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App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

rogueengine.io

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Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#371

Post by etothet »

watermelon0 wrote: post #79
etothet wrote: post #70

This argument has existed since native apps were first introduced. One of the problems I see now is how horrible and frankly broken browsing the web can feel, especially on a mobile device. With all of the cookie confirmations due to GDPA and other ways mobile websites try to engage you (such as popups to subscribe to a newsletter or for discounts off your first order), some websites become almost unusable on a mobil…

There is no difference regarding GDPR/newsletter/discount popups between website and application. It's up to the owner if they want to nag users, and on which platforms. (as for the GDPR, consent must explicitly be given in app as on the website, if they are doing tracking and sharing the data with 3rd parties)

I disagree. Native apps usually don't have annoying popups especially to the extent that the web does. Saying there's "no" difference isn't being genuine.

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#372

Post by paulddraper »

thot_experiment wrote: post #159

I man don't get me wrong, I love the idea of PWAs but this dude is out to lunch. It's so painful making anything complex work cross browser/cross platform. On iOS iirc they don't even support adding PWAs to the homescreen? You definitely can't Bluetooth outside of Chrome (probably only on Android and Windows too because nothing fun is ever allowed on Macs). Multiplayer games you kind of need UDP. You cannot UDP in th…

Author needs to show not tell.

Theory falls down hard.

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#373

Post by diggan »

wruza wrote: post #323
thot_experiment wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for pointing this out! I wasn't aware this had more or less landed. (though I think my broader point about cross platform support unfortunately still stands, I personally don't care about supporting iOS on my side projects and I'm excited to mess with this)

I wasn't aware this had more or less landed. That’s usually a sign nobody uses it because it has at least one large issue. Personally I stopped falling for “there’s now X” advices long ago because if it worked, it would already be mainstream very much heard of by everyone. Sorry for your five hours.

> Personally I stopped falling for “there’s now X” advices long ago because if it worked, it would already be mainstream very much heard of by everyone

So you just never use anything new, always stuck with what has been? Because everything starts with just one person using it, then two, then four and so on, things can't just be popular from day 0.

I'd agree with that chasing the latest fads (no matter the popularity) is a fools errand, and you need to look beyond vanity metrics to evaluate if something is useful or not. Sometimes that means trying things and sometimes even making a hard bet on something that hasn't been demonstrated "right" yet.

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#374

Post by mamcx »

rejhgadellaa wrote: post #363
mamcx wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Developers pay hefty app store fees So, hosting doesn't cost? Too many app-but-websites should be local, but because are web requires hosting and likely a database (that must be 'web-scale' so it survives bots). My web app cost far more than my older native one. And is far harder to maintain...

Then why did you switch (honest question, not intended to be snarky)?

Customer pressures. Don't want to pay for iPhones ('too costly'), and then for long very hard to optimize for Android ('why too slow?') (even native... wait if native why slow? Because they buy the worst, cheapest androids ever, then later buy androids that cost similar to iPhones, so it was a big switch cost for nothing at the end)

Eventually, it became nice because it worked to give the app a wider reach. Then I added an e-commerce front, so it made sense. But is it less costly than native? Not.

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#375

Post by yonatan8070 »

rejhgadellaa wrote: post #369
yonatan8070 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern web sucks, with all the tracking, etc. But it's still a lot better than apps, which give the developer more control without (in most cases) any tangible UX benefit. Just as an example, Reddit doesn't need to have an app, all they do is display text and images, along with some interaction, and they especially don't need to lock some content behind the app (I recently got a popup when trying to view a post s…

Yeah so native apps have some unique abilities to track you that websites do not. On top of that, platforms like Reddit and Facebook tend to prefer native apps because it's easier to keep you within the app. Even if you click a link to an external website, for example, Facebook will open that link in an in-app browser (unless you find the opt-out). A few years ago, a researcher found out that these apps often inject…

Oh wow, I had no idea about the in-app browser tracking

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#376

Post by chris_pie »

thot_experiment wrote: post #296
chris_pie wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Support is getting there on the browsers' side, but you need a backend that supports HTTP3+WebTransport - barely any out there

Yup, as I have found out over the last 5 hours. I managed to get a handshake but it's nowhere near the convenience of something like WebSockets. The security circus you have to go through to get even a handshake working is absolutely absurd, all sorts of extremely poorly documented certificate requirements and you'll be lucky to get an error message that helps you in any way. I'm getting ready to give up for the day,…

Surprisingly, socket.io supports WebTransport: https://socket.io/get-started/webtransport

The guys at Colyseus (a JS library for multiplayer games netcode) also added support, in a preview version for now.

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#377

Post by wruza »

diggan wrote: post #373
wruza wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't aware this had more or less landed. That’s usually a sign nobody uses it because it has at least one large issue. Personally I stopped falling for “there’s now X” advices long ago because if it worked, it would already be mainstream very much heard of by everyone. Sorry for your five hours.

> Personally I stopped falling for “there’s now X” advices long ago because if it worked, it would already be mainstream very much heard of by everyone So you just never use anything new, always stuck with what has been? Because everything starts with just one person using it, then two, then four and so on, things can't just be popular from day 0. I'd agree with that chasing the latest fads (no matter the popularity)…

Comments have too low credibility on average. If a new thing is worth learning about, it hits frontpage eventually with an exploratory post.

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#378

Post by hot_gril »

CharlesW wrote: post #238
hot_gril wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhones support PWAs on homescreen. However, there's no way to trigger the "install the PWA?" prompt. The user has to do it, which very few know about, and maybe that's what you were thinking of.

I haven't looked at this lately and so don't have a specific recommendation, but there are small libraries for helping iOS learn how to add PWAs using the standard Share → Add to Home Screen mechanism. https://github.com/khmyznikov/pwa-install (Try on device: https://khmyznikov.com/pwa-install/ )

I've seen guides like this before. Would be nice if they showed what the share button looks like, cause that's not obvious to some people. Or, some file sharing websites show an arrow pointing to the downloads button in desktop Safari.

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#380

Post by niutech »

leptons wrote: post #253
hnthrowaway2376 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RAM is cheap RAM is cheap for you. It's always silly when people bring up their top-of-the-line computer into discussions about performance. Software shouldn't be just for the top 1%.

Apple RAM is expensive. Every other kind of RAM is pretty cheap. 32GB DDR4 can be had for under $30, and 16GB DDR4 can be had for about $25. I'm not sure who you think has a computer, is developing software, and can't afford that. Maybe someone in India, I guess. Too bad if that's you, but "top 1%" is a laughable claim when RAM is so cheap. 16GB of RAM is nowhere near "top of the line". You're just trolling here, "hn…

Not everybody can upgrade RAM due to warranty seal/lack of slot or simply doesn't know how to do it. Software should use as little resources as it could.
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