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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

#51

Post by Brahma111 »

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.

Pls. God no.. Why this obsession with apps when a simple PWA does almost all you need. Apps are akin to what the windows app were a one and half decade back. Like web apps blew 99% of thick client app to oblivion the same is going to happen soon to the mobile apps. It isn't without reason, why Apple isn't too keen with this development (they were one of the last to implement web workers and PWA in their browsers). I hope they learn from MS' mistake and embrace PWA rather than try to impede

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#52

Post by lazerwalker »

megous wrote: post #32
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #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.

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 wonder if https://glitch.com has a mobile-friendly IDE and will also let you set up a project to be a PWA? Seems like it'd be a great fit for what you're describing.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#53

Post by thosakwe »

There are only two real things limiting PWAs in my opinion:

1. Lack of support on iOS. I presume it’ll stay this way for a while (years!). Mobile Safari finally has service workers, but really, that’s about it. No support for “Add to Home Screen” (technically it’s there, but doesn’t work the way it does in other browsers), and a lot of other APIs.

2. The Web is missing some APIs that would really let it compete with native apps. I know there was WebNFC at some point, but it was dropped. No standard/widely implemented API for reading contacts, sending texts, etc. Features like that would really push PWA over the edge and make it awesome.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#54

Post by zozbot123 »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #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.

> 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.

There are plenty of high-quality mobile apps on F-Droid, even with downloadable source. This is purely a PEBKAC issue.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#55

Post by hawski »

lazerwalker wrote: post #47
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #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.

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 dow…

In case of apps I imagine something like this:

2kB will feel instant. 5MB will feel mostly quick. 30MB will feel like it had to earn it.

When things are instant then it feels like magic. It's sad that having all those super fast machines everywhere we have to deal with so much bullshit. Your computer can push through gigabytes of memory on a second. Does it feel this way? That's why people still use CLI, at least there, many things feel instant and when not it's usually reasonable.

It's not only download speed, it's also verification time, compilation/optimization and whatever else happens during install. All of those will take longer the bigger the app is.

Similarly the problem with JavaScript on sites currently is not only download time and request count bloat. It's significant by itself, but it just takes time to even parse all this code and I did not start on execution.

But at the same time for me the proxy effect of "how much bloat and bullshit did they cram into it" is as important and can't be dismissed.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#56

Post by gardaani »

If you want to see more PWAs, then go to the PWA Directory maintained by Google: https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/gulliver

Interesting, there is one speedometer there, created 2-3 years ago. The source code is even available in GitHub. It seems that it isn't easy to find PWAs? https://pwa-directory.appspot.com/pwas/5079866537934848

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#58

Post by nerdponx »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #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.

Why don't browsers give us finer control over Javascript execution (eg whitelisting JS APIs)? Performance?

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#59

Post by ynniv »

vb6lives wrote: post #46
ynniv wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, there are always ways to lock yourself in. If you only use features supported by multiple browsers and consider the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect, you stand a decent chance of long term survival. What you sacrifice is efficiency and polish, which are important, so choose wisely.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#60

Post by callahad »

Klathmon wrote: post #49
enz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's possible. E.g., PWAs installed via Firefox on Android use Gecko, not the system WebView.
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