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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

#131

Post by EthanHeilman »

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…

>Literally all of them could be implemented as responsive pages with acceptable performance.

Speaking personally I like the division between highly sandboxed websites (no GPS access, no notifications, etc...) and trusted apps.

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

#133

Post by cma »

berns wrote: post #106
xyby wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For iOS, can't you just wrap your web application in a thin native app layer that provides the push functionality?

From the app store guidelines: 4.2 Minimum Functionality Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website. If your app is not particularly useful, unique, or “app-like,” it doesn’t belong on the App Store.

Perhaps the main distinguishing app-like thing is distracting notifications.

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

#134

Post by distances »

wpietri wrote: post #110
privateSFacct wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I haven't tried it on iOS, but Twitter's web app is quite good on Android/Firefox and Android/Chrome. Not quite as good as native, and prone to developing lag if I don't occasionally restart the browser. But surprisingly good. They talk about the process of building it here: https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-sourc...

It's unusable on Firefox Focus though. Trying to expand anything completely breaks scrolling on the page.

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

#135

Post by solarkraft »

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.

> Literally all of them could be implemented as responsive pages with acceptable performance

But not with great performance. A user feels the slight stutters, glitches and slow-downs.

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

#136

Post by duxup »

untog wrote: post #84
duxup wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

OH TIL that. That's good, showing up on the Play Store was kinda random benchmark I was looking for.

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

#137

Post by duxup »

pjmlp wrote: post #88
duxup wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Yeah I really liked MS's support that way.

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

#138

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

berns wrote: post #106
xyby wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For iOS, can't you just wrap your web application in a thin native app layer that provides the push functionality?

From the app store guidelines: 4.2 Minimum Functionality Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website. If your app is not particularly useful, unique, or “app-like,” it doesn’t belong on the App Store.

Right! I ran in to this when I wanted our app to “portal” to the website and just move Bluetooth data along. Apple thought about this and doesn’t like it.

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

#139

Post by solarkraft »

robertoandred wrote: post #119
bonestamp2 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tricky question. They start as web apps since they're built with mostly web technologies, but then they're compiled as native apps with native components and they don't run in the browser. So, I'd lean towards "no" -- they're not web apps at runtime.

React Native apps do not use web technologies.

That depends on what you include in your definition of web technologies. React and Javascript at this point mostly fall under mine.

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

#140

Post by gnusty_gnurc »

jamil7 wrote: post #59
sandGorgon wrote: post #13

Anyone know where React Native stands in modern development - especially when compared to Flutter and the upcoming Compose. All the native frameworks are also React inspired. I personally love the work done by Airbnb for its Android MvRx framework. Again, React inspired

React and it's model are great. React Native on the other hand is leaky, heavy and you'll spend a bunch of time fiddling with packages, upgrading them, tracking down weird linking issues and ultimately writing some Objective-C / Java code to debug / glue / fix whatever native API you're dealing with. Thats only from my experience though. I would much rather the Compose / SwiftUI direction.

This is exactly my experience too. It’s an absolute nightmare juggling three package managers at once.
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