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I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

debuggerdotbreak.judahgabriel.com

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Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#221

Post by evv »

scarface74 wrote: post #214
evv wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is effectively asking to double the size of the engineering team, or slow it down dramatically. If I were a startup or small business, I'd rather ship a slightly slow-feeling app with my existing team of web developers who already know their tools, than to hire a bunch of native developers and somehow get them all on the same page.

Yes. I'm asking a business that want to provide a native client to provide a native client. If it can be done as a web app why not do it as a web app? Yes I am a developer and for products that are suited to be on the web, I write websites.

What if that business wants to provide an "app" icon in the macOS dock, and a "program" in the windows start menu, without hiring a bunch of native developers? What would you advise for them, if not electron?

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#222

Post by tomcooks »

shkkmo wrote: post #108
al2o3cr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lemme get this straight: you're mad that a company you don't want to pay $99/yr to won't build APIs so you can make money on their platform. So sad, lemme find my tiny violin.

I'm not mad at them. However their lack of support for industry standards is why I won't buy their product.

Same here, and if it wasn't bad enough other companies copy this terrible attitude.

Dinosaurs will die.

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#223

Post by freeone3000 »

zghst wrote: post #176
WA wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forcing you to use native controls. This is wrong. Cordova has been around for years. Furthermore, it’s detached from reality. I released an app made with Ionic. It’s an app for average joe, not for devs or designers. Out of 20,000 downloads, I received exactly 0 complaints about performance or UI. Most users don’t care and don’t notice anyways. And it’s pretty much the only way how I can maintain an app for both p…

How accessible is your app? Have you tried it with VoiceOver? How does it do with battery and memory vs another comparable native app? When there's an OS upgrade, does your app automatically adjust to new resolutions and device classes?

It doesn't matter. Literally doesn't matter. Making apps work correctly is a lot of effort for zero gain.

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#225

Post by saagarjha »

judah wrote: post #194
al2o3cr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lemme get this straight: you're mad that a company you don't want to pay $99/yr to won't build APIs so you can make money on their platform. So sad, lemme find my tiny violin.

Author here. I'm not making any money on their platform. I'm a non-profit, building a free app; this isn't about money. I mentioned money in the post as a list of all barriers to moving a PWA to app store. $99/year + 33% in-app purchases (plus a $1000+ Mac to build, and probably one or more Mac minis for CI) is a barrier. The bigger concern is Apple is lagging behind on web standards. I suspect the reason for that is…

> I'm a non-profit

So the only thing that applies to you is the price to have access to a Mac. Since you're a nonprofit, Apple will waive your developer fee, and you wouldn't need in-app purchases anyways. Also, IIRC the cut Apple takes is 30%, not 33%, in line with the rest of their App Store policies.

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#226

Post by evv »

saagarjha wrote: post #204
evv wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is effectively asking to double the size of the engineering team, or slow it down dramatically. If I were a startup or small business, I'd rather ship a slightly slow-feeling app with my existing team of web developers who already know their tools, than to hire a bunch of native developers and somehow get them all on the same page.

> If I were a startup or small business, I'd rather ship a slightly slow-feeling app with my existing team of web developers who already know their tools, than to hire a bunch of native developers and somehow get them all on the same page. That might be the time where you'd want to stand out from your competitors by shipping a fast, native app rather than a web app.

Slack was able to stand out from its competitors by providing a reasonably fast web app. Nobody cared (cares?) about the desktop app.

It sure seems like you can compete with a good feature set and fast iteration on your product. Throwing more web developers on the project is often the right call, so you can keep shipping new features quickly on every platform.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but performance seems to be an afterthought to the market.

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#227

Post by saagarjha »

shkkmo wrote: post #105
rolha-capoeira wrote: post #47

> From minor things like “iOS Safari won’t let you play audio without first interacting with the page” to major, show-stopping things like, “iOS Safari won’t let you play the next song if your app is in the background or if your screen is off.” I disagree that these things are purely because Apple wants your $99/year. Maybe that's part of the story, but not all. I am glad that websites cannot play audio without the u…

> I am glad that websites cannot play audio without the user first interacting with the page. I am also glad that websites can't play audio in the background > These are higher-level permissions and should not be free for the taking. While they shouldn't be available to every site, these higher level permissions should be request-able by a PWA with the option to grant that permission indefinately. Apple is deciding t…

How are you going to stop every website requesting all the permissions upfront?

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#228

Post by danShumway »

saagarjha wrote: post #216
jsgo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is both, there are times where you'd like to create a quick web application to do a task that is either very specific to one's needs or only needed for a brief period of time rather than going wholesale application development. In this particular user's case, they just need some API features accessible to web and they'd be golden. As a user, if I have the ability to approve and later revoke the permiss…

> they just need some API features accessible to web and they'd be golden But now you have every single website asking for permission to use the microphone and camera and accelerometer or battery sensor. Every time some sort of device hardware is exposed to web applications, it needs to be rolled back in some way or the other because someone's found a way to use for fingerprinting.

> Every time some sort of device hardware is exposed to web applications, it needs to be rolled back in some way or the other because someone's found a way to use for fingerprinting.

This is odd to me. Do you think it's harder for a native app to fingerprint you? At least on the web I can block specific domains or scripting in general.

A native app will always be a net loss for privacy and sandboxing.

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#229

Post by saagarjha »

judah wrote: post #207
hamiltonkibbe wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you install $ANYTHING as a PWA. It's now on your homescreen, you launch it. You do $THING. now you switch to twitter. Now the PWA -- in the background -- loads some ad with an autoplaying video and now theres ad audio coming from ... well, you're not sure where, but it doesn't seem like it's coming from twitter. now you have to go find it and stop it. Meanwhile bitcoinminer.js is burning through your battery…

Stepping back a moment, it's worth noting that this was Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone: “The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone. And so, you can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone. And these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. They can make a call, they can send an email, they can look up a location on Google Maps.” Here we a…

> it's worth noting that this was Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone

One which they quickly backtracked on after realizing that it needlessly restricted what apps could do, and one which they could not shoehorn security into.

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#230

Post by scarface74 »

evv wrote: post #226
saagarjha wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I were a startup or small business, I'd rather ship a slightly slow-feeling app with my existing team of web developers who already know their tools, than to hire a bunch of native developers and somehow get them all on the same page. That might be the time where you'd want to stand out from your competitors by shipping a fast, native app rather than a web app.

Slack was able to stand out from its competitors by providing a reasonably fast web app. Nobody cared (cares?) about the desktop app. It sure seems like you can compete with a good feature set and fast iteration on your product. Throwing more web developers on the project is often the right call, so you can keep shipping new features quickly on every platform. I'd love to be proven wrong, but performance seems to be…

How many people use Slack desktop app? They also have good native apps for Android and iOS.
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