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Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

justinribeiro.com

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Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#21

Post by chippy »

wffurr wrote: 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…

The other, largely unspoken, downside to PWAs are that the user cannot block the tracking and ads in them when launched natively. Even though they might run on your android where you have firefox mobile with all the adblocking extensions enabled, and run that PWA in the browser. I'm sure this might be another reason why PWAs are being supported by the advertising industry platform suppliers.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#22

Post by saagarjha »

> 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 don’t see why this means PWAs are better than apps. There’s nothing stopping you from writing an app instead of a PWA in this case.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#23

Post by oskarla »

wffurr wrote: 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…

> How do I find your ad-free hobby project in the sea of search results for "speedometer" PWAs on the open web?

https://appsco.pe

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#24

Post by twic »

> You see my car, a 2005 Prius, has a terrible glitch in the dashboard where the dash simply doesn’t work. No speedometer, no gasoline gauge, nada.

> Both the above cases would lead one to say “surely there is a app for that!”

I note from his 'about' page that the author is a proud and admirably public-spirited citizen of Oakdale, which proclaims itself "Cowboy Capital of the World". Seems about right.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#25

Post by hasperdi »

If you do like the programming challenge then fine. Speaking for myself, I spend too much time working with computers already. I just want a practical solution and spend time doing things I enjoy.

Speedometer app for example, I bought Ulysses Speedometer a long time ago. The price is almost nothing but over the years they maintained it well and added useful features. To me that is the most time and money efficient solution.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#26

Post by extra88 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #15
frereubu wrote: 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 th…

> I didn't get the normal "add to your homescreen" popup

I thought that only happened after a PWA site had been visited a few times, not on first visit.

Hugo is a static site generator so that has no bearing on the page's behavior in the browser. I don't know if it's a PWA but they used Polymer in such a way that there's no content in the HTML, which is stupid. I don't think PWAs are antithetical to PWE, Progressive Web Enhancement.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#27

Post by w8rbt »

saagarjha wrote: post #22

> 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 don’t see why this means PWAs are better than apps. There’s nothing stopping you from writing an app instead of a PWA in this case.

Runs in any browser?

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#28

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

chippy wrote: post #21
wffurr wrote: 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…

The other, largely unspoken, downside to PWAs are that the user cannot block the tracking and ads in them when launched natively. Even though they might run on your android where you have firefox mobile with all the adblocking extensions enabled, and run that PWA in the browser. I'm sure this might be another reason why PWAs are being supported by the advertising industry platform suppliers.

That's not a downside versus native apps, though.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#29

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

jeroenhd wrote: post #15
frereubu wrote: 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 th…

Looks like there are OS-specific oddities at play. I see an 'Add to home screen' prompt on android, it installs with a custom icon, and then opens in a chromeless browser.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#30

Post by xrisk »

w8rbt wrote: post #27
saagarjha wrote: post #22

> 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 don’t see why this means PWAs are better than apps. There’s nothing stopping you from writing an app instead of a PWA in this case.

Runs in any browser?

Only a browser that supports those APIs
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