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Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

engineering.shopify.com

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Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#81

Post by pjmlp »

_hl_ wrote: post #56
newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

> What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? Performance. But we're beginning to approach performance parity - not by the web becoming an faster, mind you, but by apps becoming slower. It used to be only cheap/poor-quality apps that felt like glorified web pages, but now even many high-profile apps are just parts of a web stack embedded into an app.

It depends pretty much on what the app is all about.

CRUD mobile apps can be made pretty fast when not doing an SPA bigger than Quake just for displaying text.

SSR, pure CSS3, caching, server workers, mobile first, can go a long way.

Naturally there are other kind of apps where native wins hands down, e.g. WebGL vs GL ES 3.2/Vulkan/Metal/DX.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#82

Post by htormey »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #80

I wonder if Shopify did their homework and looked at Flutter. Flutter seems to meet their objectives more than React Native does. And as an added bonus, Flutter is easier to reason about, has edit and continue, and is more performant. Perhaps the use of Dart instead of Javascript was a deal killer though?

They talk about looking at flutter in the article.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#83

Post by pjmlp »

jszymborski wrote: post #61
newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

It's times like this where it becomes painfully clear that FirefoxOS was (1) ahead of its time and (2) woefully poorly managed.

Actually Symbian Web Runtime and WebOS were ahead of their time.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#84

Post by untog »

duxup wrote: post #38
rajasimon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this too. You know recent TWA with PWA makes the website accessible with anything on the system level. Like the location and other information.

I just wish with PWAs ... there was some more love as far as how they're handled. Last time I looked at them it was really wonky to install a PWA from Chrome. Developer advocacy at the time from Google was big on PWAs, but they were second class citizens everywhere in Google land....

You can now wrap a PWA up as a TWA (Trusted Web Activity) and publish it to the Play Store, which should make a huge difference.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#85

Post by berns »

Random_Person wrote: post #78
phreack wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't be overstated how many apps are absolutely dependent on working push notifications (all chat for example) and can't be replicated as websites. And that's not yet implemented for iOS so we're all at Apple's mercy until it is, which may never be.

The sites I build at work have proper push notifications. This problem has already been solved.

How did you solve the lack of push notifications on iOS?

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#86

Post by oakesm9 »

secondo wrote: post #10

Arguably the biggest concern with React Native is that it is controlled by a single entity, Facebook, and that they are not one of the leading mobile platforms who from a business perspective have strong incentives to ensure the future of their respective app eco systems. Facebook's incentives with React Native are somewhat unclear. This is a big, yet often unspoken, reason companies are vary of depending on React Na…

It is no longer the case that Facebook is the only major contributor to React Native. Facebook and Microsoft now just started formalising their collaboration on the project with monthly(ish) meetings[0]. Other large companies like Twitter are using React Native Web (different than ReactJS) for their main progressive web app[1].

Other large companies using React Native are:

- JD.com

- Skype

- Uber

- Tesla

- Discord

You do have a point about _control_ of the React Native project though. That's still all with Facebook. The Github repo is currently setup as a mirror of part of the internal Facebook monorepo. Therefore, all pull requests need to be merged by a Facebook employee before it becomes part of "core". This is enough of a barrier that "non-core" part of React Native were split out so they could be managed and released independently[2]. It is also true that while other major companies are _using_ React Native, they might not be actively contributing.

It would be good if Facebook put some proper structure around React Native as an open source project, however, for now the project is running along fine.

[0] https://github.com/react-native-community/discussions-and-pr... [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/ [2] https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/23313

edited: not sure how to make this list correctly formatted

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#87

Post by aantix »

privateSFacct wrote: post #14
newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

Look at your most used apps - none of them are "responsive pages". That should tell you something. Folks who have tried responsive pages haven't done that well. I am curious - what is the most popular responsive webpage on iphone would people say? I'd like to check out the current leader in this space.

Because once a company is invested in the native side, they probably aren't going to look at greenfield solutions anytime soon?

If you're considering building a new app, a responsive site with JS is definitely a contender. Take a look at the performance numbers. https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1174802413548474368

And they're only increasing, making it a more viable choice with each year passing.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#88

Post by pjmlp »

duxup wrote: post #38
rajasimon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this too. You know recent TWA with PWA makes the website accessible with anything on the system level. Like the location and other information.

I just wish with PWAs ... there was some more love as far as how they're handled. Last time I looked at them it was really wonky to install a PWA from Chrome. Developer advocacy at the time from Google was big on PWAs, but they were second class citizens everywhere in Google land....

They are first class on UWP since Microsoft decided to drop WinJS in favour of PWAs.

It is also one of the ways they are pushing for cross platform development on their upcoming foldable devices (Other being React Native and Xamarin, depending where one is coming from).

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#89

Post by jammygit »

phreack wrote: post #70
newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

It can't be overstated how many apps are absolutely dependent on working push notifications (all chat for example) and can't be replicated as websites. And that's not yet implemented for iOS so we're all at Apple's mercy until it is, which may never be.

I can’t stand push notifications, I disable them all except for a couple (like signal). They are usually only part of the app to manipulate you into using it constantly

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#90

Post by gargs »

weberc2 wrote: post #66
_hl_ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? Performance. But we're beginning to approach performance parity - not by the web becoming an faster, mind you, but by apps becoming slower. It used to be only cheap/poor-quality apps that felt like glorified web pages, but now even many high-profile apps are just parts of a web stack embedded into an app.

Absolutely this. Native apps are just so much smoother, and I say this as someone who really wants the web to win, and who used web apps almost exclusively because my 16GB iPhone 6 had very little space for apps. Also, the quality of native apps was much higher (e.g., Twitter feed doesn’t abruptly jump all over on mobile) although this could just be due to more budget allocation into native apps for whatever reason.

Not just smoother, native apps done right are interactive at the visual element level.
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