Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
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Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
1–10 of 151 posts
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#2The author spends some time talking about platform stability as a big part of why web apps are great. But for web apps, is the platform actually stable?
I run some applications on my PC that are older than the iPhone and they work just fine. Will the Starbucks web app still work a decade from now? Is any non-trivial web app ever actually done?
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#3So it sounds like PWAs now make this true:
> You don't have to create a native app because PWAs now offer all the functionality of a native app.
That's cool. But _this_ has been true for a while:
> You don't have to create a native app because a mobile-friendly website offers all the functionality you need.
I use (reluctantly) a bunch of apps that really should be just websites. They don't make use of my phone's camera or microphone or do anything fancy to my phone's user experience. They don't need any special permissions, aside from web access. They're really just websites in disguise.
And yet, for some reason, they're apps.
Some were even built as websites (e.g. using PhoneGap) and then compiled into native apps.
So before we convince people that PWAs are the answer for all of their fancy, highly integrated apps that previously could only be achieved as native apps, I think it's going to be an uphill battle just to convince them that in many cases, you don't even need an app. You just need a mobile website.
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#4The author spends some time talking about platform stability as a big part of why web apps are great. But for web apps, is the platform actually stable? I run some applications on my PC that are older than the iPhone and they work just fine. Will the Starbucks web app still work a decade from now? Is any non-trivial web app ever actually done ?
I ran a fairly niche website for a while, starting around 2006. It was pretty terribly designed (eg I learned sql and javascript from working on this project), used the whole kitchen sink of css/html/javascript circa 2006, and still, it never stopped working.
The site is actually older than that -- it started around 2004 I think.
So even poorly written web apps have longevity sometimes, even when you don't intentionally design for logevity.
So, the oldest code I wrote that's still running is a bunch of web stuff.
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#5I had to CTRL+F through the article to learn that PWA == "Progressive Web App".
Am I missing a trend?
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#6The author spends some time talking about platform stability as a big part of why web apps are great. But for web apps, is the platform actually stable? I run some applications on my PC that are older than the iPhone and they work just fine. Will the Starbucks web app still work a decade from now? Is any non-trivial web app ever actually done ?
The platform has been stable for a while now. 20 year old web pages still render just fine. Its exceptionally backward compatible.
Web apps being "done/not-done" is a different question altogether, and it depends on the ever-changing goals of the app/business behind it.
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#7So it sounds like PWAs now make this true: > You don't have to create a native app because PWAs now offer all the functionality of a native app. That's cool. But _this_ has been true for a while: > You don't have to create a native app because a mobile-friendly website offers all the functionality you need. I use (reluctantly) a bunch of apps that really should be just websites. They don't make use of my phone's came…
Being able to use the 'app' offline is a pretty important feature tho. I almost always have web access, but most apps also almost never need it (for me to do what I want to do).
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#8I had to CTRL+F through the article to learn that PWA == "Progressive Web App". Am I missing a trend?
I had to do the same, looks like it was coined about a year ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Progressive_web_a...
This article gives a solid overview: https://alistapart.com/article/yes-that-web-project-should-b...
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#9The author spends some time talking about platform stability as a big part of why web apps are great. But for web apps, is the platform actually stable? I run some applications on my PC that are older than the iPhone and they work just fine. Will the Starbucks web app still work a decade from now? Is any non-trivial web app ever actually done ?
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#10The author spends some time talking about platform stability as a big part of why web apps are great. But for web apps, is the platform actually stable? I run some applications on my PC that are older than the iPhone and they work just fine. Will the Starbucks web app still work a decade from now? Is any non-trivial web app ever actually done ?
20 year old PC apps only work by the good graces and Herculean efforts of Microsoft. Certainly any Mac app would have died many times over if unmaintained over that time, to say nothing of all the dead OSes. But web apps from that era still tend to work in modern browsers.