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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

#111

Post by jvzr »

egeozcan wrote: post #94
jvzr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is your complaint specific to websites with offline support? I always get stale data when I open Twitter app. I have to go to the top and refresh to get new tweets (and then they serve you with even more stale tweets but that's another problem).

It's very specific and I realize I'm being privileged. I don't think my argument holds much ground.

My thing is: I visit a particular website to get the latest news on a topic but it's done with some kind of poorly coded implementation of offline cache. Despite my privileged, first-world, 4G-everywhere connection, it insists on loading stale data even though it looks exactly like a regular website. And this clashes with my vision of internet, which is, as others said, regular pages with hyperlinks, and a Refresh refreshes the page to get the newest version, even if it's stale. If things haven't changed, then they haven't and I instantly know nothing's new.

As I've said, pretty minor and I realize that Offline mode has much more pros than cons.

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

#112

Post by borland »

Dude2018 wrote: post #97
bluejekyll wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DOM and CSS are good underlying principles. It would be nice if there was an alternative to HTML, like something encoded in JSON. As to JavaScript, with WebAssembly coming, there may be options in the future.

Flow-oriented markup is meant for documents not GUI.

Very much agree with this.

Having developed many websites and many apps, HTML and CSS are really quite terrible when compared to something like iOS' auto-layout system, or even something like a DockPanel in Xaml (WPF on windows)

However, you wouldn't want to layout a document in Xaml or auto-layout either. Different strengths for different original purposes.

Personally I feel like a non-trivial part of why "web apps" (i.e websites pretending to be apps) generally suck comes down to this impedance mismatch

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

#113

Post by IBM »

bluejekyll wrote: post #100
IBM wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these things are already available in native apps. Putting aside all the business reasons for why Apple wouldn't want to do this, why should Apple spend any time to enable this for web apps? You say the choice is between a web app and no app, and I'm sure on the margin this impacts companies that can't afford to create a native app, but why should Apple cater to the lowest common denominator? Steve Jobs' post…

This is a great post about why you should target iOS and macOS features specifically. But it misses the point, > we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. Yes, that's what (you and) Apple want. But what developers really want is a simple cross platform framework…

Cool so then it just comes down to leverage. Developers who wants this have almost none and Apple has all of it. As a user who mostly doesn't care about the trials and tribulations that developers go through, my interests are aligned with Apple's.

As long as Apple continues to sell more product that dynamic isn't going to change.

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

#114

Post by celeritascelery »

interpol_p wrote: post #91
christiangenco wrote: post #65

I think a lot of commenters here are missing the point and getting distracted by push notifications (who wants a website spamming them with notifications?) and loading screens (hardly a feature). Apple supporting PWA (Progressive Web Apps) is hugely important because it enables a future where web apps can natively support browser, Mac/Windows/Linux desktop, and mobile iPhone/Android/Windows native mobile with a singl…

But as an iOS user I expect you to use the technology stack provided by my preferred operating system. I don't want to use your app if you're targeting a lowest-common-denominator feature set. When I change my preferred text size through accessibility settings, good native apps respond correctly. If I need voice over support, the operating system knows how to read the view hierarchy to me in a logical way. When drag-…

This hits the nail right on he head. I can see developers wanting to have one codebase, but as a user I want apps that can take advantage of everything iOS offers. There is no Picture-in-picture or metal in PWA.

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

#115

Post by detaro »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #107
detaro wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, Apple is in a perfect position to spearhead a web micropayment API standard, and has total control over the browser and thus the way users' use it.

They have already released Apple Pay for the Web.

My post clearly was missing the word "standard", which I've now added. Running in as many browsers as possible once something is completed is important for these things.

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

#116

Post by velcro »

snowwrestler wrote: post #36
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.

And there we go again. Where/when did I ever say that Flash on mobile was great?

Just discussing monopolies and drawing parallels.

To be fair Adobe was always pushing Flash as a cross-platform, cross-browser system - mobile browsers kind of changed the game and required a different approach since they were so tightly coupled to the OS and controlled by its vendor (BTW there was also a time where Microsoft was accused of monopoly for bundling its browser with the OS - doesn't seem to apply to iOS though).

