Why our website looks like an operating system
100 comments
·September 11, 2025Retr0id
> 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.
ttiurani
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.
xp84
> 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.comdigitalPhonix
> It has done literally nothing to improve anything whatsoever, in any country
That’s because of malicious compliance from all the websites/advertisers. I guess that is partly the lawmakers’ fault for not pre-empting that; but much larger blame lies on the industry that refuses to grant user privacy.
As an example for a site that followed the intent of the law instead: https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/updates-to-ou...
Github removed excess tracking so they didn’t need to show a cookie banner and that’s what GDPR’s intent was.
fmbb
If you like things the way they were before the law, just answer yes to all cookie banners you see.
It does not take time if you don’t care to read it. Yours click yes, and they will remember you want to be tracked.
ttiurani
How would that prevent sites from selling their users' data to third parties without consent server-side? GDPR is not about third party cookies, but about requiring informed consent.
viccis
>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.
almosthere
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
Seems like it should be a browser setting that controls a request header.
benjiweber
Something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track ? Which failed in part because Microsoft turned it on by default which even further disincentivised publishers from respecting it.
rmunn
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.
weird-eye-issue
> 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
rmunn
What I mean is that if they don't add it, they're going to get threatening emails from regulators saying "Hey, you don't have a cookie banner". Those regulators don't have any way of knowing how their site operates, so the small banner at least manages to inform them and keep Posthog from receiving emails.
That is what I meant by "practically". I mean "in a practical sense" as opposed to in a theoretical sense.
JoshTriplett
It is not in any way required, and adding it just contributes to annoyance.
temptemptemp111
[dead]
Twey
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_cheese
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.
Twey
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.
cosmic_cheese
Custom groupings is a nice feature too, but that feature can live happily alongside app groups. In fact I think the two would compliment each other nicely.
BobbyTables2
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
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.
dotnet00
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.
Barrin92
>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.
boredtofears
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)
MobiusHorizons
I would typically not bother with tmux unless ssh is involved.
em-bee
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.
jolmg
> i have two dozen tmux windows in half a dozen sessions locally.
> i have yet to find a window manager that lets me group so many terminals into sessions all on the same workspace.
Locally-speaking, I don't really see the point of mixing tmux sessions and tmux windows. I wonder if you mean "sessions" -> tmux windows and "windows" -> tmux panes.
What about i3/sway? You can have a tabbed container (functions like tmux windows) with split containers inside (functions like tmux panes). You can even float the tabbed container with all windows organized inside.
boredtofears
I just logically group tabs into the same terminal window. All OS's have hotkeys for switching between tabs and windows.
null
kurisufag
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.)
jauntywundrkind
I've fallen out of using it, but for a while I was using dtach to do similar without the virtual terminal multiplexing. Much much more direct.
I'd just run a vim session. If I needed terminals, they were in my vim! Even wrote a short shell-script to automate creating or re-attaching to a project specific vim session. https://github.com/jauntywunderkind/dtachment
Haven't looked into it, but I'm love a deeper nvim + atuin (shell history) integration.
o11c
The continuity benefit is much less than it used to be, now that we have systemd with `enable-linger` so we can make proper daemons.
RadiozRadioz
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.
EatFlamingDeath
This is why we can't have nice things...
WD-42
Can we just appreciate cool things please.
keyle
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...
spartanatreyu
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)
righthand
SEO was about documents. Now days everyone wants to make games. How do you rank games?
keyle
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!
unglaublich
If your website is about finding things, then spending more time is a bad sign.
andrenotgiant
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.
binary132
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.
jonahx
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.
AfterHIA
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.
albertmz
Serious question. Could one not write a whole desktop environment in a lisp (clojurescript) and serve it as a website?
aanet
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.
webprofusion
It looks awesome but I clicked several bits and pieces and still have no idea what they do or what their product is.
aabhay
But at least you clicked
DustinBrett
As someone with a personal website which looks like an operating system, I support this trend!
This interface is very well done, great job!
nine_k
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.
xp84
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
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.
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.