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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

#521

Post by notduncansmith »

beering wrote: post #442
dubcanada wrote: post #436

I don't understand what the problem is. I can easily go to the settings area and delete my entire browser cache (Remove All Website Data), in fact if you are running low of space it even tells you to do it. Why are people assuming things stored on a browser are a good place to store things. Nothing stored on a browser should be assumed to be forever.

If you read the article, that's the issue the author was talking about: it's basically impossible to make an app that can store its data locally, instead of on some web server. All apps that you download from App Store can live offline, where they're usable without Internet or trusting some faraway web server. You can't make a web app that can do that, and to some people it smells like Apple trying to force developer…

If you read the update from webkit.org, you'll see that it's still quite possible to store data locally.

Link: https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki...

Relevant quote (emphasis mine):

> Now ITP has aligned the remaining script-writable storage forms with the existing client-side cookie restriction, deleting all of a website’s script-writable storage after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site.

If a website hasn't been used for 7 days, I'm happy for its data to disappear and save space on my device.

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

#522

Post by falcolas »

lliamander wrote: post #504
jfb wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I promise you that Apple does not give a shit about the revenue from the developer program.

Then why not make it free?

That's easy. It adds a hurdle for people who make malicious or fraudulent apps. It's not free, but neither is it MSDN levels of absurdity.

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

#523

Post by soapdog »

alkonaut wrote: post #498
soapdog wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the OP, I use a lot of PWAs. My main machine is a Surface Pro X and I don't have native apps (as in native aarch64 binaries) for many of the things I'd like to use. So, I'm using PWAs for Instagram, Twitter, Kindle, Pinafore (mastodon client), Spotify, and some of my own. I was developing a feed reader that was supposed to be a client-side-only PWA but that's tricky.

What is spotify pwa offering that is an improvement over their regular web app? Is it offline streaming (downloaded playlists)?

Their regular web app is a pwa... thats the beauty of it. PWAs are not different offer, they are just enhancement on top of web apps. Good PWAs are invisible.

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

#524

Post by Aaargh20318 »

beering wrote: post #442
dubcanada wrote: post #436

I don't understand what the problem is. I can easily go to the settings area and delete my entire browser cache (Remove All Website Data), in fact if you are running low of space it even tells you to do it. Why are people assuming things stored on a browser are a good place to store things. Nothing stored on a browser should be assumed to be forever.

If you read the article, that's the issue the author was talking about: it's basically impossible to make an app that can store its data locally, instead of on some web server. All apps that you download from App Store can live offline, where they're usable without Internet or trusting some faraway web server. You can't make a web app that can do that, and to some people it smells like Apple trying to force developer…

> it's basically impossible to make an app that can store its data locally, instead of on some web server.

No, that is trivial to do: just make an actual damn application.

What the author is complaining about is that it’s impossible to make a text document that pretends to be an application that stores data in ways they were never intended to be stored.

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

#525

Post by rstupek »

vbezhenar wrote: post #55
scarface74 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes because think of all the money Apple gets from taking 30% all of the free apps that would be free web apps....

There are very few free apps. Most of apps are paid with ads or external subscription. And Apple wants cut there as well.

Apple doesn't get a cut of ads within apps. A free app with ads doesn't make Apple any more then the $99/year for being a developer

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

#526

Post by falcolas »

woodson wrote: post #485
snazz wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users want to be able to log in and see their data from any device. If the whole idea is that there is no server that the data is stored on, then you can't have a sync function, can you? Do any of you have an example of a good offline-only PWA that will be affected by this?

It means you constantly have to re-login on a PWA (e.g. Twitters web client PWA).

Constantly being weekly at most frequent in this case.

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

#527

Post by XaspR8d »

tyingq wrote: post #182
diggan wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Does this mean I'll soon be setting up an dummy "cookie maker" endpoint on my server that turns XHR body data into HTTPS cookie data as a workaround? :/

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

#528

Post by RussianCow »

notduncansmith wrote: post #521
beering wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the article, that's the issue the author was talking about: it's basically impossible to make an app that can store its data locally, instead of on some web server. All apps that you download from App Store can live offline, where they're usable without Internet or trusting some faraway web server. You can't make a web app that can do that, and to some people it smells like Apple trying to force developer…

If you read the update from webkit.org, you'll see that it's still quite possible to store data locally. Link: https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki... Relevant quote (emphasis mine): > Now ITP has aligned the remaining script-writable storage forms with the existing client-side cookie restriction, deleting all of a website’s script-writable storage after seven days of Safari use without user i…

7 days is actually a really short period. There are lots of apps and websites that I only open on my phone every now and then. I would never use them if I had to log in almost every time.

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

#529

Post by pcdoodle »

wubin wrote: post #483

The source clarifies that this only applies to websites run within the Safari browser.[1] PWAs added to the home screen aren't affected. > As mentioned, the seven-day cap on script-writable storage is gated on "after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site." That is the case in Safari. Web applications added to the home screen are not part of Safari and thus have their own counter of days of use…

Thank you for the clarification.

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

#530

Post by soapdog »

WalterSear wrote: post #516

This sounds like a death-knell for my personal project: a fully decentralized collaborative task/wiki, built on ipfs, and encrypted against your blockchain wallet. I had just migrated the backend from firebase, too, and was ready to re-launch the beta next week. Pretty much any PWA that was using ipfs as anything but a caching/distribution layer is no longer viable. This is a huge blow to decentralization technology.…

I'm coming from a decentralization tech background as well and was working on similar stuff. That's why I'm so angry at this arbitrary decisions by Apple. This is just them breaking something that has been working well.
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