window.

fusslo• 10 months ago

just tried it myself, The minimize animation went to the upper right, and I found the window again in the little icon that looks like a calendar. The same icon dances when you minimize a window, if you are looking at it. It also shows a count of the number of open windows.

I never woulda looked at that icon without observing the animation

47282847• 10 months ago

What’s it with the definitely not legally required “legally-required Cookie Banner“.

Spacemolte• 10 months ago

Trying to look at the changelog and the roadmap, and what a spectacularly shitty way this was made.

A progress bar that never seems to finish loading, and restarts whenever you go back to the page, and then suddenly after navigating around and going back to the same page, I get a slow loading html table without any progress indication.

What a great way to really piss off users.

hu3• 10 months ago

The site is surprisingly useable on mobile.

And the theme/colours are pleasant for my eyes despite not being a dark theme.

So much so that I'll consider stealing some ideas for my next project.

Congratulations to all involved.

bigfishrunning• 10 months ago

Seems kind of redundant -- I don't need a window manager in a website. If i want to open several articles at once, can't i just open several browser windows in the window manager I'm already running?

hdb2• 10 months ago

I would give anything to have a linux window manager that looks and behaves just like this. I said this to my coworkers in slack and they said that my age is showing, which is probably true. everything on this website is so easy to find, it just feels good. icons and color scheme is perfect as well.

kevin_thibedeau• 10 months ago

LXDE and Xfce are essentially this.

dzonga• 10 months ago

nothing is loading but oh well. they do have one of the best open source django apps out there though

mrb• 10 months ago

I think this is a terrible idea from a usability standpoint. Why reinvent windows in CSS? Desktop browsers can already open multiple pages in multiple windows. And it's all neatly integrated in my OS where I can use keyboard shortcuts to maximize, minimize, close, move windows, or place the windows on multiple monitors, etc.

It's as much a bad idea as websites trying to reinvent scrollbars. No thanks. I prefer to use my native windows and scrollbars.

scosman2• 10 months ago

Usability and perf experience for me:

- I'm getting about 5 FPS scrolling on a M4 Pro

- Moving a "window" around takes 29% of my CPU, and renders at about 2 fps

- I'm losing about 40% of my screen height for reading (14" laptop screen). So much so none of the article is visible above the fold, just the title and by-line.

- My browser's CMD-F finds things on layers hidden under the current window

- Changing window size via corner drag is also selecting text on other windows, no prevent default.

- Xzibit says: Tabs are bad, so we put some tabs in your tabs?

nonethewiser13• 10 months ago

The blog post mentions some things use a spreadsheet. So I clicked the link.

It opened a change log. It took about 5 seconds to get to 94%. Then about 20 seconds to load.

There are about 40 items.

sgustard• 10 months ago

No FPS or CPU issues on my M3, it's all very smooth.

Same slow spreadsheet load as sibling, but that seems like a backend issue.

nonethewiser13• 10 months ago

EDIT: nevermind, this is not correct.

It appears as though all spreadsheets are grouped together in the same window under tabs. Perhaps its fetching the data for all of them. I noticed they all took a long time to load and then after one loaded, the others had loaded.

I imagine that could be sorted out to load per tab. Im more concerned about the idea of grouping all spreadsheets together. As opposed to a normal website which could embed a datatable in whatever page layout you want.

In general it bothers me to encapsulate what are essentially just page layouts as apps.

scosman2• 10 months ago

Interesting. I’m in safari.

arghwhat4• 10 months ago

Oh god. It has a pleasant color scheme, but this is an awful idea. By trying to recreate windows and bookmarks in the web app you're at best just implementing redundant features and getting in the way of the native browser features by trying to showcase yours, at worst breaking regular web usage entirely.

Take their right click menu for items to select whether you want an in-app tab or real browser tab. Congrats, you've broken UX by making the native browser right-click menu unavailable on link items, and because you've only implemented this on some things most of your content is not deep linkable as navigation is a cursed in-app feature.

This is as usual a fun tech demo, but it should not be used for anything in the real world.

nonethewiser13• 10 months ago

Without a doubt. Interesting idea and nice looking UI. But like you said it's creating a browser within a browser, without all the native browser support.

I found the navigation to be scattered and disorienting. In general clicking links opens new windows. In one case it navigated away from the current "page" and what I believe to be the back button (looks more like undo) didn't do anything. Why am I guessing what constitutes a page and how or if I can go back? Everyone has known how these things work in browsers for decades.

