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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

#151

Post by shocks »

Twirrim wrote: post #71

Holy crap it's scary that he's building his own speedometer like that. GPS based speedos aren't all that accurate. Ballpark, sure, but not accurate. There are also many circumstances under which GPS won't work. In many countries a car without a functional speedometer is not allowed on the road, for safety reasons.

If our drivers were smarter, we wouldn't need speedometers at all. Nobody thinks "I'm going too fast" then looks at the speedometer and decides "Oh, my speed is fine".

Drivers who want to go fast will go fast - for them the gauge is only useful so they can slow down for speed traps.

Not having a speedometer shouldn't make a sensible driver suddenly very dangerous at all.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#152

Post by emmanueloga_ »

When I first heard someone talking about "Progressive Web Apps" I thought they were talking about "Progressive Enhancement" [1].

Turns out doing a PWA is just basically about using the "Service Workers" API [2] and the practices around that.

This nice article does a lengthy trace on the origins of the "PWA" term [3]. The same guy that started the "Service Workers" spec in Github [4] created the PWA marketing campaign, apparently. Makes me wonder why he thought it was more marketable to sell this PWA idea more than the simpler and more direct message: "use Service Workers".

The PWA campaign also reminds me of the less successful "Offline First" campaign from a couple of years ago [5].

1: https://alistapart.com/article/understandingprogressiveenhan...

2: https://jakearchibald.github.io/isserviceworkerready/

3: https://medium.com/@amberleyjohanna/seriously-though-what-is...

4: https://github.com/w3c/ServiceWorker/tree/c49c878cdcbaf7a81e...

5: http://offlinefirst.org/

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#153

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

paulgb wrote: post #137
CharlesW wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I presume it’ll stay this way for a while (years!). It turns out iOS 12.2 will be "one heck of a release for Progressive Web Apps…"[1] [1] https://medium.com/dev-channel/progressive-web-app-progress-...

It’s a shame they haven’t budged much on push notifications. I know they have a reputation because they are used so much for spammy purposes, but I see that as a UI problem rather than a problem with push notifications themselves. I think if iOS got push notifications we’d start to see non-spammy use cases, e.g. one-click waitlist notifications and no-install turn-based games. One fun use I've found (I have an Androi…

I think a reasonable solution on mobile is to only allow push notification requests to PWAs that you have added to your home screen (i.e. "installed"), and removing the app from your home screen should remove the notifications. This way it will function pretty much like native apps, and you won't have to worry as much about random requests for spammy notifications - if I've gone through the trouble to "install" the PWA, then it's more likely I have a higher degree of connection to that app than just some random news site asking if it wants to send me notifications.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#154

Post by chii »

shocks wrote: post #151
Twirrim wrote: post #71

Holy crap it's scary that he's building his own speedometer like that. GPS based speedos aren't all that accurate. Ballpark, sure, but not accurate. There are also many circumstances under which GPS won't work. In many countries a car without a functional speedometer is not allowed on the road, for safety reasons.

If our drivers were smarter, we wouldn't need speedometers at all. Nobody thinks "I'm going too fast" then looks at the speedometer and decides "Oh, my speed is fine". Drivers who want to go fast will go fast - for them the gauge is only useful so they can slow down for speed traps. Not having a speedometer shouldn't make a sensible driver suddenly very dangerous at all.

> Not having a speedometer shouldn't make a sensible driver suddenly very dangerous at all.

of course. Any sensible driver will not drive the car without a speedometer.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#155

Post by beachy »

emmanueloga_ wrote: post #152

When I first heard someone talking about "Progressive Web Apps" I thought they were talking about "Progressive Enhancement" [1]. Turns out doing a PWA is just basically about using the "Service Workers" API [2] and the practices around that. This nice article does a lengthy trace on the origins of the "PWA" term [3]. The same guy that started the "Service Workers" spec in Github [4] created the PWA marketing campaign…

Maybe he took his lead from the success of "Ajax" as opposed to "XMLHttpRequest Objects".

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#156

Post by sp00ls »

chii wrote: post #154
shocks wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If our drivers were smarter, we wouldn't need speedometers at all. Nobody thinks "I'm going too fast" then looks at the speedometer and decides "Oh, my speed is fine". Drivers who want to go fast will go fast - for them the gauge is only useful so they can slow down for speed traps. Not having a speedometer shouldn't make a sensible driver suddenly very dangerous at all.

> Not having a speedometer shouldn't make a sensible driver suddenly very dangerous at all. of course. Any sensible driver will not drive the car without a speedometer.

Why not? Do you think any sensible driver would overshoot/undershoot their speed by any meaningful amount without noticing? Like without a speedometer everyone would just accidentally go 100mph everywhere or something?

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#157

Post by sp00ls »

Twirrim wrote: post #71

Holy crap it's scary that he's building his own speedometer like that. GPS based speedos aren't all that accurate. Ballpark, sure, but not accurate. There are also many circumstances under which GPS won't work. In many countries a car without a functional speedometer is not allowed on the road, for safety reasons.

Is it really that scary? Ok maybe it isn't perfectly accurate but so what? He might be going 33 instead of 30..doesn't really matter.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#158

Post by kingosticks »

avhon1 wrote: post #138
roryisok wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my first reaction. If I was pulled over in Ireland with no dash the car would be impounded . And the speedometer is great but what about the other info? Fuel gauge? Mileage? Battery Charge? Engine faults?? Geolocation won't help with any of those. That said I do love the PWA approach to things and I think more people should embrace it. Just... not for this.

I'm comfortable with driving without any of those things -- my motorcycle, for example, only has a speedometer and a non-resettable odometer. (It's like that from the factory. Many street-legal motorcycles are similarly equipped.) You know how much fuel you have by knowing the capacity of you vehicle's tank, how many hours or miles you have driven, and your pre-existing (or found on the internet) knowledge of you veh…

I think the tyre pressure warning light is rather useful. Sometimes there's just nothing noticeable until that light comes on and you examine your tyre to find its deformed (heavy load and very hot) to the point of nearly bursting on a motorway at 70mph.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#159

Post by dep_b »

cronix wrote: post #148
varjag wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really doubt you are legally allowed to use GPS based speedometer in place of actual one either.

Ok, but it's more accurate than the spedometer in my higher end car, which seems to be off by about 4.6mph lol. I was always wondering why those speed radar things on the side of the road that tell how fast you are going (usually in residential neighborhoods) were consistently showing me going about 5mpg slower than my car was indicating until I checked with my phone gps. So, I was consistently going about 5 mph unde…

I never had a car that actually had the same speed as I was driving. Always 5Km/H below it. You’re expected to drive 120Km/H where the limit says 120. If driving 121 would give you a fine that would be problematic.

Re: Tiny PWAs and why I keep building them

#160

Post by enz »

callahad wrote: post #60
Klathmon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for confirming. It is indeed great if things works that way!
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