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WebKit Goals for 2020

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Re: WebKit Goals for 2020

#71

Post by ignoramous »

joneil wrote: post #19
tannhaeuser wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully not. I'd hate to click through "This site wants to push new ads to you. Allow notifications?" modals on my shiny new iPhone (edit: in addition to content being constrained to poststamp-sized areas between GDPR banners).

Browser vendors are finally catching on. From Firefox 72 permission prompts won’t be shown unless they’re triggered from a user interaction. From the blog post: > Notification prompts are very unpopular. On Release, about 99% of notification prompts go unaccepted, with 48% being actively denied by the user. https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/11/04/restricti... I’ve heard Chrome is moving in a similar direct…

When I soft-launched MVP I built to 50 odd users, I was surprised that one user said they uninstalled the app after a couple of days because they simply didn't like the app throwing nagging notifications (it seemed to me, given the nature of the app, the notifications were essential information, but apparently not). Android does let you turn off the notifications per channel per app, but I guess most users aren't aware, surprisingly, even the ones who are annoyed by notifications.

Re: WebKit Goals for 2020

#72

Post by soraminazuki »

lwansbrough wrote: post #46
kick wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making the web suck more to match the native experience would be stupid. If people wanted the inconvenience of native apps, they'd use native apps.

They do use native apps, because they offer these features and other conveniences only afforded to native apps within Apple’s control.

Problems with Apple’s app review guidelines should be addressed by pushing for Apple to improve the guideline itself. Pushing for Apple to make their browser more adtech-friendly to the detriment of its users is not a solution.

Re: WebKit Goals for 2020

#73

Post by arciini »

newscracker wrote: post #9

Will 2020 be the year when WebKit, and the Safari browsers by extension, will have full and proper support for Service Workers and PWAs on par with other browsers? I recall reading that Safari lags behind on it, and the allegation was that Apple prefers native apps and doesn’t want web apps to be more popular.

There's been a lot of talk on this thread about the push notifications aspect. Setting that aside, at Wanderlog (https://wanderlog.com), we considered using PWA's and didn't because of another 2 WebKit limitations: storage and fast expiration.

We wanted to store pictures of where the user wants to go and cache map tiles offline. Mobile Safari has a limit of 50 MB. This is not enough for these use-cases.

Even more annoyingly, Apple deletes PWA's on iPhones after a few weeks. Our users often plan their trips months or many weeks in advance, and don't look at them for weeks at a time. By the time they go on the trip, they may be shocked to see that Apple has evicted their data from the local storage, just as they land somewhere where they no longer have access to 3G data!

I think Google's approach of providing virtually unlimited permanent storage is also probably not the best, but something in the middle might be better.

At the moment, it's clear that making PWA's capable is not an Apple-wide priority, even if the WebKit or Safari team may be in favor. We decided to avoid fighting it and build a native (React Native) app instead.

Re: WebKit Goals for 2020

#74

Post by kick »

chrisseaton wrote: post #70
kick wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

url: projectpage.tld/bugs Hi! If you're here, you must have found a bug. Send an email to XXX@projectpage.tld describing the bug, and we'll see to fixing it as fast as we can, and we'll alert you when we've started working on it! You don't have to have them subscribe, necessarily.

As soon as someone thinks about reporting a bug, they’re already doing you a massive favour. Making them go away and write an email (which many people don’t often do any more) you’re already going to be testing their patience. You should be bending over backward to accept the report.

That is very far from true.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=380270

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=309596

Re: WebKit Goals for 2020

#75

Post by soraminazuki »

alexcroox wrote: post #66
modeless wrote: post #4

The Web Push API is missing. I was hoping for that one.

A lot of companies build a native version of their web app just for push notifications on iOS. Unfortunately I doubt we’ll see web push any time soon.

I avoid many native apps for the exact same reason. Too often I encounter apps that spam and spy on its users while providing no real benefit over a simple website.

Re: WebKit Goals for 2020

#77

Post by cjblomqvist »

modeless wrote: post #58
tannhaeuser wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty of us who have legitimate use cases for web push Such as? The only use case for notifications and PWAs I'm coming across are clickbait news sites creating a sense of urgency with "homepage was updated" modals obscuring content and capturing click events. Web user agents have freedoms in rendering pages to users, and Safari siding with users and power efficiency is a good thing. In line with other c…

Here's a site I made with a legitimate use of Web Push. https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/

In reply to tannheuser: Follow that logic, there's no need for images either (if you're in the late 90s), since the majority of the really useful content on the web is text... I understand your frustration, but I don't think the solution is to remove functionality from the web.

Re: WebKit Goals for 2020

#78

Post by xPaw »

modeless wrote: post #4

The Web Push API is missing. I was hoping for that one.

Yeah that's a real bummer. Our open source web app [1] supports web push but it doesn't work on Apple's devices because they won't implement it.

The situation on iOS is even worse, because every browser is forced to use Webkit under the hood.

[1]: https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge

Re: WebKit Goals for 2020

#79

Post by banachtarski »

threeseed wrote: post #55
throwGuardian wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will they force you into the $99/annum developer program, shaft you a cool 30%, play judge and jury to your ios, macOs app store submissions and reject your work at the first hint of competition, if all the useful PWA features just work on iOS? Lest you dream of software freedom on Apple devices, their sycophants and overzealous employees will gaslight you into believing it's all for user experience and security,…

You need to understand that many of us like Apple's approach. We aren't looking for software "freedom" on our phones. We just want apps that are safe, curated, respectful of battery life and do not infringe on our privacy or user experience. Apple's approach gives us that. So by all means complain about app store submissions but as a developer I don't have sympathy for other developers who play loose and fast with th…

I really disagree with this viewpoint. There's no reason Apple can't simultaneously embrace open standards while providing implementations that enforce privacy and battery life and all that. They could even push to improve those standards. What you have instead is the push for an isolated platform to enforce a monopoly and exclusion. Many of us may like it, but count me out.

Re: WebKit Goals for 2020

#80

Post by cageface »

threeseed wrote: post #55
throwGuardian wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will they force you into the $99/annum developer program, shaft you a cool 30%, play judge and jury to your ios, macOs app store submissions and reject your work at the first hint of competition, if all the useful PWA features just work on iOS? Lest you dream of software freedom on Apple devices, their sycophants and overzealous employees will gaslight you into believing it's all for user experience and security,…

You need to understand that many of us like Apple's approach. We aren't looking for software "freedom" on our phones. We just want apps that are safe, curated, respectful of battery life and do not infringe on our privacy or user experience. Apple's approach gives us that. So by all means complain about app store submissions but as a developer I don't have sympathy for other developers who play loose and fast with th…

Even though you’re happy with the way Apple is handling the user rights you’ve abrogated to their control right now, make sure you’re still going to be comfortable with that indefinitely because the tighter you’re locked into their ecosystem the harder it’s going to be to escape if different leadership with different priorities or incentives comes into power and starts making changes you don’t like.

Enlightened despotism is the ideal government in many ways. The fatal flaw is guaranteeing succession of another enlightened despot instead of an ordinary tyrant. This is why preserving choice, however messy, is so important.

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