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Show HN: Pep – Turn Your Website into a Progressive Web App

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Re: Show HN: Pep – Turn Your Website into a Progressive Web App

#11

Post by TACIXAT »

spectramax wrote: post #7

Can someone explain what a PWA is? I tried reading the official Mozilla docs and wikipedia. I don't understand - how do these apps work like "native" apps if they are not using native UI kits and running inside a browser? That's not really "native". Native app to me is like macOS Mail or Sublime Text. I don't consider any of the electron apps (Slack, VSCode) as "native". There is a real beauty of using native apps. I…

PWA is basically a mobile optimized (read: responsive) website that caches page content and data (see IndexedDB). Mobile browsers have the option of "installing" them, basically saving the data and making a shortcut in your app drawer / home screen. There is also support for push notifications but not on iOS. The idea is basically a web page that still functions if you lose connectivity.

Re: Show HN: Pep – Turn Your Website into a Progressive Web App

#12

Post by K0nserv »

spectramax wrote: post #7

Can someone explain what a PWA is? I tried reading the official Mozilla docs and wikipedia. I don't understand - how do these apps work like "native" apps if they are not using native UI kits and running inside a browser? That's not really "native". Native app to me is like macOS Mail or Sublime Text. I don't consider any of the electron apps (Slack, VSCode) as "native". There is a real beauty of using native apps. I…

I think you are a bit unfair towards the end of this and the focus on developers is misguided. I agree that the cross platform hype is a bad trend that sacrifices user experience for developer experience however one needs to look at the incentives that developer operate under before placing the blame solely with them. Businesses are equally or more to blame for the current state of things than individual developers.

> ...software engineering than say a C++ developer. BootCamp courses teach you how to make bloat...

Reeks of elitism

Re: Show HN: Pep – Turn Your Website into a Progressive Web App

#13

Post by K0nserv »

petersonh wrote: post #10
spectramax wrote: post #7

Can someone explain what a PWA is? I tried reading the official Mozilla docs and wikipedia. I don't understand - how do these apps work like "native" apps if they are not using native UI kits and running inside a browser? That's not really "native". Native app to me is like macOS Mail or Sublime Text. I don't consider any of the electron apps (Slack, VSCode) as "native". There is a real beauty of using native apps. I…

It's an "installable" web app - ie creates a desktop icon or mobile launch icon and removes the chrome from the browser so it looks like a native app. For mobile I believe there's a pop-up that prompts for install, on desktop you have to do it in the options menu I believe.

It's more than that, you've been able to do this with bookmarks on mobile platforms since day one. It also support offline use among other features.

Re: Show HN: Pep – Turn Your Website into a Progressive Web App

#14

Post by lucasverra »

I've deployed a full PWA (by lighthouse standard) and its hard to understand how can you comply with one line of code.

Ex how do you define the installable icon for the Add to home screen icon ? Or how do you choose what gets in the cache for offline access ?

PS : this is your score https://www.webpagetest.org/result/200227_PT_b799b0e13e0417b...

Re: Show HN: Pep – Turn Your Website into a Progressive Web App

#16

Post by z3t4 »

spectramax wrote: post #7

Can someone explain what a PWA is? I tried reading the official Mozilla docs and wikipedia. I don't understand - how do these apps work like "native" apps if they are not using native UI kits and running inside a browser? That's not really "native". Native app to me is like macOS Mail or Sublime Text. I don't consider any of the electron apps (Slack, VSCode) as "native". There is a real beauty of using native apps. I…

What if I told you that macOS Mail and Sublime Text was made with "web" techbology? You can make slow apps with bad UI in any language or framework, JavaScript just makes the barrier to entry lower, so you will get more shitty apps.

Progressive web app (PWA) just means that it use feature detection to enhance itself. The most notably features are "add2desktop" and "service workers". "add2desktop" lets you add the app to the app drawer, and service workers lets you manage the cache and, listen for push notifications, and acts like a proxy in front of the app, making it possible to serve from the cache while the user is offline.

Re: Show HN: Pep – Turn Your Website into a Progressive Web App

#17

Post by benrmatthews »

Kudos for making it so easy. If PWA is the way forward, then services like this will help accelerate adoption.

Will be good to see how this affects / slows down site performance.

On a separate note, how many users know about or bother to “Add to screen”? Can the number of users launching from the home screen be tracked?

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