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Prisoners of Google Android development

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Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#221

Post by siva7 »

jarm0 wrote: post #105
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Android you have to pop open a menu and find the install option. That's not inherently discoverable as you need to know it's even possible, and most people don't. It would be trivial to present the user with a more proactive notification that a site can be installed as an app, or even include such a notice in their search results on Google, but they choose not to do so.

Actually nowadays it's not that bad anymore. Android browser itself offers installable PWA and there is an event called beforeinstallprompt event ( https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/befo... ), which can be used to perform PWA installation on user interaction. Of course it's not supported in every browser. iOS is more difficult since user needs to understand that "saving to home screen" is same a…

That’s not a PWA. Saving to home screen literally creates a link shortcut which just opens a new tab on your safari app. Apple never supported PWAs.

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#222

Post by [deleted] »

scarface_74 wrote: post #184
jarm0 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually nowadays it's not that bad anymore. Android browser itself offers installable PWA and there is an event called beforeinstallprompt event ( https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/befo... ), which can be used to perform PWA installation on user interaction. Of course it's not supported in every browser. iOS is more difficult since user needs to understand that "saving to home screen" is same a…

> and there's no way to trigger it programmatically or help user in any other way than with visual illustrations. It literally took a two second Google search https://web.dev/web-share/

[deleted]

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#223

Post by Ozzie_osman »

scarface_74 wrote: post #202
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #162

I don't get the comments tearing into OP. Sure, he could have been more careful. He could have tested the login on the latest version of Android. But what if it wasn't a login crash? What if it worked on the latest version but not others? At what point do you draw the line? At some point, you just have to say "OK this is a platform used by literally millions of apps and millions of developers, and mistakes will be ma…

> What if it worked on the latest version but not others? At what point do you draw the line? This is a poor excuse. Even if it were a web app, you would still need to test on multiple browsers. Doing a smoke test on a new release is just basic professionalism. And having a phase roll out with a rollback is also not a new concept.

> And having a phase roll out with a rollback is also not a new concept.

Having a quick revert is also "not a new concept". Most modern devops practices focus not just on Mean Time to Failure, but Mean Time to Recovery, and a quick revert is a critical part of that. Even Google's own SRE best practices encourage that.

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#224

Post by themerone »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #218
themerone wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a properly coded single page application, the back button works as expected.

As keeps getting pointed out, every. Time. This. Gets. Raised: evidently most SPA’s are not written properly, because “back button not working properly” is easily one of the most common complaints.

It's not a complaint I've received about my applications.

15 years ago, getting it right took a ton development time, but today there are frameworks that handle it with minimal effort.

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#225

Post by Ozzie_osman »

This is actually ironic because one of Google's SRE principles is that "rollbacks are normal".

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/reliable-releases...

"At Google, our philosophy is that “rollbacks are normal.” When an error is found or reasonably suspected in a new release, the releasing team rolls back first and investigates the problem second. A request for a rollback is not interpreted as an attack on the releasing team, or even the person who wrote the code containing the bug; rather, it is understood as The Right Thing To Do to make the system as reliable as possible for the user. No-one will ask “why did you roll back this change?” as long as the rollback changelist describes the problem that was seen."

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#226

Post by cxr »

scarface_74 wrote: post #188
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what's pretty great about PWAs: 1. For people like you that don't want to install them, they're just a normal website. 2. For people that do want to install them for the added functionality (things like notifications), then it is easy to install, and furthermore cheaper for developers to build and maintain (one codebase instead of multiple). You say "you have no desire to have an app", but I think for most peo…

And web apps are always a worse experience. Even with simple things that should be a decent experience like the Papa John’s pizza app or AirBnb

That's not always because of anything intrinsic to the Web. We know that ordering a pizza isn't any more complicated than what can be represented on a paper form. Forms can also be capably represented in a browser. The problem is that app developers are by and large not capable of distilling the requirements down to what is necessary and sufficient for the task at hand. Instead, they're foolishly preoccupied with what they consider to be the mandate to deliver experiences.

In short: most devs' simulacra suck.

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#227

Post by [deleted] »

skinner927 wrote: post #219
danpalmer wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why you set a version number for the API you want. No type system in wide production use is able to encode the semantics of APIs sufficiently. Many of the best APIs out there have version numbers that allow you to pin the API structure and semantics – GitHub and Stripe come to mind with this.

There’s this company out of I think Washington state who builds an operating system for x86 and x64 systems. I know for a fact that GUI applications from 15 years ago still work on the modern version. It’s called Microsoft Windows. You should check it out. The win32 api has changed but it’s backwards compatible.

[deleted]

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#228

Post by zaat »

curt15 wrote: post #215
zaat wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I said, I live half my life within browsers. But big chunk of the population that you are probably not thinking about is not like that. My mother in law is using browser to read on her computer, and will never do that on her phone - the screen is too small and the whole experience not something that fits someone at her age. On the other hand, my children use apps since they are two years old, and at t…

>On the other hand, my children use apps since they are two years old, and at the age of seven they still rarely if ever used browser. Most of the people writing on HN were first exposed to the internet through web browsers. On the other hand, children these days who grow up with smartphones first interact with the internet through phone apps. Do they have any difficulty adapting to the unfiltered web when they grow…

I sure hope not. I don't have definitive first hand experience though as my kids are not old enough to have to use a computer and they haven't grow much interest in that direction. When my dad's first PC arrived home it was for me the most exiting thing ever, but it didn't have to compete with a smartphone.

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#229

Post by sexy_seedbox »

modeless wrote: post #128
themacguffinman wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Truthfully, I'd prefer to get rid of the app and just have users go to the website and install the PWA, but the average user still doesn't know how to do this. And the Play Store is still the first place users go to find apps. If google would just allow submitting a PWA directly to the app store, that'd be nice... I am not looking forward to doing this yearly. This is what Trusted Web Activities (TWA) are for, you…

My TWA app still got hit with this mandatory update requirement. I'll have to rebuild the wrapper app for the first time in years. I don't even remember how I did it last time but I do remember that Android makes it nowhere near as trivial as it ought to be. I can practically guarantee that something will break if I try to do all this busywork. I'm probably not going to bother, it's just a free app that I made as a s…

> If Google actually cared...

Oh, I can say that about a LOT of other Google products.

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#230

Post by e12e »

scarface_74 wrote: post #188
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what's pretty great about PWAs: 1. For people like you that don't want to install them, they're just a normal website. 2. For people that do want to install them for the added functionality (things like notifications), then it is easy to install, and furthermore cheaper for developers to build and maintain (one codebase instead of multiple). You say "you have no desire to have an app", but I think for most peo…

And web apps are always a worse experience. Even with simple things that should be a decent experience like the Papa John’s pizza app or AirBnb

> And web apps are always a worse experience.

Check out:

https://timetable.fusion-festival.de/

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