Gormo2• 10 months ago

I found the navigation to be scattered and disorienting.

I find to be significantly less scattered and disorienting than the vast majority of "modern" websites.

the__alchemist• 10 months ago

It is fun and I like it

ryukoposting• 10 months ago

I find it incredibly funny that this company has re-invented the horrid "nested window" UX of Windows 3.1, 30-something years after the fact.

discreteevent• 10 months ago

horrid ... 30-something years after the fact.

The article is specifically saying that they know that it looks like an OS - they think that this is an improvement and it lists the reasons why. You are just calling it old and horrid without addressing any of the points made.

codegeek• 10 months ago

I really admire Posthog as a company and how they run things there. Big fan. But let's be honest. This website redesign, even though cool and unique, wouldn't work if they were an unknown brand. I think they have done a great job building a solid brand over the years and now have the freedom to update their website however they want.

If you are a no name startup, doing something like this will be a bad idea. My 2 cents.

nonethewiser13• 10 months ago

I dont think it works for Posthog either

LPisGood• 10 months ago

I also have to imagine it completely shreds to pieces any accessibility reader.

ninetyninenine3• 10 months ago

Why don’t you read why they did that. Instead you responded with your own reasoning without countering or responding to there reasoning. I actually agree with you but the article has actual points that you didn’t bother to read or reference.

Like this:

Frankly for a site like this efficient use of space and multi tasking isn’t as important for a front page. A front page needs to be optimized to be in your face to understand what posthog is in as little time as possible then give you optional pathways to dig in for more detail. A website that’s like an OS is too busy, it’s optimized for productivity and I still have no idea what posthog does exactly.

nonethewiser13• 10 months ago

Multi-tasking? With About pages, Blog posts, pricing, etc.

I have no doubt there is a subset of features here that could be implemented as a single page app.

arghwhat4• 10 months ago

I read it in full before posting. Writing about something doesn't make it a better idea afterwards.

pverheggen• 10 months ago

The best of both worlds would be a different subdomain that serves up the same content but as a conventional site, like how old.reddit.com does it. Then you get to keep the neat gimmick, but have a fallback for users that can’t stand it.

vasusen• 10 months ago

I used to be in-charge of homepage getting over 1.5M views a day. I would really be curious how this converts. I am assuming Posthog has a lot of metrics.

If I were to bet, while this is fun, it will be a disaster for conversions once the launch hype goes away.

CyberDildonics• 10 months ago

People have been doing this for years but it's always an experiment or a demonstration that it's possible. It's slow, it's bloated and it is the opposite of what people actually want, which is quick information.

kulahan• 10 months ago

It's doubly crazy because who's ever heard of software devs not following standards? They're called engineers for a reason! ;)

soiltype• 10 months ago

As I'm reading about their scrolling philosophy, my hand gets tired and I switch to keyboard scrolling.

Oop, there is none.

I will never laud an application that breaks the most basic of keyboard functions. You can design a clever and flashy application with pointer-only UI, but you can't design a good one.

mariocesar• 10 months ago

I open a few pages and then press Command+W, that close the tab :/ muscle memory.

However, I really enjoy it!

talkingtab• 10 months ago

Except look at it from a phone. (Developer tools if you don't have a phone).

3cats-in-a-coat• 10 months ago

TLDR: It looks like an operating system so it can get viral, like get an article on HN and so on.

kamranjon• 10 months ago

Gotta love the employees feet pics folder found in the trash bin: https://posthog.com/feet-pics

metalliqaz• 10 months ago

I think that might be my favorite website. I love it, so much content.

coolThingsFirst• 10 months ago

Absolute failure of UI/UX.

This is another hint that if your startup does something well the frontend barely matters.

nonethewiser13• 10 months ago

I vaguely recall the posthog website in the past. I remember thinking it looked really cool. Disappointed by this change.

EDIT: Oh, I see. They just released it. It was the older version 2 days ago (September 10) https://web.archive.org/web/20250910142406/https://posthog.c...

bovinecomputer• 10 months ago

software apps inc did this concept a while ago with a real vintage mac emulator and i think it was executed really well! probably makes more sense for a company like software apps inc to do it vs posthog imo https://software.inc/

dcchambers• 10 months ago

I love it for a marketing website.

