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Web Apps on macOS Sonoma 14 Beta

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Re: Web Apps on macOS Sonoma 14 Beta

#21

Post by nerdjon »

kelthuzad wrote: post #6

I don't want to be nit-picky and it might seem like a minor nuisance, but developers will need the ability to display a small banner/prompt to educate user's about the possibility of installing the website like a regular app, otherwise it will be lost on casuals. I really hope that Apple implements this fully and doesn't use strategic loopholes to sabotage Web Apps in small but clever ways.

I would think this could be done the same way that some websites that are optimized for web apps on iOS will have a prompt (often pointing to the control) saying you can save the website as a web app.

Re: Web Apps on macOS Sonoma 14 Beta

#22

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

kelthuzad wrote: post #6

I don't want to be nit-picky and it might seem like a minor nuisance, but developers will need the ability to display a small banner/prompt to educate user's about the possibility of installing the website like a regular app, otherwise it will be lost on casuals. I really hope that Apple implements this fully and doesn't use strategic loopholes to sabotage Web Apps in small but clever ways.

I wouldn't hold my breath. This always was and I think still is the problem with web apps on iOS: there's no good way to prompt the user to add it to their Home Screen. There's tons of sites out there that do it in their own ad-hoc way, but point in the wrong place because they were designed for Safari (n-1).

Meanwhile there's long been special affordances to make it easy to go to an App Store page. The purpose of a system is what it does…

Re: Web Apps on macOS Sonoma 14 Beta

#23

Post by Loveaway »

kelthuzad wrote: post #6

I don't want to be nit-picky and it might seem like a minor nuisance, but developers will need the ability to display a small banner/prompt to educate user's about the possibility of installing the website like a regular app, otherwise it will be lost on casuals. I really hope that Apple implements this fully and doesn't use strategic loopholes to sabotage Web Apps in small but clever ways.

Sorry to be dimissive, I know it's good intentions and all, but please don't do that. We don't need any more unsolicited banners or prompts. See it's one reason native apps are so much preferred over websites. Websites always have banners and whatnot, good apps don't do these things.

Re: Web Apps on macOS Sonoma 14 Beta

#24

Post by garblegarble »

tough wrote: post #16
garblegarble wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>very slow to adapt new web technologies I'm not sure this argument holds water given the shockingly old versions of Electron that vendors ship (WhatsApp is using 13.6.9, Slack 24.2.0, Skype 19.0.9, Discord 22.3.2...) Separately, is Safari actually slow to adopt new web technologies, or do they wait for standardisation and not simply accept the latest half-baked api of the week that Google builds for Chromium, uses a…

Push notifications where a chromium thing?

Remembering that this thread is in the context of using native browser engines for desktop apps vs Electron, and the original poster's suggestion was quite measured (i.e. we don't need electron for every desktop app). I don't think your point about push notifications is particularly relevant in this use case (personally I don't want desktop apps sending me any push notifications when they're closed - am I in a minority?)

A review comparing the bleeding edge versions of Chrome, Edge, Safari, and Firefox on caniuse.com shows that Safari is doing quite well: https://caniuse.com/?compare=chrome+117,edge+114,safari+TP,f...

Many of the areas of "no" for Safari are also "no" for Firefox, suggesting Chrome/Chromium features without a consensus amongst browser vendors, and many don't make any sense for desktop apps (e.g. Vibration/Gyro/Accelerometer APIs).

The GP made a fairly broad statement about web technology support which is what I was responding to - I know they've lagged behind on Push Notifications but what I'm arguing is that I think the narrative of "Safari is slow to adopt new web tech" is more a perception driven by Chromium constantly pushing new features into their browser (and them being regarded as 'web tech' rather than 'chrome tech' simply by nature of their position in the market) than Safari actually lagging behind standards implementation generally.

P.S. On Web Push, I don't think anybody whose older relatives use Android and get regular advert-laden push notifications (from sites they didn't realise they were accepting push notifications from, and often aren't sure how to stop them) would disagree that Google's attitude on Web Push was foolhardy, and Apple taking a more thought out approach is welcome (although I agree that it should have happened faster)

Re: Web Apps on macOS Sonoma 14 Beta

#25

Post by tolmasky »

Can Web Apps use tabs? As in, if I command click a link, will it open in a native tab in the Web App? If they can't, then a bunch of apps I want to use as web apps will have to stay within the main browser unfortunately.

Re: Web Apps on macOS Sonoma 14 Beta

#26

Post by galleywest200 »

tolmasky wrote: post #25

Can Web Apps use tabs? As in, if I command click a link, will it open in a native tab in the Web App? If they can't, then a bunch of apps I want to use as web apps will have to stay within the main browser unfortunately.

Having tabs would just make it a browser. Your description leads me to believe you want a browser anyways, not a single app experience whatsoever.

Re: Web Apps on macOS Sonoma 14 Beta

#27

Post by galleywest200 »

kelthuzad wrote: post #6

I don't want to be nit-picky and it might seem like a minor nuisance, but developers will need the ability to display a small banner/prompt to educate user's about the possibility of installing the website like a regular app, otherwise it will be lost on casuals. I really hope that Apple implements this fully and doesn't use strategic loopholes to sabotage Web Apps in small but clever ways.

Websites do this already. On my iPad I have used sites that suggest doing this.

Re: Web Apps on macOS Sonoma 14 Beta

#28

Post by breckenedge »

sambeau wrote: post #7

I would love to be able to ship apps in this, with a code bundle, so we don't need to ship a full Electron engine for every app. Even better, I wish someone would standardise it so we could still write one, ship to all platforms.

It is standardized and Safari isn’t the first. Edge already supports this on Windows, Chrome does everywhere, and they’re all using the same “manifest.json” declaration whenever display is set to “standalone”.

These all require a service worker, so that’s the destination of your pack and, conveniently, a cache for downloaded assets.

Re: Web Apps on macOS Sonoma 14 Beta

#29

Post by Someone »

kelthuzad wrote: post #6

I don't want to be nit-picky and it might seem like a minor nuisance, but developers will need the ability to display a small banner/prompt to educate user's about the possibility of installing the website like a regular app, otherwise it will be lost on casuals. I really hope that Apple implements this fully and doesn't use strategic loopholes to sabotage Web Apps in small but clever ways.

I think web pages can detect whether they’re running as a Web App using the display-mode media query (https://web.dev/learn/pwa/detection/)

If so, they can use that to help/annoy their users/casual visitors by showing an “install me as a web app” banner.

Re: Web Apps on macOS Sonoma 14 Beta

#30

Post by azangru »

Loveaway wrote: post #23
kelthuzad wrote: post #6

I don't want to be nit-picky and it might seem like a minor nuisance, but developers will need the ability to display a small banner/prompt to educate user's about the possibility of installing the website like a regular app, otherwise it will be lost on casuals. I really hope that Apple implements this fully and doesn't use strategic loopholes to sabotage Web Apps in small but clever ways.

Sorry to be dimissive, I know it's good intentions and all, but please don't do that. We don't need any more unsolicited banners or prompts. See it's one reason native apps are so much preferred over websites. Websites always have banners and whatnot, good apps don't do these things.

> We don't need any more unsolicited banners or prompts.

If you open https://squoosh.app on a phone (or in browser dev tools emulating a phone), you will see what I think is a great example of use of an install prompt that I personally would be totally ok with.

screenshot – https://i.imgur.com/NALZpz8.png

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