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Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

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Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#31

Post by egeozcan »

Sjenk wrote: post #18
rimliu wrote: post #7

I am starting to get a vibe that there is a new breed of programmers who think that knowing just one language is good enough and learning anything else is "stifling innovation". I don't even want to start on "PWAs work more seamlessly than native". I just cannot take person making such claims seriously.

This kind of scares me to. The vibe that I have is that (web)developers want to make JS into a silver bullet to solve every problem (backend nodeJS, apps react native cordova etc). But I also wonder why they don't want to learn a new language. Some languages really make you look at a problem from a different perspective and to be honest also work better then JS.

The vibe you have is wrong.

It's not about learning a new language. Most web developers are comfortable in many languages. Plase stop attacking a straw-man. Not many web developers say stuff like "omg these new things are web scale" or "oh javascript is everything I need, I hate everything else". Yeah the author didn't want to learn a new language. Which is not an insane decision at the very beginning of a project.

The biggest deal, though, is code reuse. If I'm not given enough budget, I'm not developing a native app for your precious walled-garden, sorry. I can also rightfully complain that what you have is a walled-garden, and also that the owner of the garden inhibiting a cross-platform alternative.

This has nothing to do with ignorance. Give me a cross-platform API, I'm happy.

At the end, as long as there is docs & support, most really don't care if it's Haskell or PHP.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#32

Post by ino »

All browsers still suck at basic functionality.

Here's a quick short list of things that developers still have to write because the current implementations are broken, buggy, inconsistent or absent:

- Date pickers.

- Image upload [1].

- Autocomplete and datalist.

- Range pickers.

- Upload time remaining without javascript.

- Number min/max/step, use up/down keys to increment/decrement.

- Form elements that are unable be styled by CSS.

- Color picker (arguably not as important as the others, and some OS color pickers suck anyway).

[1] Basic things like resize image on the browser prior to uploading. Size, aspect ratio, crop could be hinted by the html or chosen by the user. Server check is still needed, but upload size and times would be reduced drastically.

Shouldn't those be more important?

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#33

Post by mantas »

FussyZeus wrote: post #21
pluma wrote: post #4

I think push notifications and offline support are the real killer features that Apple currently doesn't support. It's kind of funny as a web developer because for the longest time Apple seemed to be the one pushing the mobile web forward but now that web apps are reaching for feature parity with native, Apple's initial momentum seems to be ancient history. It seems Apple still thinks of the mobile web as a content d…

I've never met a single end user who wants desktop notifications for web "apps," including myself. In fact I wish I could turn it off globally and more easily. I'm sure there are a number of legitimate uses but as of now, every craptastic "news" website I visit now wants to pester the hell out of me with notifications when they post new clickbait.

Ironically, they frequently don't give RSS feed. Which I'd be happy to subscribe to.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#34

Post by nothis »

IMO convoluted JavaScript hacks aren't the solution to "cross platform development" I'd want to settle on. Do I really want my weather app to be running on top of the browser app? And as far as cross-platform compatibility goes, we're now at a point where websites tell you to please load them with Chrome for the "full experience", that just reminds me of when websites used to tell you to please use Internet Explorer. So much for "Apple mobile Safari is the new Internet Explorer", lol. Push notifications for browsers are a weird concept, anyway.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#35

Post by illuminati1911 »

"all sorts of great features that you’d normally associate with native apps, like push notifications, offline support, and app loading screens — but on the web! Awesome."

I didn't know app loading screens were "a great feature".

Anyway I really don't see the point of PWAs or much future for them anyway. Even if Apple started supporting these with Safari, the web apps still could not interact with different hardware components/sensors, iOS SDK's etc.

React Native already brought a platform which allows making apps with native components and good performance with JS + decent access to hardware and iOS and still it's barely used outside of hobby projects.

I'm sorry, but native apps aren't going anywhere.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#36

Post by snowwrestler »

velcro wrote: post #23

Officially Apple's reasoning for barring Flash was that web should be pushed forward. Now, almost 8 years later when web is "almost there" - its still hindering real web-app experiences in the iOS browser. Its pretty clear what this was always about. -- (Please lets not do the fanboy "Flash is garbage" here - even if you do feel that it was heating up your CPU with ads - it would have taken a lot less than 8 years to…

Adobe and Android had every financial incentive to make Flash work well on a phone, and failed.

To say that Flash on mobile was great but Apple killed it anyway, gives Apple way too much credit. Flash on mobile killed itself.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#37

Post by Rjevski »

PWAs and any of those Javascript-powered "apps" are shit. I am glad Apple is against them. Even the best JS apps with perfect UX (those are rare, but they exist) still feel relatively slow compared to a native counterpart.

I don't want to pay with UX if some "developers" can't be bothered to learn new languages and insist on doing JS everywhere.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#38

Post by jimktrains2 »

FussyZeus wrote: post #21
pluma wrote: post #4

I think push notifications and offline support are the real killer features that Apple currently doesn't support. It's kind of funny as a web developer because for the longest time Apple seemed to be the one pushing the mobile web forward but now that web apps are reaching for feature parity with native, Apple's initial momentum seems to be ancient history. It seems Apple still thinks of the mobile web as a content d…

I've never met a single end user who wants desktop notifications for web "apps," including myself. In fact I wish I could turn it off globally and more easily. I'm sure there are a number of legitimate uses but as of now, every craptastic "news" website I visit now wants to pester the hell out of me with notifications when they post new clickbait.

Im comfortable with the current system where websites request permission for notifications, but they are as useful as phone notifications. Message in a webchat, new email, new private notification on Twitter, &c.

It should always be opt in, but it is a useful thing for many use cases.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#39

Post by pluma »

IBM wrote: post #10
pluma wrote: post #4

I think push notifications and offline support are the real killer features that Apple currently doesn't support. It's kind of funny as a web developer because for the longest time Apple seemed to be the one pushing the mobile web forward but now that web apps are reaching for feature parity with native, Apple's initial momentum seems to be ancient history. It seems Apple still thinks of the mobile web as a content d…

Is there a reason for users to care about this at all? Because it seems to me that this just solves problems for developers while making the user experience worse or not as good as it could be. The same goes for Electron-based apps.

Push notifications? Every single messenger or anything that lets you set reminders. Note that features like push notifications are implemented with a discrete opt-in on every other platform already. Don't want notifications? Just say "Deny" when you're prompted.

Offline support? Only if you happen to live in the 99.99% of the world that doesn't have 24/7 perfect WiFi/4G coverage with unlimited data. If you've ever kept a page open in the background and wished the data would still be there when you come back, offline support could have helped with that.

The choice is not between a native and a web app. The choice is between a web app or no app. There are certainly apps that could cease developing platform specific native apps when PWAs are supported on iOS but the vast majority of apps that benefit from PWAs being supported universally are apps that simply would never be available as native apps (let alone native apps on more than one platform).

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#40

Post by pluma »

jvzr wrote: post #17
IBM wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a reason for users to care about this at all? Because it seems to me that this just solves problems for developers while making the user experience worse or not as good as it could be. The same goes for Electron-based apps.

Exactly. I don't want websites to send notifications. And I dislike websites with Offline support: I always have to refresh twice to make sure the content I'm seeing came from a fresh source and not from cache.

Then just deny push notifications when the website prompts for them (exactly once). And simply refresh manually to make sure the offline-available website is fresh.

It's not like you're being force-fed notifications against your will. And it's not like offline content hurts you. Any inconvenience offline support causes to you pales in comparison to how much people benefit who actually need to be able to access content on spotty connections.

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