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Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs

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Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs

#41

Post by [deleted] »

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #7
jawns wrote: post #3

So 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).

[deleted]

Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs

#42

Post by csense »

I'm really sick and tired of going to a site on my phone, and getting inundated with popups and banners and crap telling me to install the app (Reddit, I'm looking at you).

I just want to view the same fricking website that I view on my desktop, but on my phone. You'd think that would be a simple and obvious way of working that would be supported by every single website in existence without any special effort on the part of web developers. And you'd be right, except web developers these days GO OUT OF THEIR WAY TO MAKE IT NOT WORK THAT WAY.

You'd think the simple and obvious fact, that phones these days generally have web browsers just as capable as desktop browsers, would have penetrated people's thick skulls by now. But for some reason everyone wants their own app, I darkly suspect so they can use the email, contacts, camera, microphone etc. for God knows what creepy spying and data harvesting purposes.

So if this guy's figured out that the way to convince The Powers That Be, who've already been convinced by someone else that You Need To Have An App Even If The App Is Literally The Same As Your Website, that it's actually okay to Not Have An App And Just Have People On Your Phones Go To Your Website, by simply re-naming your website from "a website" to "a Progressive Web Application," more power to him.

Me, I just want to look at websites, and occasionally look at them on my phone, and I'd like a web that allows me to have the experience I'm used to from my desktop, on my phone.

Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs

#44

Post by omg_ketchup »

csense wrote: post #42

I'm really sick and tired of going to a site on my phone, and getting inundated with popups and banners and crap telling me to install the app (Reddit, I'm looking at you). I just want to view the same fricking website that I view on my desktop, but on my phone. You'd think that would be a simple and obvious way of working that would be supported by every single website in existence without any special effort on the…

I work at a small business, and our customers are constantly asking that we make an app. We have a fully functional website that is completely responsive, and we do more mobile sales than desktop. But they keep asking for an app. I have no idea why- I guess it feels more "legitimate" than a website. I try to politely explain that I'm our sole developer, and I'd have to support the website, AND an iphone app, AND an android app, and they pretend to understand, and say "yeah, but an app would be nice...".

I mean, do you want the app so you can have an app, or do you want the app so you can make a purchase? I don't understand.

Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs

#45

Post by unkown-unknowns »

I'd not heard of PWA before. After reading the OP I did an additional search on Google. Found a course on udemy that claims to be on sale.

https://www.udemy.com/progressive-web-app-pwa-the-complete-g...

I've seen three of the videos in it so far. Seems like an ok course for the ~25 USD I paid for it.

Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs

#46

Post by omg_ketchup »

dehef wrote: post #25

Just be aware that ionic3 is full of bugs. You can use angular 4 which is absolutely ready now. Ionic is full of promises (literally and figuratively), but it is not even ready as a beta. - I spent days to make workaround for making it work. Even basic things like routers. - I suffered a lot with its build process. Transpiling my typescript is a so much pain for my mac. That is even worse than when I compiled java ye…

Quasar framework for Vue is a breath of fresh air.

Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs

#47

Post by terminalcommand »

csense wrote: post #42

I'm really sick and tired of going to a site on my phone, and getting inundated with popups and banners and crap telling me to install the app (Reddit, I'm looking at you). I just want to view the same fricking website that I view on my desktop, but on my phone. You'd think that would be a simple and obvious way of working that would be supported by every single website in existence without any special effort on the…

I was also skeptical of apps, but they do deliver a better more cohesive experience. I actually like the reddit app and it saves me a lot of time.

As for security, you don't have to grant permissions. All apps are also put through a scanning process.

For portability the browser wins. For quality well crafted apps prevail.

Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs

#48

Post by dehef »

mikodin wrote: post #31
dehef wrote: post #25

Just be aware that ionic3 is full of bugs. You can use angular 4 which is absolutely ready now. Ionic is full of promises (literally and figuratively), but it is not even ready as a beta. - I spent days to make workaround for making it work. Even basic things like routers. - I suffered a lot with its build process. Transpiling my typescript is a so much pain for my mac. That is even worse than when I compiled java ye…

Interesting that you had so many pain points. I like Ionic, don't love it but I find it to be very very easy to work with. I don't mean to flame, I just want to provide a counter example as I was using Ionic on the day to day basis for about 5 months. - I find the router to be very easy to use, requiring no work arounds, you call the nav controller and push / set a view, nothing crazy here. - The build process, speci…

I use "ionic-app-scripts" (@ionic/app-scripts) for watching the change. It's what is used by ionic cli I think. Since the recent update to webpack 3 things are better but I still loss my focus on each build :) In fact I just checked and it's around 1 minute to finish the watch process, but many time consecutively, it become worse.

When I only update scss that is very quick indeed. The start process is very quick also.

For the router, things have became messy when I tried nested ion-nav. A method is deprecated (getRootNav) and the new is not even ready to use! (getRootNavById)

I post many issues on github. Still using ionic router (no other choices now, but by using tricks like events), and ionic cli for building, some buttons also, and I avoid anything else.

ion-menu was too buggy on ios, I had to make a menu by myself

The general quality on ios is very poor

Some plugins are great but I have bizarre issues... Keyboard plugin for exemple, I had to "ngZone" it to make it work.

Using the grid was too verbose and too buggy also. I design everything in flexbox now. It fells that ionic is trying to build a good WYSIWYGs editor with ionic creator but making developpers "beta-testing" their frameworks (sorry to complain after a open source project)

Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs

#50

Post by ben336 »

WoodenChair wrote: post #39
maxsilver wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author also points out (correctly) that web apps are smaller than their equivalent native app. Well, the author straw-mans that web apps are smaller. Yes, web apps are lighter than equivalent native apps. But not to anywhere near the degree described in the article. There's no legitimate reason for the Starbucks app to be 100MB. None. A native Android app equivalent to the PWA in the article would come in at ab…

Even worse every time you go to Starbucks.com you might re-download all of the junk. If you use it multiple times a day, that's a lot of wasted bandwidth compared to a slim (unusual in these days) native app.

The value of PWAs with service worker support is that redownloads don't happen. That's also how they can have offline support (on Android at least, safari currently has a lest robust caching story)
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