Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps

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Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps

#31

Post by mrighele » Sun, Nov 13, 2016, 9:47 AM UTC

SCdF wrote: post #24

I am building native webapps using PWAs at the moment. They are not there yet. He touches on navigation, but misses talking about the Android hardware back button, which in PWAs hooks up to the same mechanism as it does in the browser: it goes back. This quickly stops making sense when you're making an application, as you want that button to go "up" rather than back. Imagine you are viewing a list of contacts and you…

> This quickly stops making sense when you're making an application, as you want that button to go "up" rather than back.

Did you try to use the history API [1] for this ? Not straightforward but with either replaceState or the onpopstate event maybe you could achieve with JS what you are looking for.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History_API

Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps

#32

Post by paganel » Sun, Nov 13, 2016, 9:48 AM UTC

josephg wrote: post #9

As a web developer, I honestly hope the author of this post is wrong. Performance of modern web apps is simply awful compared to their native counterparts by any measure. They load slowly and consistently feel sluggish in comparison to proper native apps. Slack takes seconds to load and it'll happily sit on over a gig of ram while in use. (And remember, its a glorified IRC client.) Web apps only have two benefits ove…

> Performance of modern web apps is simply awful compared to their native counterparts by any measure

For what is worth I can now only access FB from my phone using the browser (the web-app, so to speak), the native FB app has become ridiculously slow for quite some time. I use the native app only for uploading photos, once every 3 or 4 months. I'm using an iPhone 4 of which I'm still pretty happy, don't feel the need to drop 600+ euros on a New phone just yet if this one still does its job.

Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps

#33

Post by gioele » Sun, Nov 13, 2016, 10:02 AM UTC

SkyMarshal wrote: post #29

josephg wrote: post #9

As a web developer, I honestly hope the author of this post is wrong. Performance of modern web apps is simply awful compared to their native counterparts by any measure. They load slowly and consistently feel sluggish in comparison to proper native apps. Slack takes seconds to load and it'll happily sit on over a gig of ram while in use. (And remember, its a glorified IRC client.) Web apps only have two benefits ove…

Regarding #2 I feel like Oracle is dropping the ball here with Java for the desktop. They need to provide a lightweight JVM tailored specifically for desktop apps and for bundling into a self-contained install package, so that the app doesn't have to confuse users by downloading the JVM separately. Just pack it all into a single .msi/.dmg/.dpkg/etc, download one file, install it, and you're good to go. The JVM should…

> Qt is not open source

Not only is Qt open source, it is also free software according to FSF. Core Qt and most modules are released under the LGPL, the rest under the GPL.

https://www.qt.io/licensing/

Qt even has a binding poison-pill promise that will make the code BSD-licensed should Qt (the company) stop releasing it. See https://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/Software_License_Agr... and https://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation....

Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps

#34

Post by daleharvey » Sun, Nov 13, 2016, 10:31 AM UTC

josephg wrote: post #9

As a web developer, I honestly hope the author of this post is wrong. Performance of modern web apps is simply awful compared to their native counterparts by any measure. They load slowly and consistently feel sluggish in comparison to proper native apps. Slack takes seconds to load and it'll happily sit on over a gig of ram while in use. (And remember, its a glorified IRC client.) Web apps only have two benefits ove…

Web apps do not need to be slow, they are slow because they are badly written or more usually rely on the network far too often. There is no reason


is faster than


    
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      Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps
      #35
    
    
      Etheryte
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      Post by Etheryte » Sun, Nov 13, 2016, 10:32 AM UTC
      
      Hard to take this article seriously when it practically ignores performance topics.
      
    
    
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      Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps
      #36
    
    
      rudedogg
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      Post by rudedogg » Sun, Nov 13, 2016, 10:47 AM UTC
      
      

  
    paganel wrote:
    post #32
  
  
    

  
    josephg wrote:
    post #9
  
  
    
    
    As a web developer, I honestly hope the author of this post is wrong. Performance of modern web apps is simply awful compared to their native counterparts by any measure. They load slowly and consistently feel sluggish in comparison to proper native apps. Slack takes seconds to load and it'll happily sit on over a gig of ram while in use. (And remember, its a glorified IRC client.) Web apps only have two benefits ove…
  


    
    > Performance of modern web apps is simply awful compared to their native counterparts by any measure For what is worth I can now only access FB from my phone using the browser (the web-app, so to speak), the native FB app has become ridiculously slow for quite some time. I use the native app only for uploading photos, once every 3 or 4 months. I'm using an iPhone 4 of which I'm still pretty happy, don't feel the nee…
  


      
      The app is said to have over 18,000 classes:  http://quellish.tumblr.com/post/126712999812/how-on-earth-th...I'm guessing that link will crash on mobile, it slows down chrome on a desktop.
      