It would be a hard no from me if the actual product/application was like this though.

joewhale• 10 months ago

this is "cool" but this doesn't appeal to the enterprise customer. but it seems like they aren't targeting them and building a "good enough" suite until you have to graduate.

jedberg• 10 months ago

As a side note, I like how at the bottom it says "legally required cookie banner" which ironically is not required by law. You don't have to have a cookie warning if you only use 1st party cookies for website operations (which is what this looks like).

asa400• 10 months ago

I played around with this for a while and couldn't actually derive any useful information from it.

As someone who doesn't know posthog, this was basically impossible to navigate. The UI and theme is cool, the widgets are fun and well styled, but I couldn't actually figure out what I was supposed to be doing, what I was supposed to be reading, what meaning I was supposed to take away about a company (I'm guessing) that makes products (again - guessing).

browningstreet• 10 months ago

Once I hit the fake, non-functional scrollbars I tapped out. I'm not gonna decode what's fake and what's real in a webpage UI.

seemaze• 10 months ago

This is almost as bad as hijacking the back button. It ruins the mental model of branching provided for by actual browser tabs.

mannyv• 10 months ago

Someone is trying to redesign the web experience for humans instead of googlebot? Huzzah!

notnmeyer• 10 months ago

i miss the old web where websites were fun, so this is kind of neat. on the other hand i’m not a huge fan of sites so loaded with js that performance is abysmal.

poolnoodle• 10 months ago

Better window management than macOS

methyl• 10 months ago

IMO this is nothing more or less than a successful marketing stunt, I suspect once it gets the reach it can get, they will replace it with something less radical.

Very cool growth hack idea and I admire the fact that they were able to pull it off, as crazy as it is.

faefox• 10 months ago

The overall look and feel is very BeOS and that's just about the highest compliment a piece of software can receive. :)

remix2000• 10 months ago

What is this company actually selling anyway?

Their about me page reads:

    We're here to help product engineers build successful products Literally every piece of SaaS that a product engineer needs.  This includes tools for building products, talking to customers, and making sense of all your customer data.  PostHog is a single platform for people who build things.

This is literally just a verbose way to say "we're a company that does stuff"…

Wouldn't it be better if the about me page actually had some concrete information inside it…?

MetaWhirledPeas• 10 months ago

What is this company actually selling anyway?

Even with normal web designs this is frequently my question as well. It's always a bunch of business speak about solutions and enabling. So I think that question has less to do with the website design and more to do with their choice of messaging. "We’re building every tool for product engineers to build successful products." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

rglover• 10 months ago

They sell error tracking, log observation, etc. Basic devops tools. Think similar to Sentry or LogRocket.

cyral• 10 months ago

The homepage has a list of what they are selling right under the header text

fny• 10 months ago

Very fun! Some constructive feedback: the mobile experience is painful. Lots of real estate gets eaten up, and a lot of content ends up being hidden.

Also you broke the back button.

Finally, it's not intuitive where to click to get started.

SamDc73• 10 months ago

It's funny that it shows the word "PostHog" as a "Possible spelling mistake found." in my browser ...

srmatto• 10 months ago

There's gotta be a way to let people read multiple things at once on a webpage without resorting to this.

procaryote• 10 months ago

This is why we invented application windows

rat_on_the_run• 10 months ago

This website looks terrible on mobile. It shows a horizontal scroll bar any time I do a vertical scroll and there's no space for horizontal scroll in the first place. It has very large floating header and footer such that the actual content occupies little space. The footer is "ask AI" and I expected to be able to close it. When I select some text, the floating menu appears above the header and not at the place I long pressed.

While writing this comment, the website went to a screen saver state, displaying meaningless animations. I also want less white space but this website is not doing that. I honestly don't want to visit that website for a second time.

robinhood• 10 months ago

The former website's version was genius. This new version is genius too, but for totally different reasons. It's so creative, funny, beautiful and technically advanced. It's also extremely hard to understand globally. I find it awesome to push things forward, but considering how different the UX is from a standard website, and how confused I've felt during the navigation, I wouldn't copy this version as much as I copied the other previous versions.

dirtikiti• 10 months ago

"These website encourage scrolling, but just to get people to the bottom of the page? And then what?"

so you're putting the content in a fancy container to scroll through... just to get to the bottom of that container. And then what?

i dont want an os inside a web browser inside an os.

i want to browse web [i]pages[/i].

1dom• 10 months ago

This made me smile to myself a fair few times - this is really great. PostHog sounds like a sincerely well intentioned and fun place.

