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

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341–350 of 451 posts

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

#341
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t disagree more. I find gmail to be a perfect example of why web apps are playing to the lowest common denominator and result in poor user experiences everywhere. Just my opinion though, I realise most people love it.

What feature of native apps do you wish web-GMail had?

Snappiness. It wasn't close even to Fastmail's web UI and took forever to load when my connection was slow.

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

#342
post #339
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate threaded conversations, so that isn't something I even value.

Even if you personally dislike it, I think you can agree that it's one of the UX choices that made it storm over the alternatives at the time. Not all our individual tastes align with what's most popular, obviously.

Not really, I guess many jumped on it, because it was a free email server from Google.

I still manage my own email servers.

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

#343

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-…

Yep. There are also, as I'm sure you're aware but for the benefit of the less-familiar, plenty of "hybrid" ways to build "native" apps for mobile: https://github.com/auth0/blog/blob/master/_posts/2017-01-11-...

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

#344

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…

So put your web app in a Cordova bundle and you can send push notifications. No need to learn react or write native code. Not a huge problem to solve.

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

#346

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…

It seems like at some point we're just going to end up re-writing Java - But for the web.

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

#347
post #341
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What feature of native apps do you wish web-GMail had?

Snappiness. It wasn't close even to Fastmail's web UI and took forever to load when my connection was slow.

That can't be attributed to playing to the lowest common denominator.

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

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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)…

> iOS app written by someone like OP That's a business choice that they made, and will suffer for. If a developer and business choose to half-ass the native iOS application, there's no reason to believe it would behave any better on iOS when written as a webapp. > the tools they need to write the best product they can The best product that can be made will never be made with cross-platform tooling. It will always be…

The general problem is that there are some APIs which work differently enough between platforms that they leak sufficiently that it makes a difference above the stuff they're supposed to abstract. The browser is [sadly] as close as we've been in recent history to having APIs which mostly work across platforms by leveraging the browser (which is consequently made by the OS developers on mobile OSes) for abstraction over OS stuff. Combined with how "everything is in the cloud" and the decline of the importance of stuff like local file management for average users (now you can lose all your stuff in GDrive just as easily), it's becoming a good-enough choice for making software that works on whatever thing people try to run it on.

Java on a phone is nothing new, but the Java for Symbian you'd write probably wouldn't work very well on a desktop. VC++ for Windows Mobile apps wouldn't work well on a desktop either. The web is the lowest common target, even though it's quite a high level to target. We still run into plenty of HCI issues (why is there a big fat + button in the lower-right on my laptop in GDocs instead of "New" or File -> New action? Because Material is mobile-first and applied thoughtlessly to non-touch experiences), but if you play your cards right, it's now possible to have a codebase, and truly the same app, running on whatever OS and architecture the user has, without specifically building and packaging for 30 different target combinations.

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

#349

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…

I was wondering what prevents someone from sending an initial app UI?

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

#350
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 single codebase of open technologies. Why after over 30 years of experiencing cross platform "write once run anywhere* technologies do developers still think that's the best user experience? Yes it mak…

GMail was (and maybe keeps being) a much better user experience than native email clients for desktop PCs.

Believe it or not, in my experience, Exchange + Outlook 2016 stomps all over GMail. I find that its faster, searches quicker, and takes up _WAY_ less memory. I don't do any fancy things other than basic email, scheduling meetings, etc so YMMV.
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