31–40 of 198 posts
Firefox needs to catch up on PWA support for desktop, Safari too.
What's missing is the ability to integrate it with my OS app launcher, though I can get around that by adding my own launcher. Something like:
firefox --ssb="https://news.ycombinator.com"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…
"Why did all my data get deleted? How can I get it back?"
and
"Why is it saying the browser won't let me store more data?"
The user's desires are pretty clear in both cases, but it's very unclear how the user can get what they want.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Good for users" was in the context of PWAs, not installed PWAs. Clearly the user's expectation is that clearing browsing data will clear data for web apps they navigate to in the browser. 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 cer…
Keeping the user logged in is not the issue. A PWA can inject a unique ID into the installation in various ways. The problem is the data. Imagine a text editor where all your text documents are gone after you cleared the data of a different app, the browser. I wrote a fitness app as a PWA some time ago and its pretty annoying to download all the instruction videos again every time you clear your "browser data". Plus…
One way to address that issue is the native file system access APIs[0] coming soon, available today in Chrome Canary and Edge Canary. There, you'd be able to save your documents to the user's file system, just like a native app would. Those files will be exempt from any browser data clearing.
> all infos about which exercises you did and when is gone for good of course.
Might be good to store that data on the server. I realize not all PWAs have a proper backend server, but that sounds like a good candidate.
[0]: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=853326
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.
One of the issues is that storage in a PWA is done via localStorage or IndexedDB... both of which aren't really available outside of the browser.
Also, part of the benefit of a PWA is being able to be in mobile devices and 'storage' there is different than on the desktop.
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.
Discoverability is an issue too. If your users search for your app keyword there then you're more easily found
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "What's the sense in publishing your PWA in the Store? We've trained a generation of users to look for apps in app stores. I blogged about this here[0], but having your PWA in app stores means more users for your app. [0]: https://debuggerdotbreak.judahgabriel.com/2018/04/13/i-built...
I actually had just read this blog post prior to posting my comment. There's a lot of good insight on HOW to publish but I didn't see any compelling evidence on WHY to publish (specific traffic numbers, etc).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keeping the user logged in is not the issue. A PWA can inject a unique ID into the installation in various ways. The problem is the data. Imagine a text editor where all your text documents are gone after you cleared the data of a different app, the browser. I wrote a fitness app as a PWA some time ago and its pretty annoying to download all the instruction videos again every time you clear your "browser data". Plus…
> "Imagine a text editor where all your text documents are gone after you cleared the browser data" One way to address that issue is the native file system access APIs[0] coming soon, available today in Chrome Canary and Edge Canary. There, you'd be able to save your documents to the user's file system, just like a native app would. Those files will be exempt from any browser data clearing. > all infos about which ex…
Great, so there is light at the end of the tunnel!
> store that data on the server
Well, we talked about that already:
You seem to be heavily involved in the PWABuilder website. Can you explain why the PWA needs to register a pushManager? I'd like to publish my app without setting up push notifications.
If you're referring to the PWABuilder analysis page, yeah, we hear your feedback. We're going to be revamping that page in the coming months. We'll deal with push notification score when we do that.
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.
You can request persistent storage that isn't cleared.
kinlan is referring to this web API[0], which allows a PWA to store data persistently.