After spending a while on there, it did start to get a little sluggish with lots of windows open. A really fun desktop experience overall though.

nayuki2• 10 months ago

I’ll want to refer to different pages at the same time. So I’ll CMD + click “a couple times” while browsing around and before I know it, I have 12 new tabs open
You can multitask, open a few articles simultaneously, and move them around as you please.
It has window snapping, keyboard shortcuts, and a bookmark app. It works as well as you’d expect an operating system to work in a browser.
You can be reading the latest newsletter from Product for Engineers while watching a demo video in the corner and also playing Hedgehog Mode, the game.

Please stop that; you're creating the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect a second time. The fact that a web browser is an inner platform with respect to the bare-metal operating system is bad enough already.

I have 12 new tabs open – all indistinguishable from each other because they share the same favicon.

Nothing precludes you from declaring a different favicon per page or per author. That's a site design problem, not a browser software problem.

It has [...] keyboard shortcuts

Yet, I can't even scroll your page using my usual keys of Up/Down/Space/Shift+Space/PgUp/PgDn. That is rather disrespectful to my preferences, before you throw in all that unnecessary inner window chrome.

SilverElfin• 10 months ago

Can’t I just open tabs and move them around myself?

stalfosknight• 10 months ago

Why can't the color mode default to the system instead of defaulting to eye fryingly bright white?

Nevermark2• 10 months ago

I love it! Looks nice, response as smooth as butter.

Not to for serious use. But it is clever, interesting and fun to play with.

But where is the web browser? To be complete, it needs a web browser. :)

kldg• 10 months ago

This is a very neat design; it's quite complicated, but I don't see anything particularly unnecessary. I use DPI scaling, so I was impressed because it's something I tend to have a hassle with in testing frontends which need to be aware of dimensions of objects and calculate where the user's cursor is. The "close all" button in window manager is pretty good.

This will be good to study from, if nothing else for me personally. I appreciate that it's almost wholly unobfuscated.

tracker1• 10 months ago

I keep debating doing something similar for a web-based BBS, in the classic BBS sense in terms of messages, files, doors/games, etc. I remember some of the thick clients like WorldGroup/Wildcat offered in later versions, and I'm mixed.

I wouldn't use it for a general website, but something more akin to an app space, I can see it kind of working.

straydusk• 10 months ago

I'll tell you what, I was interested in this place, but this would stop me in my tracks. For an A/B testing shop to do this (which I can promise you they did not A/B test), it pretty much invalidates everything they supposedly stand for. This is one of the goofiest, most non-functional things I've ever experienced on the internet. This would be a fun hackathon project... should have stayed there.

codethief4• 10 months ago

I haven't tested it much but the site seems surprisingly snappy & usable even on mobile – except for… the browser back button?! In Chromium & Firefox (both on Android) it keeps bringing me back to the top of the previous page and does not restore my scroll position. That seems like a rather large oversight?

EDIT: Ok, I take back the "usable" part. This is insanity. I have found links that don't do anything. Some links open in overlay popups (some of which get cut off on mobile), others in new "windows". The X button behaves erratically (or at least not as I would expect), clicking on the page title in the headers sometimes opens menu, sometimes it doesn't. There's a WYSIWYG editor bar at the top of https://posthog.com/changelog/2025 even though I'm not editing anything(?!) and the "undo" button(?) looks like a browser refresh button(?!), though I'll have to admit I initially thought this might be a back button, since there's also that forward button.

Who thought this was a good idea?

Popeyes• 10 months ago

A terrible idea competently executed.

lpln3452• 10 months ago

My goal on a webpage for specific product information is simply to extract data and leave. I have zero interest in learning a new immersive UX for a task that should take seconds.

The modern web's obsession with maximizing engagement and time on page is fundamentally user hostile. It creates a frustrating experience for anyone viewing the web as a utility rather than just a source of entertainment.

chatmasta• 10 months ago

I think this is cool - I won’t comment on the utility of it.

But you gotta work on the performance. My iPhone 15 Pro is practically burning my hand and I don’t even have the tab open anymore. I’ve lost 5% of battery just reading two pages on the site and iOS dimmed my screen in an attempt to cool down the device.

dkersten• 10 months ago

I hate the new website. I know the product well enough so know what content is on their site and yet I struggle to navigate the new design. It also really doesn’t make me want to.

It also makes me scared for the product itself, it doesn’t feel made by people who understand or care about UX.

Awesomedonut• 10 months ago

I love the visuals! It's super creative and fun, more than most sites I've come across on the web!

Why our website looks like an operating system

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