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Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

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Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#181

Post by donatj »

diegoperini wrote: post #165

I already have a comment on this subject in a thread here but I believe this should be stressed more explicitly. Apple didn't kill offline web apps. You can always add an interaction to your app which exports the stored data into a file which then can be saved by the user. It can be done entirely on the client side as well. If anything died here, it is the implicit consent by the user for allowing unnoticed storage s…

This might technically work, but is an absurdly user-unfriendly.

Name a modern game that required you to manually manage game state files, let alone didn’t have autosave. It’s a feature users expect, and they’re going to have a bad time. I don’t want to play a quick game on my phone and have to remember to save and where I am keeping my save files.

I’d argue a far better options would be just to treat local storage as a permission like camera or microphones.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#182

Post by tyingq »

diggan wrote: post #148
gsnedders wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cookies expire in the same way.

With cookies you can set the expire time yourself, as a developer. And looking at the list of the original blogpost from webkit ( https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki... ) it shows the following will be affected by the 7 day cap: Indexed DB, LocalStorage, Media keys, SessionStorage, Service Worker registrations Since cookies are not mentioned, I'm assuming it's NOT affected by the 7 day cap bu…

If the cookie is set by http headers, yes. If it's set with client side js, though, it's capped at 7 days (since ITP 2.1).

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#183

Post by DiabloD3 »

floatingatoll wrote: post #169

Perhaps the author doesn't realize that WebKit is open source. They could have used their screed to propose to the WebKit team that a first-party page loaded from a file:/// URI not have its client-side storage subject to the 7-day purge, by setting the "firstPartyWebsiteDataRemovalMode" network connection property to "none" — patch included! But they did not, which is quite disappointing. The new change to ITP is he…

Apple does not use that Webkit branch, however. They maintain their own branch internally that cherry picks from upstream. Webkit could very well accept a patch, and then Safari never ships that patch because they disagreed with it for use in Safari.

Also, unrelated fun fact: Did you know Webkit still uses svn? That Github repo you linked to is a clone of Webkit's own git repo (git.webkit.org), which is a mirror of their actual repo (svn.webkit.org).

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#184

Post by jedieaston »

untog wrote: post #134
madeofpalk wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m guessing that Apple will start hindering web apps because the new mouse support in iPadOS is going to be such a boon to web apps. As a web developer , I've never believed Apple has hindered web development on their platform, purposefully or not. They just don't spend their resources adding in WebBluetooth or whatever new API-of-the-day Google has decided to come up with. As I see it, their focus is on the user…

That’s a very rosy way of looking at it. iOS has had bugs with its “add to home screen” webapps that kicked around literally for years . If they were being “user first” they’d support it fully or not support it at all. Instead they implemented then neglected it.

Probably because Apple giving a crap about web apps was depreciated with the release of iPhone OS 2.0 and the App Store over a decade ago. I'd bet few users even use the "add to home screen" button outside of corporate environments that want to add a shortcut to internal sites.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#185

Post by [deleted] »

untog wrote: post #149
machello13 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many users even know or care about that feature?

How is that relevant to the conversation? If it is so little-used as to be irrelevant then the user-first thing to do would be to remove the functionality but Apple haven’t. I can speak from personal experience that users do use it when you include specific instructions on how to use it. And it’s used in a number of corporate settings for installing webapps on an iPad.

[deleted]

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#186

Post by Touche »

Veen wrote: post #123
diggan wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This particular move takes something that is possible in web applications today and makes it not possible in the future (offline capable frontend-only applications), making the gap between native applications and browser applications further, so developers who need to build apps that works offline on iPhone, will only be able to use Apples own technologies for doing so, in a non-cross-platform way. Which in general,…

It could also be exactly what they say it is: a way to prevent the abuse of local storage for tracking.

It's both.

They could restrict these APIs to "installed" web apps via the web app manifest file, if they were to adopt that. Maybe they will in the future, but for now they've just made web apps far less powerful.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#187

Post by snemvalts »

diegoperini wrote: post #165

I already have a comment on this subject in a thread here but I believe this should be stressed more explicitly. Apple didn't kill offline web apps. You can always add an interaction to your app which exports the stored data into a file which then can be saved by the user. It can be done entirely on the client side as well. If anything died here, it is the implicit consent by the user for allowing unnoticed storage s…

So i can start to manage save files on my disk? in 2020?? this is absurd.

apple should fix their safari bugs first before starting with this nonsense.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#188

Post by gear54rus »

madeofpalk wrote: post #125
robenkleene wrote: post #60

I’m guessing that Apple will start hindering web apps because the new mouse support in iPadOS is going to be such a boon to web apps. Because of sandboxing, web apps are the only cross-platform apps that can run in their full versions on iPadOS. I wrote a quick summary of the situation[0]. Therefore, since native apps are more of a platform differentiator than web apps, moving forward we can expect Apple to start sys…

> I’m guessing that Apple will start hindering web apps because the new mouse support in iPadOS is going to be such a boon to web apps. As a web developer , I've never believed Apple has hindered web development on their platform, purposefully or not. They just don't spend their resources adding in WebBluetooth or whatever new API-of-the-day Google has decided to come up with. As I see it, their focus is on the user…

> As I see it, their focus is on the user,

Oh and let me guess, they know better than me that I don't need this or that.

Let them suffocate inside their poisonous wall garden as the web gets richer and richer.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#189

Post by joeblau »

donatj wrote: post #181
diegoperini wrote: post #165

I already have a comment on this subject in a thread here but I believe this should be stressed more explicitly. Apple didn't kill offline web apps. You can always add an interaction to your app which exports the stored data into a file which then can be saved by the user. It can be done entirely on the client side as well. If anything died here, it is the implicit consent by the user for allowing unnoticed storage s…

This might technically work, but is an absurdly user-unfriendly. Name a modern game that required you to manually manage game state files, let alone didn’t have autosave. It’s a feature users expect, and they’re going to have a bad time. I don’t want to play a quick game on my phone and have to remember to save and where I am keeping my save files. I’d argue a far better options would be just to treat local storage a…

I don’t even play games but I wouldn’t expect a web game to store all of its metadata in my local storage. I would expect it to store data on their own severs and only store active gameplay information locally.

My browser storage is not a game developers long term storage, its a cache.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#190

Post by sneak »

A bit offtopic, but the following is my basis for interpreting privacy-related claims from Apple.

I noticed a text editor I bought from the Mac App Store, iA Writer, includes silent spyware that transmits your activity back to the developer without notice or consent (thank you, Little Snitch). Apparently, I "consented" to this in the Mac App Store ToS (right).

When I left a negative review on the app, their response was "we aren't doing anything not permitted by Apple in the App Store".

I don't use App Store apps any longer, and I take most of what Apple says about privacy with a huge grain of salt.

PS: OSX phones home to Apple in about a dozen different ways even with iCloud entirely disabled and all reporting/telemetry/feedback options turned off during the OOBE/setup. Try doing booting a fresh install of macOS with Little Snitch, but disable the Apple/OS exemption in Little Snitch's rules. I was astounded. Dozens of things.

I wonder if there's any major, widespread GUI OS in a default configuration that does not transmit to your ISP and third parties (including government snoops) when you open a local text file to write. I block all of these requests; most do not.

I am reminded of Winston Smith's paper journal.

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