Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 198 posts

Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better

#41

Post by judah »

judah wrote: post #33
no_gravity wrote: post #24

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…

Also, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, you may also be interested in the Persistent Storage APIs: https://web.dev/persistent-storage/

Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better

#42

Post by paxys »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #27

Nice, I like the way Microsoft chose to ignore the bad blood with Google regarding its apps for Windows Phone and has embraced Android. PWA collaboration seems to be a step in the right direction, especially since Edge is using chromium and Microsoft seems to be building great PWA apps[1]. Although I'm not entirely sure about Google's end game with PWA[2], I hope these kind of collaboration motivates industries to bu…

New leadership definitely helps. Satya seems to want to move past the old way of doing things at Microsoft as aggressively as possible.

Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better

#43

Post by osrec »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #27

Nice, I like the way Microsoft chose to ignore the bad blood with Google regarding its apps for Windows Phone and has embraced Android. PWA collaboration seems to be a step in the right direction, especially since Edge is using chromium and Microsoft seems to be building great PWA apps[1]. Although I'm not entirely sure about Google's end game with PWA[2], I hope these kind of collaboration motivates industries to bu…

I agree. Apple is stifling innovation by not supporting certain APIs.

They need to stop doing this, or they will hurt themselves in the long run. As it is, most people use Safari on iOS because they are forced to - all other browsers on iOS are forced to use WKWebView, which basically means they are wrappers around Safari's view.

To this day, I can't understand why their users stand for this. In this regard, Apple reminds me of a cult leader brainwashing their followers into believing the cult's way is the best way. Makes me a little sick actually.

Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better

#44

Post by _bxg1 »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #27

Nice, I like the way Microsoft chose to ignore the bad blood with Google regarding its apps for Windows Phone and has embraced Android. PWA collaboration seems to be a step in the right direction, especially since Edge is using chromium and Microsoft seems to be building great PWA apps[1]. Although I'm not entirely sure about Google's end game with PWA[2], I hope these kind of collaboration motivates industries to bu…

Microsoft has also heavily invested in the web ecosystem via VSCode, TypeScript, and NPM. Not to mention that Office is now chiefly a web app. My guess is that, among other things, they see it as a way to cultivate fields adjacent to Azure and attract customers to it.

Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better

#45

Post by pjmlp »

yeahgoodok wrote: post #16

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.

You can get access to native APIs that way, without the typical hybrid approach.

Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better

#46

Post by mandeeeeeep »

I remember when the microsoft app store on windows 8 were a bunch of websites wrapped into an app. It really lowered the quality of apps and the overall appeal of the windows app store.

That being said, how will PWAs get around the apple and google requirements that apps downloadable from their stores where they mention apps can't just be a website wrapped into an app?

Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better

#47

Post by pjmlp »

FiddlerClamp wrote: post #12

I wonder if they're doing this for the Surface Duo launch.

They already had this with Edge and Windows Store.

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa/

The best part was that this way WinRT APIs are directly exposed as browser APIs, no need for hybrid solutions.

This is just the next step using the Chrome based engine instead.

Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better

#48

Post by pjmlp »

davrous wrote: post #30
Nightshaxx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to customize it a bit more to make it clear this is an offical blog. For a few seconds when reading this on mobile I was super confused if this was official or just someone outside MS writing about it.

Thanks for this feedback. We're thinking about hosting a blogging platform directly under pwabuilder.com. We've got a small team that was mainly focused on writing new features & code but we definitely need to better address our blogging approach.

Something like this I would expect to be be part of Edge Developer Blog, given https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa/

Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better

#49

Post by judah »

mandeeeeeep wrote: post #46

I remember when the microsoft app store on windows 8 were a bunch of websites wrapped into an app. It really lowered the quality of apps and the overall appeal of the windows app store. That being said, how will PWAs get around the apple and google requirements that apps downloadable from their stores where they mention apps can't just be a website wrapped into an app?

> "It really lowered the quality of apps and the overall appeal of the windows app store...how will PWAs get around the apple and google requirements that apps downloadable from their stores where they mention apps can't just be a website wrapped into an app"

Fair question. Google is implementing a new quality bar for PWAs in their store. See this post[0] for details.

Microsoft also is doing work in this area. We're not ready to share details, but will likely in the coming months.

With PWABuilder, our goal is to help devs build quality PWAs: ones with rich offline experiences, measurably great performance, and apps that are functionally rich. This implies something more than e.g. your resume packaged as a PWA. Towards that end, PWABuilder analyzes your PWA and gives you feedback on capabilities: encourages use of our rich web components[1], helps you build a great offline experience[2], and more. Whether your app is functionally useful (i.e. not just a brochure) is a quality bar left to app stores themselves.

[0]: https://twitter.com/ChromiumDev/status/1276223634550353920

[1]: https://components.pwabuilder.com

[2]: https://www.pwabuilder.com/serviceworker

Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better

#50

Post by iggldiggl »

no_gravity wrote: post #37
judah wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

> Native File System API Great, so there is light at the end of the tunnel! > store that data on the server Well, we talked about that already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23793541

I wonder how Mozilla will handle this, given that so far they deemed file system access as too dangerous even for extensions, nevermind random web pages…
Post reply on HN