Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible • Hacker News Board

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

#811

Post by enos_feedler » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 8:31 AM UTC

Twisell wrote: post #781

jdauriemma wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some fantastic PWAs out there. Twitter is the one I use most regularly. I think one of the reasons we see a lot of less-polished PWAs is that the idea of the PWA appeals to businesses at certain stages. Larger shops can afford to ship native binaries to more than one platform, but a smaller operation can't. PWAs are presumably tempting to those types of product teams: you get multi-platform reach while trul…

Is Twitter really a PWA or just a nicely done responsive website? At this point the boundary is a unclear. Beside Twitter rely on server side storage and pretty much only store session token in the PWA "local storage" (largely speaking). And as a user I rather installed iOS native App to keep finer grained control on permissions. (I also use multi accounts not sure the PWA Handel that?)

This highlights a longstanding issue of PWA definition and how to position it against modern web practices and features. What is a PWA? Why is it even a thing?

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

#812

Post by gridlockd » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 8:33 AM UTC

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #673

gridlockd wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You must've been not following things. The web platform is an application platform and has developed to that end, for many years. Progressive Web Apps are applications based on standard Web APIs that are designed with the intent to en…

> The web platform is an application platform and has developed to that end, for many years. No it’s not. Using it like that is a lasagna of dirty hacks. The web is for structured text with hyperlinks, everything else is bullshit that doesn’t belong on the web.

> No it’s not. Using it like that is a lasagna of dirty hacks.

First it's a bunch of dirty hacks. Then it's an informal convention. Then it's a standard. Lots of technology evolved that way.

All the stakeholders driving the web standards forward are focusing on making it a more powerful application platform.

> The web is for structured text with hyperlinks, everything else is bullshit that doesn’t belong on the web.

That's your personal opinion on what the web platform should be, not what it is. Of course it's a crappy platform in many respects. Of course a lot of people don't like the way it goes. It doesn't matter.

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

#813

Post by enos_feedler » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 8:41 AM UTC

dzhiurgis wrote: post #683

jedieaston wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Facebook messenger is good use case for web app, but zuck want's to track you so you need to install app instead...

Try sending an AR video capture to someone over the web, lol

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

#814

Post by hutzlibu » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 8:52 AM UTC

searchableguy wrote: post #741

b1tr0t wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there, I'm the product manager for PWAs on the Chrome team. Very interested in hearing about pain points you've had building out PWAs, especially if there's features you were keen on that haven't been released. Easiest way to reach me is on Twitter: https://twitter.com/b1tr0t Fully agree with you that docs are all over the place. We've started to consolidate docs under web.dev, and the PWA section launched recentl…

More background services would be very nice even though it's a bit of a security nightmare. A request was opened almost 5 years ago for background geolocation services. Any plans for https://developers.google.com/nearby ? I don't want Google or central authorities to decide which PWAs are "trustworthy" directly to ask for certain permissions but there could be a way or compromise. I don't remember which feature it wa…

"I really want the first screen after installing PWAs to be their privacy policy or detailing which permissions/how they use them."

Wouldn't it make more sense, to display this info before you install a pwa?

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

#815

Post by koonsolo » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 9:03 AM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #593

koonsolo wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter client is a PWA.

Ok I think I'll have to rephrase the question: are there many widely used PWAs that actually go one step further than being a web app using a few of these APIs (spotify, twitter), and actually try to "mimic" desktop apps more (installation, icons, fully offline etc)?

I think you should ask the reverse question: are there many apps out there that are not just a frontend to a web service?

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

#816

Post by silon42 » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 9:11 AM UTC

starbugs wrote: post #82

silon42 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love for browsers to have an opt-in mechanism to preserve that data (also snapshot/restore/import/export it).

I bet there's tickets in both Google's and Apple's bug trackers from 2012 asking for that.

There should also be an reliable upgrade mechanism, so the app alway upgrades successfully and completely, no intermediate states where a network or other error would prevent offline functionality from working.

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

#817

Post by realusername » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 9:21 AM UTC

merrywhether wrote: post #786

Silhouette wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope not. Apple has had substandard support for modern web technologies in Safari for a long time, to the point where it is often referred to in the industry as the new IE. We've had enough of browsers breaking things that used to work in the name of false progress. Time for the grown-ups to take a careful look and see this for what it is.

You realize that custom, new, cutting-edge APIs (can you imagine the web without xhr?) was what made IE into the IE we talk about. Some they got right, some they got wrong, some were way too tied into IE’s parent’s ecosystem (sound familiar, AMP?). It’s once it stopped getting updated that it became a problem, as no one else had or planned to have some of its stuff, resulting in it being an oddball. Chrome fits the f…

It's not only custom cutting-edge APIs, there's a lot of common stuff which is broken in Safari, that's also why it's referred as the new IE. I personally had issues with forms, clicks, svgs, selects... It's really broken in many ways.

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

#818

Post by starbugs » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 9:37 AM UTC

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #201

starbugs wrote: post #29

Is this really that big of a problem? You had to be expecting that local storage is deleted without any notice anyway, in every web app.

I absolutely don't have that expectation. I built a comic reader app that I use on my Android tablet, which saves files to IndexedDB. I've been using this for over a year and no files have ever been deleted, even after I stopped using the app for a month or so. If Apple provided an alternative this would be ok. An alternative such as the native file access API (still a WIP). Or a prompt so that the user can allow lon…

Hint: they are a for profit company and want you to pay 30% of your app revenue. Don't expect any open web standard that can actually compete with native apps unless something in the market changes.

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

#819

Post by thu2111 » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 9:43 AM UTC

reilly3000 wrote: post #803

This is really in response to the irresponsible use of APIs for trackers. Evercookie is a stunning example of how far it can go... From their repo: - Standard HTTP Cookies - Flash Local Shared Objects - Silverlight Isolated Storage - CSS History Knocking - Storing cookies in HTTP ETags (Backend server required) - Storing cookies in Web cache (Backend server required) - HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) Pinning (w…

It's really in response to a confused, ad-hoc web privacy model that has never been designed and is simply incrementally patched over time in response to complaints from an equally confused, directionless and visionless 'privacy warrior' subculture.

Mobile apps suffer these kinds of problems far less, partly because it's understood that actually mobile users don't install apps then get upset about "tracking", in fact, the vast majority of apps will want you to sign in to some sort of account and those that don't will be using ad networks to fund themselves, that users understand and accept this and that throwing up permissions screens doesn't achieve much because users will typically grant the permissions. Privacy on mobile platforms is more about stopping activity the average user would recognise as illegitimate spying - turning on cameras and microphones to feed conversations to angry ex-girlfriends, that sort of thing.

If the web's architecture had some sort of coherent view on how the tension between users, content providers and advertisers should work, then we wouldn't see this steady endless churn of app-breaking API changes. Everyone would know the rules of the road and there'd be way less tension as a result. Mobile platforms aren't quite there because they were designed with security architectures that were then pressed into service as ad-hoc privacy architectures, but they're still far more coherent on the topic than the web.

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

#820

Post by ayoisaiah » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 9:57 AM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #739

PudgePacket wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, make 3 apps instead of 1? This was the whole idea behind PWA.

Yes, that's the whole idea behind having different devices and operating systems with different capabilities. Why should users suffer the lowest common denominator because of lazy developers?

It makes it a lot harder for solo developers or small companies to develop apps that work on all platforms