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What PWA Can Do Today

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Re: What PWA Can Do Today

#61

Post by jwells89 »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #57
jwells89 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what part of browsers are being spoken about. They’re plenty flexible and capable for the case of traditional pages and server-side apps, but it’s a totally different story for interactive widgets and especially full blown SPA’s. For example, browsers don’t furnish a tableview/datagrid or even a basic single column recycler view, meaning one has to find a third party library to do those things that’s st…

> For example, browsers don’t furnish a tableview/datagrid or even a basic single column recycler view and ? Or am I missing something?

Goes back to static vs. dynamic/interactive. That’s fine for static content but falls apart when you need a table view that can be edited, sorted, reordered, can have columns resized/rearranged, and can contain thousands of rows (necessitating recycling of table row DOM elements to maintain performance and efficiency).

This sort of view has been table stakes for desktop UI frameworks for decades and is a common need.

Re: What PWA Can Do Today

#62

Post by HWR_14 »

hotgeart wrote: post #56
pjmlp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PWAs are the next step in mobile Web, for most forms over data apps, it isn't really needed. When I came back to Web/Distributed Systems after my stint dealing with Windows desktop, all the applications I have been involved only had Web frontends, including for mobile devices, not Web views, the actual browser. They managed perfectly fine.

> PWAs are the next step in mobile Web For subscription app may be, but all ads revenue websites will reject it.

Wouldn't that be the opposite? Subscriptions through the App stores, ads as PWA?

Re: What PWA Can Do Today

#63

Post by aquova »

bodantogat wrote: post #54
fidotron wrote: post #22

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 IOS, I can't install a PWA/add to home screen with a simple click. I think thats the bigger obstacle.

Can't you? You just hit Share->Add to Home Screen, granted that's two clicks, but it seems pretty straight-forward.

Re: What PWA Can Do Today

#64

Post by thekingshorses »

bob1029 wrote: post #38

We push PWAs to iPads & Surface Go devices via Microsoft InTune for some of our clients today. 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…

> 2D barcode

Which JS library do you use?

I couldn't find a single library that can reliably scan PDF417 barcodes.

Re: What PWA Can Do Today

#65

Post by JimDabell »

wojciechpolak wrote: post #46
SPBS wrote: post #25

Call me back when PWAs can be registered as share targets on iOS (i.e. it appears as an app on the share sheet when you click "share" on a web page). I really want the ability to bookmark sites I browse on my phone and save it to a self-hosted web application.

Web Share Target API (manifest: share_target) - it allows a website to specify itself as a share target. Of course, it's not yet supported on iOS.

This is not a web standard. Google wrote the specification and only Google have implemented it. It’s an unofficial draft:

> Editors:

> Matt Giuca (Google Inc.)

> Eric Willigers (Google Inc.)

> Status of This Document

> This specification was published by the Web Incubator Community Group. It is not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track

— https://w3c.github.io/web-share-target/level-2/

Firefox doesn’t implement it either: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1476515

Apple raised a concern about spoofing which seems to have gone unaddressed by the spec authors in over a year: https://github.com/w3c/web-share-target/issues/109

This may yet turn into a web standard given more work, but please don’t hold up a Google spec. implemented only by Google as if it were a part of the web platform that Apple are late in implementing.

Re: What PWA Can Do Today

#66

Post by fidotron »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #57
jwells89 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what part of browsers are being spoken about. They’re plenty flexible and capable for the case of traditional pages and server-side apps, but it’s a totally different story for interactive widgets and especially full blown SPA’s. For example, browsers don’t furnish a tableview/datagrid or even a basic single column recycler view, meaning one has to find a third party library to do those things that’s st…

> For example, browsers don’t furnish a tableview/datagrid or even a basic single column recycler view and ? Or am I missing something?

The big question is how the table gets populated with the data and enables things like column based sorting all executed on the client side. (With the associated interactions with scrolling).

The point of recycling views is as row UI elements scroll off the top they are reused for those appearing at the bottom (or vice versa) which reduces system resources for these things a lot. This way the data table can contain 20 million rows but if the user can only see 100 the UI only pays the cost for 100.

This is standard practice in native app dev and I think is a good example for the case they are making. I would argue such a thing would be needed in the hypothetical NeXT type API of course.

Re: What PWA Can Do Today

#67

Post by onion2k »

starfox64_ wrote: post #4

It's kinda sad that the website doesn't prominently display which features have "universal" support across iOS and Android. The whole point of PWAs is to provide cross platforms apps so if a feature isn't available on all/most platforms, I don't think it's fair to say that it's really usable at all in your PWA.

The whole point of PWAs is to provide cross platforms apps so if a feature isn't available on all/most platforms, I don't think it's fair to say that it's really usable at all in your PWA.

You should be delivering the best possible experience for the user based on what their device can do, not the lowest common denominator of some arbitrary set of features. Progressive enhancement, API detection, and polyfilling are all common strategies that can be used to mitigate almost all device differences.

Re: What PWA Can Do Today

#69

Post by martinald »

thekingshorses wrote: post #64
bob1029 wrote: post #38

We push PWAs to iPads & Surface Go devices via Microsoft InTune for some of our clients today. 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…

> 2D barcode Which JS library do you use? I couldn't find a single library that can reliably scan PDF417 barcodes.

I assume the built in one that OP has? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Barcode_Det...

Re: What PWA Can Do Today

#70

Post by riordan »

doodlesdev wrote: post #9
ricardobeat wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Did it even reach significant mobile share at any point?

Also, Firefox on Android still supports PWAs, it was only removed on the desktop.

It’s good to hear that PWAs are still on Firefox Android, even though they’re out of Desktop.

From my [fairly-out-of-the-loop-for-the-past-few-years] vantage point, Mozilla’s been a lot less invested in the PWA ecosystem since they abandoned their Firefox Phone / Boot2Gecko initiative, which was intended to create a middle tier between the expensive smartphones of the early 2010’s and ubiquitous and cheap feature phones (flip phones, classic Nokia candy bars), and expand access to the web across the world with it.

All the apps were PWAs, which made it simple to build out. Eventually Mozilla stopped the project, but KaiOS became a commercial implementation and it still runs on a fair number of feature phones to this day.

But without that pressure for PWA support in Firefox as a critical mobile feature, it was largely serving as an expensive bookmark launcher in the Firefox code base so that folks could alt-tab to the small number of sites that supported it on their desktops. Not a noble end for Mozilla’s support for what should have been / could have been an incredible leverage point for the web ecosystem and open development.

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