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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

#61

Post by ntaso »

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…

I build an app with Ionic and didn't encounter a single problem you mentioned here.

- Router? What's wrong with it?

- Build process? `npm install` then `ionic serve`. I think that's it.

- Live reload and building my app became much faster during the last months. It takes probably 5-8 seconds today

Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs

#64

Post by ntaso »

I want PWAs to succeed, because I would love to publish close-to-native apps without an app store. I think PWAs are a great thing for the open web. However, hyping PWAs with unrealistic expectations doesn't do any good. The Ionic team talks in the same vein. I like Ionic, I don't like hype. Here are a few reasons why PWAs aren't there yet and probably won't replace most apps in the near future:

- No native APIs. Yeah sure, you can order a coffee at Starbucks, but the underyling hardware isn't exposed to JS. You won't be able to make a camera app with PWAs.

- Input controls suck. Same as with every mobile browser and every Cordova-based app: You cannot control how the keyboard behaves and I suspect that it's not even in Apple's interest to make Mobile Safari super-great. Sure, they're working on PWAs, but that doesn't mean anything. Just see how bad Mobile Safari's looks like. Or bugs in multi-selects that have been there forever.

- They still run in a browser. It shows an address bar and whatever else your browser is always showing. Try Twitter's PWA right now: https://lite.twitter.com It's way too easy to accidentally swipe back. And then, Twitter being a shitty Single-Page-App, the browser loses its scroll position.

- PWAs suffer from the same problems like all SPAs [1]

And finally:

- A PWA is just a proxy to download and cache responses from a server. It enables offline support (kinda) for single-page apps. It's not a magical something. The problem is that most users go to the App or Play Store first (like djrogers pointed out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15219682). They COULD be using PWAs – or at least good mobile webistes – right now, but they aren't.

I think PWAs will find their places and I'm betting on them, too, to a certain extend. But over-hyping PWAs without addressing these issues is just naive.

[1]: Great read on this topic: https://adamsilver.io/articles/the-disadvantages-of-single-p...

Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs

#66

Post by osrec »

ntaso wrote: post #64

I want PWAs to succeed, because I would love to publish close-to-native apps without an app store. I think PWAs are a great thing for the open web. However, hyping PWAs with unrealistic expectations doesn't do any good. The Ionic team talks in the same vein. I like Ionic, I don't like hype. Here are a few reasons why PWAs aren't there yet and probably won't replace most apps in the near future: - No native APIs. Yeah…

One mobile safari bug that really irritates me is not being able to move the cursor on a text input element. Basically, if the text in there is longer than the element, you won't be able to move the cursor left or right. You can only work with the visible part of the input element. Try it - it's really quite terrible!

Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs

#67

Post by dmitriid »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #30
dmitriid wrote: post #15

> You don't have to create a native app because PWAs now offer all the functionality of a native app This is a blatant lie > Starbucks PWA: ~600KB 2.1 MB just the initial page, with no cards. The preview.js file is 751 K I do agree, however, that it's much smaller than an iOS app.

> 2.1 MB just the initial page, with no cards 650 KB for me: https://i.imgur.com/eVoZtWQ.png

preview.js 752 KB

vendor.js 614 KB

https://dmitriid.com/i/gm2tmobrgeydcnbt.png

Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs

#68

Post by scaryclam »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #26
scaryclam wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really depends on what the app is . A few of my friends use apps to look up when the next bus is coming. I use the official website. There's zero need for their apps to be available offline, they only thing they're for is looking up the next bus, which requires an internet connection. The app in this case gives absolutely no advantage to the website. I find that's the case for a lot of phone apps

I feel like such an app could download the bus schedule and do this all offline (and let the user know it is simply an estimate) In fact, I really wish Google Maps did this, but I guess the damage of getting it wrong once is far greater than getting it right 100 times. Phones are pretty powerful with huge storage. If you can compute directions offline, why not buses? Saving a map or route is tiny compared to the 64,…

I think you may misunderstand. The bus company provides live information. This is not a schedule, so cannot be downloaded ahead of time.

Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs

#69

Post by ntaso »

omg_ketchup wrote: post #44
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 a…

Same here, except I had someone make native apps. They were bad and unmaintained for a long time (solo dev here as well, running a small business). But still, people used this Android app that didn't receive updates for 4 years(!) over a mobile website where I put a lot of effort into.

At some point, I gave up. If apps is what people want, I make apps. After a looong process of deciding between native and hybrid (build with Ionic), I finally settled on Ionic. The result is actually quite okay. People love it. I can maintain two platforms with a single code base and will probably rewrite parts of the web app with Node so that I can share core code between 3 platforms.

How all of this will turn out in the long run, I don't know. Maybe I'll outsource app development at some point again in the future, now that I have a working product that is exactly as I want it to be.

Seriously, consider releasing a Cordova-based app. Slap some functionality on top so that it won't be rejected by Apple (Website-only wrappers aren't allowed). Maybe an offline storage or whatnot. This shouldn't take too much effort and you might be surprised that new customers find their way to your business.

Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs

#70

Post by ntaso »

dmitriid wrote: post #67
Ajedi32 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2.1 MB just the initial page, with no cards 650 KB for me: https://i.imgur.com/eVoZtWQ.png

preview.js 752 KB vendor.js 614 KB https://dmitriid.com/i/gm2tmobrgeydcnbt.png

Wrong column. Transferred counts. Not the actual file size.
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