If it was supposed work cross-platform on 2 mobile platforms - and one platform says no, well then 1 platform is not cross-platform any more is it? Adobe then gave up and stopped developing it - but yeah, Apple effectively did kill it. Especially since it was still a very early try. I mean up until 1-2 years ago even normal css/webanimation was laggy on mobile browsers.

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

#117

Post by fredley »

interpol_p wrote: post #72

I hate using web apps. On desktop, mobile, wherever. The author's list of things they want supported by Mobile Safari is just aggravating: > Here are a list of things you still can’t do with mobile safari due to Apple’s refusal to support them: > > Create an app loading screen > Use push notifications > Add offline support > Create an initial app UI to load instantly > Prompt installation to the home screen through b…

Push notifications and home-screen icons are strictly opt-in. If you don't want them, don't opt, simple as. I use webapps for several things because I can much better protect myself from tracking and data-harvesting with a well-configured browser than I can using a native app.

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

#118

Post by emsy »

interpol_p wrote: post #91
christiangenco wrote: post #65

I think a lot of commenters here are missing the point and getting distracted by push notifications (who wants a website spamming them with notifications?) and loading screens (hardly a feature). Apple supporting PWA (Progressive Web Apps) is hugely important because it enables a future where web apps can natively support browser, Mac/Windows/Linux desktop, and mobile iPhone/Android/Windows native mobile with a singl…

But as an iOS user I expect you to use the technology stack provided by my preferred operating system. I don't want to use your app if you're targeting a lowest-common-denominator feature set. When I change my preferred text size through accessibility settings, good native apps respond correctly. If I need voice over support, the operating system knows how to read the view hierarchy to me in a logical way. When drag-…

>I don't want to use your app if you're targeting a lowest-common-denominator feature set.

You might even use a hybrid app without it knowing. Many apps just need to show some buttons, input fields, images or a map and hit a web service. Brushing ALL hybrid apps off as useless is in my eyes just ignorant.

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

#119

Post by icebraining »

NoGravitas wrote: post #86
icebraining wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. In Firefox, just open "about:config", search for dom.webnotifications.enabled, then double-click it. If using other browsers, don't :) (PS: I like desktop notifications for Slack, but since I'd prefer not to use Slack in the first place, I'm not sure I count)

Also dom.push.enabled = false, apparently.

From what I understand, the previous config kills all desktop notifications, overriding that config, which is just about push notifications.

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

#120

Post by drusepth »

interpol_p wrote: post #91
christiangenco wrote: post #65

I think a lot of commenters here are missing the point and getting distracted by push notifications (who wants a website spamming them with notifications?) and loading screens (hardly a feature). Apple supporting PWA (Progressive Web Apps) is hugely important because it enables a future where web apps can natively support browser, Mac/Windows/Linux desktop, and mobile iPhone/Android/Windows native mobile with a singl…

But as an iOS user I expect you to use the technology stack provided by my preferred operating system. I don't want to use your app if you're targeting a lowest-common-denominator feature set. When I change my preferred text size through accessibility settings, good native apps respond correctly. If I need voice over support, the operating system knows how to read the view hierarchy to me in a logical way. When drag-…

>But as an iOS user I expect you to use the technology stack provided by my preferred operating system. I don't want to use your app if you're targeting a lowest-common-denominator feature set.

I would wager that the average quality of an iOS app written by someone like OP that "has a web experience and _has_ to learn iOS just to work on that platform" will probably be lower than if that person (with web experience) could just extend their web app natively with PWA.

I completely agree with you that the app should feel native to the platform (I actually quit a job a while back because they wanted me to theme our web Android experience as iOS for "consistency across all devices" instead of matching the user's device's design patterns), but there is huge value in giving the devs the tools they need to write the best product they can, and splitting codebases and requiring more work/knowledge/moving parts is actively detrimental to a quality end-product for everyone, unfortunately.

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