I don't think writing a web extension thingy on Safari/Chrome mobile can be achieved with a PWA. Would love to be corrected.
Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
121–130 of 151 posts
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#122I think one of the uphill battles you're going to have to fight with PWAs is end-user habit. If Joe consumer is looking for a great way to see a weather forecast he's going to look for an app. Jane wants to play podcasts - she's looking for an app. Ezra wants a Jewish calendar - app store. 99 times out of a hundred for the smartphone carrying crowd, the app store has become a replacement for google searches when it c…
I think you're wrong about the uphill battle part. Most users don't bother with new apps at all. https://www.recode.net/2016/9/16/12933780/average-app-downlo... Keep in mind this is in the US. People in developing countries, on older and slower devices with limited bandwidth, are even less likely to download new apps.
Oh they actually do. The thing is that people already have all the apps what they need, so there is no regular need to download other apps. But when such need arrives though, they head to the appstore.
The reality in developing countries is actually completely opposite. People in those countries love apps and use WiFi etc. to downlod them in coffee shops/schools/offices... so they can keep using the service only by downloading the minimalistic json instead of downloading whole service with UI/GFX etc. each time they need it.
I tried using some of those PWA now online and they do work better than traditional webapps, however they are still slightly laggish and have unfinished feeling when compared to native apps.
PWA is going to be almost certain flop. It's trying to do almost same what React Native has already done but with PWA you have to convince the users to switch from the secure, trusted, well working apps to "inferior and unsure webapps" and from just pressing the app icon back to the old school "open browser, select address bar, enter address, press enter"-hassle. Changing this mentality that people have build for almost 10 years now is probably going to be as easy as to make Trump change his opinion about the wall.
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate why offline use is something that matters for bus schedules? I mean, I get the usefulness of wilderness-related apps (e.g. ocean fishing) or various things that could be useful in an emergency like the aftermath of a hurricane, and for these offline functionality matters, but for buses , if you're within a few miles of a bus stop and the buses are running at all, then you're guaranteed to have high-…
> If you're within a few miles of a bus stop and the buses are running at all, then you're guaranteed to have high-speed cellular internet access This just isn't the case in the United States. There are large swaths of the country that straight up don't have high speed internet in any form.
But those large swaths apparently have a bustling public transit system? Sorry, rural America lacks both decent cell service AND decent busses.
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you're within a few miles of a bus stop and the buses are running at all, then you're guaranteed to have high-speed cellular internet access This just isn't the case in the United States. There are large swaths of the country that straight up don't have high speed internet in any form.
But those large swaths apparently have a bustling public transit system? Sorry, rural America lacks both decent cell service AND decent busses.
Certainly, our rural public transit is a catastrophe in it's own right. That still supports the argument that there is a very real use case for offline bus schedule lookup.
edit: /apps/lookup
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#125Here's what I've realized lately. Our product is for teachers (K-6 mostly) who tend to not be very techy. They use phones, tablets, etc. to the extent that they need to. We spent TONS of time optimizing our website for mobile. At one point it was a PWA that was very optimized and had like a 95 lighthouse score (not anymore because of finicky SW behavior). They didn't care one bit. Like, not even one little bit. To th…
This doesn't match my experience. I've recently built an "intranet" website for some consukting agency. They had an IOS app already, but no android app. I built them a SPA based on create-react-app with a material design look and feel, making sure it worked fine both on desktops and on phones (which also means changing how certain things are presented, not just scaling the same screens). I told them to try the "add t…
I guess probably just fundamentally different experiences. We couldn’t have afforded to put any more time into optimizing for mobile, but most users I talked to didn’t even care to look at the mobile site before insisting they couldn’t use it unless it was an app. No need for push notifications, camera, anything like that—heck we even put in the iOS add to home screen stuff to try to get them to see it as more “app” like—but still, they just insisted an app straight from the App Store was necessary.
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#126Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're wrong about the uphill battle part. Most users don't bother with new apps at all. https://www.recode.net/2016/9/16/12933780/average-app-downlo... Keep in mind this is in the US. People in developing countries, on older and slower devices with limited bandwidth, are even less likely to download new apps.
Oh they actually do. The thing is that people already have all the apps what they need, so there is no regular need to download other apps. But when such need arrives though, they head to the appstore. The reality in developing countries is actually completely opposite. People in those countries love apps and use WiFi etc. to downlod them in coffee shops/schools/offices... so they can keep using the service only by d…
You know that one of the major features PWAs offer is creating an app icon so you can launch it just like an app in a headless browser and use it offline, right?
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Doe 20 year old web apps using java applets or framesets and Netscape 4 DOM still render just fine?
If you have a browser with a Java plugin, then yes.
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#129I've been experimenting with turning a work application into a PWA, but ran into a problem - all the stuff that would be great to cache was behind an authentication wall. None of the PWA examples covered this. Also, the service worker examples all had "Don't use this in production" warnings. :D
You can encrypt the cacheable content.
Re: Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
#130So 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…
What about sensors/stuff on the hardware that the browser may not be able to access?
Edit: I have seen some browser demos that could show your phone's orientation. In the past the camera trigger was not reliable that was in 2013-2014 if I recall dang time flies.