Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only a browser that supports those APIs
With Safari coming around, I think all mainstream browsers except IE11 do support them.
And I think MS recently officially stop supporting IE11.
Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them
41–50 of 178 posts
Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them
#42I'm amazed there's a jurisdiction in a developed nation where driving a car with dead dashboard is legal.
It's not, but it would only show up in annual or bi annual safety inspections, if their area even had them. In the US it's on a per state basis, with emissions testing on a county level in some states.
Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 :)
Can you share a link? People reading your comment have no way to know how to learn more about your project, or even whether it is relevant to the topic at hand. The most relevant result I could find for "linux on the web" was https://linuxontheweb.appspot.com/ which doesn't seem to be relevant at all.
Did you try the "desk.os" link that is link number 3 on that page... https://linuxontheweb.appspot.com/desk.os ?
I can really only guarantee that things work on a relatively recent version of Chrome (like within the last few stable releases). The version that is live now is a couple weeks old. I'm working on some really cool features for the modular synth app right now. I'd love to start sharing this stuff with you guys!
Also, link number 5, at https://linuxontheweb.appspot.com/shell.os is for people who just want to poke around the deep system internals via a command line. For that, you need to use the "import" command in order to pull in libraries of commands. For instance, running a command like:
$ import fs && vim
should open up my custom-made vim clone.
Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them
#44> 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.
Google/apple don’t provide tooling for users to control ios/android app, and most apps are compiled without source code available / verification of the binary. With a web browser you are actually executing interpreted code so it’s easy to read the source, block ads etc
Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them
#45What 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.
I've "installed" this PWA via Brave on Android. So it now runs upon the Brave engine when I launch it, I suppose. I hope Brave continues to block trackers when executing "installed" PWAs.
Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them
#46> 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.
I've argued both sides of this for a long time. The short argument for web apps are that you have real control over them, which means any platform, any time. An iOS app from five years ago is useless without recompilation with the current toolchain, and even then it only works on iOS. A web page from 1994 still renders unmodified today, on any platform, and will for the foreseeable future.
> A web page from 1994 still renders unmodified today, on any platform, and will for the foreseeable future.
Rose tinted glasses.
There was a time not too long ago where IE6 was virtually required because of activex, vbscript, ie specific markup, etc.
Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them
#47> “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 agree the loss of control is unacceptable. I agree that only being able to get commercial apps like this that monetize through advertisements and selling opaquely-gathered tracking data is unacceptable.
But I'm curious how much download weight matters, outside of as a proxy for "how much bloated ad bullshit is hiding inside the app bundle"?
I'd wager the difference between a 2KB PWA and a 5MB or 30MB native app download is relatively insignificant — in storage space, in cellular data use, in initial download time — to your average user when compared to streaming a film on Netflix or downloading a F2P game with 100MBs to GBs of assets.
(where "average user" is assuming most of these apps are only localized in English and only available in largely-western countries — totally get how the story is very different in emerging markets)
Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them
#48> “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.
Exactly. If more people's reaction, instead of searching an app store for a privacy respecting screen light, was to sit down and write: let on true; and were able to easily upload it somewhere on a phone and run it locally from a shortcut on the screen. We'd have hacker culture encouraged right there.
You can do that with mobile-web-app-capable and add to home screen on both ios and Android. No address bar and it looks like any other app. You need to host the site though.
Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I've "installed" this PWA via Brave on Android. So it now runs upon the Brave engine when I launch it, I suppose. I hope Brave continues to block trackers when executing "installed" PWAs.
I didn't think it worked like that, but I could be super wrong.
Last I saw things launched from the home screen or in a webview from another app use the "Android System Webview" as it's rendering engine.
IIRC there was some work done to make that runtime swappable, but I'm not sure how far that went.
Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them
#50> “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.
Exactly. If more people's reaction, instead of searching an app store for a privacy respecting screen light, was to sit down and write: let on true; and were able to easily upload it somewhere on a phone and run it locally from a shortcut on the screen. We'd have hacker culture encouraged right there.
I'd love that but I don't think it'll encourage hacker culture. Instead we'll have the Can-Code making things for the Can't-Code like we do now, but with even fewer checks for nefarious activity.
Case study: people copy-pasting random code into their Myspace profiles