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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

#191

Post by henriquez »

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…

Also you could sync data to an API and offer a login function. If the cookie expires, login and download your data again. This could be end-to-end encrypted for privacy, and having remote storage enables other clients to login and access the same data. Either way it's wise to have some kind of persistence option beyond just cookies and localStorage.

It's annoying how far Apple is behind Mozilla and Google when it comes to progressive web app functionality, but I don't think their action is as user-hostile as is being raised here.

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

#192

Post by Touche »

im3w1l wrote: post #56
vbezhenar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User not coming to website 7 days can't be invalid use-case. Losing important data simply because someone went on vacation is unacceptable.

So store this data on the server.

Cool, so now my movie library app has to host terabytes worth of movies and deal with copyright laws, just because Apple assumes that anyone using IndexedDB must have malicious intent.

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

#193

Post by Touche »

nradov wrote: post #64
bg0 wrote: post #5

I really appreciate this link. I would have never seen this otherwise. It's kind of a disappointment for us on the enterprise side. Our main offering is an offline app where people are disconnected from the internet for weeks and we use localStorage to validate who they are. It's a bit vague about how this affects apps that don't use safari. Nevertheless, we might have to start to really think about the user experien…

Have you considered porting to a native application?

I've considered just not supporting iOS.

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

#194

Post by donatj »

joeblau wrote: post #189
donatj wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The article as well as my concern here is not about the browser proper but web apps like you install onto your phone and one of the major points of is that they work offline despite t

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

#195

Post by chrisfinazzo »

lonelappde wrote: post #33
bg0 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, we actually don't use safari at all in our app. So this might not have an effect but it's pretty vague.

If you don't use Safari you can patch webkit to change the policy, right? Change 7 to 10000000

You could...but it's a change that the Webkit project would never accept and you would be forever diddling this value every time an update came along.

Sisyphus says 'Hi!'

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

#196

Post by kristiandupont »

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…

>I don't have any idea about how mobile browsers behave for the scenarios stated above.

That's the problem, it won't work there. Apples support for PWA's is frustrating to say the least.

It's fair that you might need consent from the user before storing and keeping large amounts of data, but by removing the option you are forcing a bunch of developers to make a native app instead of a webapp which I find quite infuriating.

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

#197

Post by diegoperini »

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…

Our suggestions are not mutually exclusive options. Both can coexist if the developers are ready for the implementation burden.

The issue with the permission model is there has to be a mechanism to prevent overuse which I believe is always worked around by annoying the user with the prompt as often as possible until they concede.

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

#198

Post by duxup »

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…

>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.

But... why? Drag the user through some dialogue to save a file locally / manage / be responsible for that and then deal with that whole deal? That seems like very... old / unnecessary.

The fact that applications store some random things locally to me is neither surprising nor a hassle. Browsers already cache files and etc. Unless I don't know something... LocalStorage and other non cookie options seem just fine / safe.

I get the concerns about cookies and such but this seems a step beyond what is needed into the realm of unnecessary / a hassle for the user.

Maybe I'm missing some bad patterns / dark patterns using LocalStorage and etc but it seems to throw them out with the bathwater.

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

#199

Post by aurbano »

sandstrom wrote: post #133

How would static "single-page" apps (HTML/JS/CSS) that store session tokens in localStorage avoid 7-day auto-logout? Perhaps using something like this: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Credential_... Anyone know of other Web APIs that could be used?

Cookies are a lot safer for authentication than localStorage. The only problem with this change is persisting data for offline use, not authenticating the user.

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

#200

Post by lern_too_spel »

_0w8t wrote: post #179
cageface wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

moving forward we can expect Apple to start systemically hindering web apps They have been doing this for quite some time now. Always ostensibly to protect users but always also conveniently putting webapps at a permanent disadvantage to native apps. For my part I'm not interested in being a user of a platform so hostile to the web that it disallows any third party browsers.

Apple disallows third-party web rendering engines. Google Chrome on iOS uses own networking stack. It is still a significant restriction, but it is rather understandable. Without it it could be just Blink everywhere at this point.

> Without it it could be just Blink everywhere at this point.

In what reality-distortioned universe is that worse than having a crippled web?

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