    
    
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      Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps
      #37
    
    
      skissane
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      Post by skissane » Sun, Nov 13, 2016, 10:52 AM UTC
      
      

  
    SkyMarshal wrote:
    post #29
  
  
    

  
    josephg wrote:
    post #9
  
  
    
    
    As a web developer, I honestly hope the author of this post is wrong. Performance of modern web apps is simply awful compared to their native counterparts by any measure. They load slowly and consistently feel sluggish in comparison to proper native apps. Slack takes seconds to load and it'll happily sit on over a gig of ram while in use. (And remember, its a glorified IRC client.) Web apps only have two benefits ove…
  


    
    Regarding #2 I feel like Oracle is dropping the ball here with Java for the desktop. They need to provide a lightweight JVM tailored specifically for desktop apps and for bundling into a self-contained install package, so that the app doesn't have to confuse users by downloading the JVM separately. Just pack it all into a single .msi/.dmg/.dpkg/etc, download one file, install it, and you're good to go. The JVM should…
  


      
      Have you looked at "Self-Contained Application Packaging"?https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/deplo...
(Disclaimer: I work for Oracle but I don't speak for them)
      
    
    
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      Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps
      #38
    
    
      exodust
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      Post by exodust » Sun, Nov 13, 2016, 10:56 AM UTC
      
      

  
    pepijndevos wrote:
    post #28
  
  
    
    
    One thing the article does not touch on is monetization options for web apps. This is where the App Store makes everything orders of magnitude easier.
  


      
      Except that these days it's more common to offer the app for free and then the user chooses or not to get premium content via in-app purchase. A web app or website can quite easily offer an upgrade to premium content if the user is already using that service.More than monetization, the app store provides stronger discover-ability than web apps.
      
    
    
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      Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps
      #39
    
    
      on_and_off
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      Post by on_and_off » Sun, Nov 13, 2016, 11:01 AM UTC
      
      

  
    josephg wrote:
    post #9
  
  
    
    
    As a web developer, I honestly hope the author of this post is wrong. Performance of modern web apps is simply awful compared to their native counterparts by any measure. They load slowly and consistently feel sluggish in comparison to proper native apps. Slack takes seconds to load and it'll happily sit on over a gig of ram while in use. (And remember, its a glorified IRC client.) Web apps only have two benefits ove…
  


      
      Interesting that you mention #2. This is what Instant apps want to solve. tbh I wonder if it is that much of an issue but we are probably going to test it at some point.About #1. I am not that convinced that they are easier to build. Well they are, but building them in a way that fits each platform and performs well looks harder than making 2 apps.
I should mention that I work in a 30 devs teams (half iOS, half Android) working on the same in-house app.
I do believe that there is some potential to reduce duplicated work with something like j2objc.  
It is probably not the definitive expression of this concept, but it seems to me that it should be possible to share a lot of the business logic and this is what this tool aims to do.  
Some of the data objects should be shareable as well.
All the rest : UI, integrating with the Home screen, notifications, services, et cetera is just very specific to the platform and IMO should be written specifically for each platform.
I am still waiting for the perfect kotlin-to-swift library allowing that.
      
    
    
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      Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps
      #40
    
    
      on_and_off
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      Post by on_and_off » Sun, Nov 13, 2016, 11:02 AM UTC
      
      

  
    millstone wrote:
    post #5
  
  
    
    
    > From now on, I won’t be building any more native apps It looks like the author blogs exclusively about JavaScript. What native apps has this author built?
  


      
      Well, at least it won't be too difficult for him to commit to this.More seriously, this kind of comment seems to almost entirely come from javascript devs.
      
    
    
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