11–20 of 198 posts
The main problem I see in PWAs these days is that they cannot permanently store data on the device. As soon as the user deletes their "browser data", all the data of the PWAs on the device is lost too. If PWAs would get their own permanent storage like other apps, it would be a huge step forward.
I wonder if they're doing this for the Surface Duo launch.
This collaboration with Google took place because Google revamped their "PWAs in the Store" story. It used to be a very basic story: a native app wrapping a web view that loads your PWA. Those worked, but didn't support some modern APIs (e.g. service worker, IIRC), didn't share cookies and login information with the browser, and other problems.
Google revamped the story here to a more first-class approach for PWAs in their Store. It's called "Trusted Web Activities."
And earlier this year, Google created Bubblewrap, a command line tool to generate a proper Trusted Web Activity for publishing in their Store. So we wanted to take advantage of that new and better approach. That's really our reason for collaboration here.
The main problem I see in PWAs these days is that they cannot permanently store data on the device. As soon as the user deletes their "browser data", all the data of the PWAs on the device is lost too. If PWAs would get their own permanent storage like other apps, it would be a huge step forward.
Certainly it's true PWAs are subject to the user's desires about browser data. I think that's a good thing for users. PWAs usually store client-side data as a kind of cache: cookies, local storage, service worker cache. Caches are not meant to be permanent. There may be room for improvement here, however. One might imagine that clearing browser data shouldn't clear data for installed PWAs. That's an argument worth fu…
Not being able to reliably store data on the device means that PWAs have to send the users data over the internet and store it on an external server. I would think users rather do not like that.
I am only talking about installed PWAs here. Of course not every website should be able to avoid having its cookies deleted.
What's the sense in publishing your PWA in the Play Store? Chrome already prompts the user if they'd like to install a PWA shortcut when you visit the site. I ask because it costs $25 and while I have a lot of time on my hands I'm a cheap ass.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Certainly it's true PWAs are subject to the user's desires about browser data. I think that's a good thing for users. PWAs usually store client-side data as a kind of cache: cookies, local storage, service worker cache. Caches are not meant to be permanent. There may be room for improvement here, however. One might imagine that clearing browser data shouldn't clear data for installed PWAs. That's an argument worth fu…
Can you elaborate why it could be a good thing for users? Not being able to reliably store data on the device means that PWAs have to send the users data over the internet and store it on an external server. I would think users rather do not like that. I am only talking about installed PWAs here. Of course not every website should be able to avoid having its cookies deleted.
Installed PWAs is another question. I suspect users will be surprised if they clear their browsing data only to discover they have to login again to Twitter, for example.
I may raise this question to the Edge Chromium team. I'm certain it's been raised before, but with Microsoft making PWAs first-class on Windows[0], this becomes a more prominent issue.
[0]: https://www.windowscentral.com/heres-how-microsoft-making-ed...