31–40 of 285 posts
This should have big warnings on it. Some of these are not web standards; they are features implemented unilaterally by Google in Blink that have been explicitly rejected by both Mozilla and Apple on privacy and security grounds. Take Web Bluetooth, for example: Mozilla: > This model is unsustainable and presents a significant risk to users and their devices. — https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-bluet…
On a purely technical level the main thing stopping PWA adoption is the JS front end universe being addicted to front end frameworks which destroy the UX of websites and PWAs, but there is a key value add with app stores which PWAs will never have: trust, and much as the Apple haters will hate it it is much stronger on the iOS App Store because of the very things they hate about it. Chrome, for all of Google's sins,…
I rather think, the main thing stopping PWA are that browsers still can not decide how to treat them. In some ways you can just do anything unrestricted and in other areas your PWA gets treated and limited like a random untrusted website, with no way to get needed rights. At least that was my experience last time I messed with it.
It is of course a problem to do it right, as prompts for confirmation just gets clicked away, but there should be a way to get real user consent for a proper app, that people trust.
But Apple for example wants to keep their app store under their control, so they surely won't provide an easy way to bypass the normal app store by giving developers a way to ship full apps just through the browser.
On a purely technical level the main thing stopping PWA adoption is the JS front end universe being addicted to front end frameworks which destroy the UX of websites and PWAs, but there is a key value add with app stores which PWAs will never have: trust, and much as the Apple haters will hate it it is much stronger on the iOS App Store because of the very things they hate about it. Chrome, for all of Google's sins,…
The front end framework mess is just a symptom of the actual problem, which is that the building blocks provided by browsers are too crude/limited to allow for consistent quality, and so Rube Goldberg machine frameworks arise to try to paper it all over. I think browsers can be a good platform but for that to happen they need to be a bit more batteries-included, with built in APIs for UI and other essentials that riv…
This should have big warnings on it. Some of these are not web standards; they are features implemented unilaterally by Google in Blink that have been explicitly rejected by both Mozilla and Apple on privacy and security grounds. Take Web Bluetooth, for example: Mozilla: > This model is unsustainable and presents a significant risk to users and their devices. — https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-bluet…
Extinguish? The web is "existinguished" by websites being able to use bluetooth, after asking for permission?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Extinguish? The web is "existinguished" by websites being able to use bluetooth, after asking for permission?
The "extinguish" is what happens after a substantial portion of the web is only accessible through Chrome. At some point it no longer makes sense to use a different web browser, and when we reach that point the open web is gone.
On a purely technical level the main thing stopping PWA adoption is the JS front end universe being addicted to front end frameworks which destroy the UX of websites and PWAs, but there is a key value add with app stores which PWAs will never have: trust, and much as the Apple haters will hate it it is much stronger on the iOS App Store because of the very things they hate about it. Chrome, for all of Google's sins,…
> On a purely technical level the main thing stopping PWA adoption is the JS front end universe being addicted to front end frameworks which destroy the UX of websites and PWAs I would hesitate to conflate PWA adoption with JS framework popularity olympics. On a purely technical level, the only thing stopping you from using a PWA is you. Perhaps you should reconsider your product and business model if it doesn't work…
It's not about you, but the users. iOS users do trust Apple as a proxy in the App Store and consequently spend much more there than even Android users do in the Play Store (on a per user basis).
The great anomaly to this used to be Amazon where Kindle Fire users used to have even higher ARPUs than iOS, but I've been out of the loop too long to know if this is still the case.
Not too long ago I decided to push the limits to see what web apps can do now and did https://luduxia.com/reversi/ - there are no UI libs here, the whole thing bundles in under a second with esbuild, and it runs perfectly on iOS Safari.
This path started out very nightmarish (circa 2020) but it's going much smoother today. One of our customers actually came back to us with a slightly improved process based upon the one we gave them. They switched from iPad to Surface Go and used some extra endpoint management to make the PWA experience into a sort of kiosk mode.
The #1 constraint for us is the quality of the environment-facing camera and the level of access we have to its capabilities via the browser. iOS/Safari started out extremely weak on this but is quite good today. I can get a solid 2k environment scan at 30fps from the rear facing iPad camera in Safari today. Things like 2D barcode scan and document capture are 100% feasible now. These items used to make us extremely nervous on product demos but we don't worry anymore.
We almost capitulated and went back to native iOS apps because of the camera issues, but the pain of maintaining a native build chain when you are otherwise a 100% Microsoft shop (with barely 3 developers) was pushing back hard too. We were signing enterprise IPAs for all of our clients for half a decade before we switched to web/PWA. I will never go back to native apps. I'll find a different career path and hobbies if the web goes away.
I don't have a clean answer for B2C other than... I use HN and Twitter in Safari and I don't even process that it's not a native app. Neither of these web properties had to spend a single second worrying about a native app to acquire my business.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Extinguish? The web is "existinguished" by websites being able to use bluetooth, after asking for permission?
The "extinguish" is what happens after a substantial portion of the web is only accessible through Chrome. At some point it no longer makes sense to use a different web browser, and when we reach that point the open web is gone.