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Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

justinribeiro.com

11–20 of 178 posts

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#11
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why do it as a PWA? Presumably, so that it can be available in his car, when there’s no network access.

I meant the site linked to here - it's done as a PWA when there was no need to, and it fails on first load on mobile Safari for some reason.

Ah, right. I was confused because everything worked fine for me. Although, believe it or not, after reading this comment, I went back and saw the exact behaviour you describe! (Safari, iPad)

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#12
post #3

What happens to your PWA page weight when you add tracking and ads to it? How do I find your ad-free hobby project in the sea of search results for "speedometer" PWAs on the open web? What makes sure you will keep paying the, admittedly modest, hosting costs for the app? I think it's great you can make "tiny PWAs" but I think the article is glossing over the incentives and discovery problem that leads to 30MB ad-infe…

Hosting static content can be done for free. Looks like he's using Firebase, but I believe you could host it on Netlify/Github Pages for $0, since there's no server side work being done.

Firebase has a pretty feature complete free tier.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#13
post #3

What happens to your PWA page weight when you add tracking and ads to it? How do I find your ad-free hobby project in the sea of search results for "speedometer" PWAs on the open web? What makes sure you will keep paying the, admittedly modest, hosting costs for the app? I think it's great you can make "tiny PWAs" but I think the article is glossing over the incentives and discovery problem that leads to 30MB ad-infe…

> What makes sure you will keep paying the, admittedly modest, hosting costs for the app?

I thought the point of a PWA is that it is installed on the phone. So it doesn't need any hosting.

For the initial distribution, IPFS would be a good fit. It ensures a.) That even if the original developer is compromised you still don't get a malicious app, and b.) That even if the original developer stops hosting it, it's still available as long as anyone in the world is hosting it.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#14
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hosting static content can be done for free. Looks like he's using Firebase, but I believe you could host it on Netlify/Github Pages for $0, since there's no server side work being done.

Firebase has a pretty feature complete free tier.

Good point. Looks like the Firebasee free tier hosting limit is 10 GB/month, so if his speedometer is 1.7 KB, and PWAs only need to be downloaded once by each user, that's ~5.8 million new users/month for free. So basically free forever.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#15
post #2

Tiny PWAs and why they don't render until you force refresh on mobile Safari. Edit: to be slightly less snarky, that was my experience of the linked site - just one long scrolling blank page. This could be a really simple HTML / CSS page. Why do it as a PWA and add more points of failure?

Is it a PWA? I didn't get the normal "add to your homescreen" popup and manually adding it to my homescreen adds a bookmark instead of opening in a separate instance. I think this is just a regular old website with strange javascript libraries.

The footer says it's based on Polymer and Hugo, perhaps they don't play along well with Safari?

Strange how Safari still has trouble with PWAs, web applications were one of the main selling points of the original iPhone...

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#17
> “surely there is a app for that!” A quick look leads to speedometer apps with ads and 30MB download weight, and simple screen light that also have ads that weight in at 5MB.

I’m finally groking what rms has been banging on about for so long. It is completely unacceptable that we are running software that does this to the user. Users need to be empowered and able to run code that they can control.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#18
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant the site linked to here - it's done as a PWA when there was no need to, and it fails on first load on mobile Safari for some reason.

Ah, right. I was confused because everything worked fine for me. Although, believe it or not, after reading this comment, I went back and saw the exact behaviour you describe! (Safari, iPad)

Oh, and here was I thinking it was just advanced snarcasm. :P

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#19
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why do it as a PWA? Presumably, so that it can be available in his car, when there’s no network access.

I meant the site linked to here - it's done as a PWA when there was no need to, and it fails on first load on mobile Safari for some reason.

PWA on Safari (iOS, MacOS) ... Is not yet as progressed as one would hope.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#20

> “surely there is a app for that!” A quick look leads to speedometer apps with ads and 30MB download weight, and simple screen light that also have ads that weight in at 5MB. I’m finally groking what rms has been banging on about for so long. It is completely unacceptable that we are running software that does this to the user. Users need to be empowered and able to run code that they can control.

I started building something I like to call "Linux on the Web" (LOTW) 6+ years ago in order to start working on this problem (it's live on the web right now). Just like with node.js applications, the smallest legal file size for an app running inside of LOTW is precisely 0 bytes. I've tried to shave that down even more, but I seem to be running into physical limits :)
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