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Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

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Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#151

Post by toldyouso2022 »

palsecam wrote: post #24

https://FreeSolitaire.win is a successful PWA of mine. It’s a Klondike Solitaire game. It used to bring ~$500/mo of advertising revenue, but that’s significantly down these days: I refuse to have a cookie/consent banner, so I refuse customized ads (in the UE, in some US states now, &c.) Players do add it to homescreen. There is a non-intrusive button prompting them to do so, at the end of a game. People like to be ab…

I'm really liking it, I've played multiple times and installed it. I will ask though: is it possible to remove the vibration?

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#152

Post by dang »

meiraleal wrote: post #80
joshstrange wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read my full comment: > I love the web, in fact all my “apps” are built with web tech and I offer them all as websites/PWAs I'm well aware you can build binaries and ship a PWA, I literally do that. I don't hate PWAs, I dislike people that refuse to ship anything but PWAs and I especially dislike being told I don't care about the "open web". If you want to be a martyr and _only_ ship PWAs be my guest but prete…

[flagged]

Please don't cross into personal attack on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#153

Post by palsecam »

toldyouso2022 wrote: post #151
palsecam wrote: post #24

https://FreeSolitaire.win is a successful PWA of mine. It’s a Klondike Solitaire game. It used to bring ~$500/mo of advertising revenue, but that’s significantly down these days: I refuse to have a cookie/consent banner, so I refuse customized ads (in the UE, in some US states now, &c.) Players do add it to homescreen. There is a non-intrusive button prompting them to do so, at the end of a game. People like to be ab…

I'm really liking it, I've played multiple times and installed it. I will ask though: is it possible to remove the vibration?

Thanks for the feedback!

I understand your will to disable vibrations. But thing is, right now I can’t think of how to offer that option properly. For instance, adding a Setting menu+icon just for that would be lame.

I’ll think about it more, tho.

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#154

Post by palsecam »

ttymck wrote: post #126
palsecam wrote: post #24

https://FreeSolitaire.win is a successful PWA of mine. It’s a Klondike Solitaire game. It used to bring ~$500/mo of advertising revenue, but that’s significantly down these days: I refuse to have a cookie/consent banner, so I refuse customized ads (in the UE, in some US states now, &c.) Players do add it to homescreen. There is a non-intrusive button prompting them to do so, at the end of a game. People like to be ab…

Your buy a coffee link was not clickable on Firefox Android

OK, finally found a fix:

  /*
    Work around Firefox Mobile getting the hit target (clickable area)
    of the game control buttons wrong, when the (bottom) navigation bar
    gets hidden (when scrolling down).
    
    See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1813213
    and https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70893056/mozilla-android-addressbar-conflict-with-sticky-button-on-bottom
    and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40733062 ← thanks @ttymck for the bug report!
  */
  if (/Mobile.+Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent)) {
    self.addEventListener('resize', frameThrottle1(() => {
      document.getElementById('metagame').style.position = (window.outerHeight > window.innerHeight)
        ? 'sticky'
        : 'fixed';
    }));
  }

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#155

Post by neoberg »

mvdtnz wrote: post #128
jmb99 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PWA (if it were implemented properly): "Click here to install app". Click. Confirmation dialog. App is installed. App opens in the same window. > App store: "Click here to install app". Click. An entirely different application opens. Confirmation dialog. App is installed. You open it, but now you're in a different context. You’re unfortunately oversimplifying the PWA installation. Say a user has heard of a new serv…

This is an idiotic way of breaking it down. How does the user even know Florb exists? They're already on the web at this stage. You're also being totally disingenuous with your break down. Why does the user have to "hunt and scroll" for the app on the PWA side but not the app store? Go ahead, search for "fastmail" on your Android app store and tell me what the first and most prominent result is. And when I click "add…

They can hear it from a TV/radio ad, they can see it on a billboard, they can hear it from a friend. Exploring that an app exists doesn't happen only on the product website.

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#156

Post by toldyouso2022 »

palsecam wrote: post #153
toldyouso2022 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really liking it, I've played multiple times and installed it. I will ask though: is it possible to remove the vibration?

Thanks for the feedback! I understand your will to disable vibrations. But thing is, right now I can’t think of how to offer that option properly. For instance, adding a Setting menu+icon just for that would be lame. I’ll think about it more, tho.

A burger menu in the top right where you then see settings and help.

Again, well done

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#157

Post by tomcam »

streptomycin wrote: post #137
iuvcaw wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question - not defending Apple/google - does your pwa not use a dedicated server / db for user’s data? And then localstorage just as a cache if needed?

It doesn't... started as a hobby project in 2012, wanted to see if it was possible to make an app that stored a lot of client-side data in IndexedDB. Now, my app is successful so I don't really want to move to another platform, but also it creates too much data to easily and cheaply sync to a server. So I'm in a weird situation. https://basketball-gm.com/ if you're curious. I realize I'm a bit of an edge case. But al…

Wait why not just charge a small amount?

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#158

Post by goosejuice »

joshstrange wrote: post #91
goosejuice wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your preferred method of wrapping? No resistance from Apple? I've read of many instances of wrapped PWAs not getting approved for the app store. I guess mileage may vary

I use Capacitor (via Quasar, though you will only want to use this if you use Vue and like Quasar, else maybe look into Ionic if you sue React or Angular). If you don't use a framework or don't want to use Quasar/Ionic then you can use Capacitor "raw" but I've not done that before.

Thanks. I was considering Capacitor. It looked a bit heavy. Really dreading this process to be honest. I'm hoping we can convert the majority iOS users to installing the PWA and have that hold long enough to either go native or better PWA support on iOS. Not holding my breath for the latter.

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#159

Post by goosejuice »

scarface_74 wrote: post #95
goosejuice wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point, but I think app store presence would be more important in d2c rather than b2b SaaS. In that situation I don't think charging more would go over well with consumers. Have you seen this done?

Spotify did it for awhile before they completely stopped accepting in app purchases. Paramount+ also use to do it. Netflix offers in app purchases for streaming subscriptions if you pay through their games. But only the ad tier. You can subscribe to YouTube or Hulu via in app subscriptions. But you can’t subscribe to YouTube TV or Hulu Live TV via the app. I guess these days I would offer a higher month to month subs…

Excellent context, thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#160

Post by goosejuice »

knallfrosch wrote: post #149
goosejuice wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to builds of a PWA wrapper shipped to the App store? If you don't mind sharing, how did your approval process go? Any hangups?

Sorry for the confusion. We ship minimal Electron (Windows) / Cordova (iOS) wrappers to interface with our website. They're a pain to set up but don't require all that much code themselves. This allows us to publish to the respective stores. Would be hard to convince non-technical users to click "Install as PWA" because noone knows what that is.

Good to hear. I've read a few companies who really struggled getting approved with this method. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#min...
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