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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

#841

Post by Razengan »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #798
Razengan wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I wouldn't attribute it to laziness. Quality can really suffer when you need to maintain so many code bases. Not all teams have those kinds of resources.

Perhaps Electron/PWA should be seen as a last resort, not the norm, reserved for exactly such a situation: when you don’t have the resources to build native for all platforms.

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

#842

Post by specialist »

thu2111 wrote: post #819
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…

"some sort of coherent view on how the tension between users, content providers and advertisers"

Please share anything you think and find.

Balancing these kinds of trilemmas, on a knife's edge, is my metaphor for designing open markets, governance, democracy, planning, and so forth.

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

#843

Post by roblabla »

tomnipotent wrote: post #779
roblabla wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is actively refusing to implement the standard for installable webapps (PWA). So, Apple is intentionally crippling a feature on the grounds of privacy with no possible remedy. This decision comes from an actor that is protecting their business interests. It might have some positive side-effect for some users, and of course Apple will spin it that way. But in the end Apple is very agressively hampering the web's…

Can you link me to a standard? I checked the W3C, and other than the disparate API's used by PWA's I don't see a "PWA standard" anywhere.

The standard is called "web app manifest". You can find it at https://w3c.github.io/manifest/.

Note that Apple does support PWA to some degree. My understanding is that they don't support onbeforeinstallprompt, which means you can't create an ergonomic, in-browser installation flow. You have to manually go in the browser menu to find an "Add to Homescreen" button, or something along those lines.

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

#844

Post by Silhouette »

madeofpalk wrote: post #822
Silhouette wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a web developer, I've never believed Apple has hindered web development on their platform, purposefully or not. [...] As I see it, their focus is on the user, which is why they've been slow to adopt APIs that are privacy concerns, or drain battery, or have other negative implications. As another web developer, I find this entirely unrealistic. Apple's QoI even for popular new features like the HTML5 media elements…

Just to be clear, Apple didn't kill Flash, mobile killed Flash. Even on the Android phones that supported Flash, it ran like shit and drained battery. Apple just never opted into that experience. This revisionist history, of seeing people wanting the proprietary Flash to come back, is crazy.

Just to be clear, Apple didn't kill Flash, mobile killed Flash.

I don't think that generalisation is warranted.

Apple refused to support Flash at all, meaning everyone who wanted to provide (among other things) audio/video content had to switch to the nascent HTML5 functionality, which was at that time and for some years afterwards inferior to Flash in almost every way except availability.

In that situation, it made little sense to invest in better Flash support on Android as it was presumably seen as a dying technology. However, there was no inherent reason why Flash couldn't have been improved to use less battery in the same way that the browsers themselves were, or that Flash could not have taken advantage of better hardware support on mobile devices for computationally expensive tasks like video decoding as this became available with newer devices.

This revisionist history, of seeing people wanting the proprietary Flash to come back, is crazy.

There's nothing revisionist in saying that people wanted A/V content on their sites, that Flash player had been by far the dominant way of providing that content up to that point, or that the then-new HTML5 alternatives were also very poor in quality and performance on mobile for several years afterwards.

Remember how for several years everyone with iPhones couldn't watch the videos on a lot of websites, and how excited people were when the big video hosting sites started adding HTML5 players and, in time, support for better codecs? Probably many of those people had no idea what Flash or HTML5 even were, so I don't suppose they did "want Flash to come back", but they certainly weren't happy that they couldn't watch videos on websites like everyone else.

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

#845

Post by falcolas »

osrec wrote: post #573
falcolas wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can personally think of cases (not that PWAs have ever been anything but fragile when it comes to locally stored data), but as a user, the occasional clearing of super cookies is a bigger boon.

I don't disagree that local data for PWAs has always been fragile. I wished browsers were taking steps to make it less fragile, as opposed to more fragile. It would allow certain use cases to become valid for PWAs, thereby circumventing the need to create a 10mb native app for something that can be deployed much more easily and quickly with 30kb of Javascript.

Respectfully, I haven't visited an online SPA with under 100kb of Javascript in a very long time. Anytime I care to look, they are almost always in the 5mb range.

So, an offline app's size, when compared to just browsing the web, isn't a compelling difference (especially since it's downloaded maybe once a month or so).

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

#846

Post by Silhouette »

kevsim wrote: post #789
Silhouette wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does something like allowing data to be stored by a web app that isn't even being used for more than a week cause your laptop to lose 30 minutes of battery life?

It doesn't as the two have no connections whatsoever. The point was that Safari is the most battery efficient browser overall on MacOS, so they're willing to put up with sub-standard support for web standards if their battery lasts longer.

I'm sure it will be a great comfort of them to not be able to use their computer for useful things for a bit longer before they have to plug it in. :-)

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

#847

Post by Silhouette »

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…

Chrome is the new IE in the embrace-and-extend sense (the early IE that won the browser war).

Safari is the new IE in the stagnating, not supporting new functionality, not fixing long-standing bugs sense (that same early IE several years later).

Neither of these is a good thing or to be encouraged.

Please don't get me started on the oxymoron that is "living standards". I think that idea is responsible for a great deal of what has gone wrong with the web ecosystem in recent years.

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

#848

Post by searchableguy »

hutzlibu wrote: post #814
searchableguy wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Oh, yeah before. Though, I think it should also show that screen if a user hasn't used the app for a while.

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

#849

Post by ben509 »

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?

Why should customers pay for the development and maintenance of three apps when one is entirely sufficient for their needs?

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

#850

Post by OzzyB »

72deluxe wrote: post #295
OzzyB wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you start refering to the "i" in "iPhone" as Intranet and not ~Internet~ then we're cool.

My iPod Classic has no intranet or internet. What does the "i" mean in that case???

iPod was that Harddrive MP3 Player that piggybacked on the MP3 download craze people were doing on the internet, obviously.
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