I miss Chrome apps. What was wrong with them? Genuine question.
They were proprietary; only worked in chrome. Progressive webapps are built out of open standards, and will ideally eventually work everywhere.
Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better
91–100 of 198 posts
Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better
#92I really wish that firefox and ubuntu would hop on board with this. It seems like they both should be at the forefront of this, but for some reason it's still impossible to make a PWA show up in my app list on ubuntu without installing chrome. Firefox on android does a great job of notifying and offering to install PWAs, but on desktop seems to pretend they don't exist. The bug report for adding any PWA support on de…
The "app list" in GNOME is a database of XDG desktop files which you can create manually if you want. Refer to the freedesktop.org docs.
Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better
#93With PWAs, you have to write apps in HTML, CSS, and JS, which seems worse than natively compiled languages like Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, etc. This, I feel, is a fundamental problem. Perhaps the solution instead is that we need a way to distribute natively compilable apps via other means, maybe through a website but also through other app stores not subject to the Google / Apple duopoly; so basically PWA level access a…
> With PWAs, you have to write apps in HTML, CSS, and JS, which seems worse than natively compiled languages like Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, etc. This, I feel, is a fundamental problem. Flutter supports compiling to PWAs https://flutter.dev/web
It does, but Flutter web performance is worse than when compiled to apps.
Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better
#94With PWAs, you have to write apps in HTML, CSS, and JS, which seems worse than natively compiled languages like Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, etc. This, I feel, is a fundamental problem. Perhaps the solution instead is that we need a way to distribute natively compilable apps via other means, maybe through a website but also through other app stores not subject to the Google / Apple duopoly; so basically PWA level access a…
PWAs can't use WebAssembly?
Perhaps, but WASM isn't ready yet.
Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better
#95Nice, 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 re…
Apple is making the right decision here.
My iOS device has never once shown me "this website requires Chrome." I get to use the mobile web without needing Google. And Apple is the only reason why.
Maybe some day, web apps will become so undeniably awesome that Safari's position is untenable. But the agitation is not coming from iOS users missing out on awesome PWAs. Instead it's web developers, who are just annoyed that they have to actually respect the conventions of the platform they're building for.
Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better
#96With PWAs, you have to write apps in HTML, CSS, and JS, which seems worse than natively compiled languages like Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, etc. This, I feel, is a fundamental problem. Perhaps the solution instead is that we need a way to distribute natively compilable apps via other means, maybe through a website but also through other app stores not subject to the Google / Apple duopoly; so basically PWA level access a…
Tongue in cheek reference to WebAssembly?
I actually was thinking more in line with how you can download Android APKs and install them directly. More like F-Droid, especially for a platform like Apple that doesn't allow third party app stores.
Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, would be cool. Firefox is currently unusable on mobile :/
I'm going to guess you're on iOS where you don't actually have Firefox (or any other actual browsers besides Safari). Firefox on iOS (like all iOS browsers) is required by App store rules to basically just skin Safari. On Android, Firefox is the MOST usable browser.
It's just not as responsive as Chrome :/
Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
99.9% of users don’t even know what a browser engine is. Why would they care that they’re using WebKit instead of gecko or chromium? What they want is their bookmarks and such to sync between browsers across devices, and Apple lets that work just fine. As an iPhone user I actually like that all phones use the same engine. It prevents the “this website is better viewed in ” pop up from affecting mobile users (and in p…
If the last period of monoculture (the IE one) had persisted, most sites wouldn't have worked for any iOS users. iOS might not been feasible at all.
Yes, and the monoculture is Chrome, with Mobile Safari the holdout
Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better
#99Nice, 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…
PWAs would be very off brand for iOS. It would allow all kinds of spammy low-quality apps to masquerade as iOS apps without any vetting from Apple.
Part of Apple's success is their extreme stubbornness. They decide something and make zero compromises. The consumer tech industry is forced to fall in line with whatever they want; they have final veto power over all new consumer tech basically.
Re: Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh man, not sure where to begin with responding to this. I'm not saying Google is incredible (my opinion is quite the contrary actually). However, I am saying Apple is holding the web back, in a fairly annoying way, for developers. The fact that they are a rich corporate does not mean they always will be, or that they're conducting their business in the best way possible. There are plenty of examples of rich tech bus…
> I'm not saying Google is incredible (my opinion is quite the contrary actually). However, I am saying Apple is holding the web back, in a fairly annoying way, for developers. Right. Because Google, who dominates the entire web standards spectrum, is known for creating well thought-out, well-designed APIs that take into consideration concerns and criticism, and thinking long-term of the web as a whole. Oh wait, they…
> Up to and including the point where both Mozilla and Safari are saying they won't implement certain functionality because of glaring holes in the design, and Chrome not only shipping the features, but making them GA.
I feel this is being dismissed by many people, but there's a lot of truth in this statement. Here's an example of this at play:
https://twitter.com/Rich_Harris/status/1220412711768666114
Chrome devrels and cheerleaders pile on Safari and Firefox all the time for not adhering to Chrome's agenda and frame it as "holding the web back." But the true thing that holds the web back is a browser monoculture.