Having a website and then a PWA for the people that REALLY want that is what I think the best arrangement is. Especially with the control that the stores (specifically app store) can have on you, the freedom of a website is much better than an app.
Do not download the app, use the website
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Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#732The Discord web app is nearly identical to the desktop app. The main things you are missing are global push-to-talk and rich presence (i.e. dicord spies on your process list and tells other people what games you are playing). I'm always surprised more people don't use it.
Is that how it works? Don't you need to call into it with the Social SDK?
It uses both methods, so that not every game needs integration to show up. If I recall correctly, you can just add arbitrary executables to the list. Set it to some system daemon like ntpd and it might say "has been playing ntpd for 49 hours" on your status.
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#733Earlier quoted context omitted.
>By saying we're all web devs here, I mean you should've already expected that we have an impression of job posts, Reddit, Hacker News, Google Search¹ trends, Github ecosystem, or even npm download trends. We start the argument there. I can't tell if you're just accidentally incoherent or if you're just using some generated slop that makes no sense in the flow of the discussion. You claimed that the web ecosystem is…
Ok, my apologies, it really doesn't show up in your history. Your user page doesn't show anything fresher than 16 hours. Next time I should scrape the page more carefully to check for your replies in other threads. However, I looked through all the posts you just linked. I still have nothing quantitative on whether "PWAs never took off". It's so much analysis on Apple. > There isn't just Apple, there's also Google wh…
>However, I looked through all the posts you just linked. I still have nothing quantitative on whether "PWAs never took off". It's so much analysis on Apple.
"Nothing quantitative"? You either dont know what that word means or you're unable to grasp what you're reading. I've explained in great detail why PWAs couldn't live up to their potential. The reason why there is "so much analysis on Apple" is because they, as a dominant gatekeeper, have actively engaged in sabotage of PWAs in defense of their App Store by treating PWAs as an existential threat. (See? You're making me repeat myself again, because you either refuse to reflect on what you're actually reading or you are simply not able to connect the dots and realize that i've already answered your question)
>> That's just the lazy manufactured and false narrative that I've already thoroughly debunked. I'm not going to repeat it, since you would just ignore it again.
>This is how you replied to me. You say "ignore it again" but this is the first time we spoke and all I can see is up-thread. That's what I mean by prejudice.
I said that "you would ignore it again" (which you have just done btw) precisely because that's not the "first time we spoke", your comment was in response to my comment and that comment of mine already explained that Apple sabotaged PWAs. You simply ignored that and baselessly claimed that "PWAs 'just' didn't take off" with no effort to substantiate your claim whatsoever. So it's not me being "prejudiced", it's an objective prediction based on your behavior which you have just proven, my prediction was spot on.
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#734Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, web apps are superior in most ways to mobile apps for the user experience, but only if vendors support the web and stop actively trying to make it like apps are the better option. The preference for apps is a learned behavior, not something fundamental. The vast majority of people with real understanding would prefer the web
This seems like an extremely biased opinion. PWAs are only as good of a user experience as the developer programs it to be. The average local TV news affiliate website spends 5MB-20MB of bandwidth within a minute of downloading 1 page. My last iOS app was only 5MB shipped and only consumes a few KB of bandwidth per session. There are massive convenience features that native apps support which aren’t available to brow…
>PWAs are only as good of a user experience as the developer programs it to be. The average local TV news affiliate website spends 5MB-20MB of bandwidth within a minute of downloading 1 page. My last iOS app was only 5MB shipped and only consumes a few KB of bandwidth per session.
This is a very strange argument to make, the exact same applies to "native" apps. Every app "is only as good of a user experience as the developer programs it to be". There are countless of "native" apps on iOS like "wallpaper" apps that drain the battery, consume absurd bandwidth and have outright scammy business models which App Store "review" just lets pass (because Apple gets a cut of the scam!).
>There are massive convenience features that native apps support which aren’t available to browser APIs. Auth, payments, notifications, parental controls, power efficiency, and perhaps security and privacy (depending on how prevalent analytics/ tracking/ advertising libraries are on native apps).
Auth? https://whatpwacando.today/authentication
Payments? https://whatpwacando.today/payment
Notifications? https://whatpwacando.today/notifications
Parental Controls? Use Web Content Restrictions.
Power efficiency? If JIT (Just-In-Time) compilation were universally allowed for all web browsers and PWAs on iOS, it would be a complete game-changer, dramatically closing the performance and power efficiency gap with native apps. (see above why Apple actively sabotages PWAs)
Security and Privacy? PWAs benefit from the OS's sandbox and its own sandbox
>A well crafted PWA can compete on most features with a well crafted app, but ultimately the App Store review process means native apps have a decently high floor, whereas PWAs have zero floor.
You can't even compare the App Store review to someone actively going on e.g. Pinterest.com and clicking on install PWA. The user has already reviewed and decided that it's an app worth installing. Finally, the App Store "review process" is a bad joke, not only because it is slow, inefficient and often arbitrary, but because it fails to even filter out the most obvious of scams:
"Apple claims its App Store is carefully curated so that only the best apps get through. The truth is, the App Store is littered with scams" -https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/06/apple-a...
"The widely used Apple App Store has become a minefield of scam apps. While several scam apps have been removed by Apple, it seems they’ve only acted when directly called out on social media. Despite the removal of some scam apps, Apple has not yet acted to ban the guilty app developers from the app store."
https://mccunewright.com/scam-apps-sold-on-the-apple-app-sto...
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#735At AutoTempest we resisted making an app for years, because anything that a hypothetical app could do, we could do with the website. And in my opinion, when searching for cars, it's more convenient to be in your browser where you can easily open new tabs, bookmark results, etc. And for years, it was our most requested feature, by far. We had instructions for how to pin the site to your home screen, and would explain…
Currently in this boat. Avoiding pushing an app version but seems like it might be time...
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#736Earlier quoted context omitted.
Web apps can do that too with service workers, it is just a bit of a pain in the ass.
And if you ever push a service worker with a bug, then you make the browser permanently unable to display the site unless the user knows how to manually remove the service worker. I've seen it happen on Gmail.
Yes it is a pain in the ass, but just for other people who read this, the bug was in the self-update code for the service worker. If you mess up the cache configuration it can make the service worker never look for an updated version of itself.
It is quite subtle thing in a very small part of the service-worker code but it is not like any random update can brick your app.
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#737Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems like an extremely biased opinion. PWAs are only as good of a user experience as the developer programs it to be. The average local TV news affiliate website spends 5MB-20MB of bandwidth within a minute of downloading 1 page. My last iOS app was only 5MB shipped and only consumes a few KB of bandwidth per session. There are massive convenience features that native apps support which aren’t available to brow…
>PWAs are only as good of a user experience as the developer programs it to be. The average local TV news affiliate website spends 5MB-20MB of bandwidth within a minute of downloading 1 page. My last iOS app was only 5MB shipped and only consumes a few KB of bandwidth per session. This is a very strange argument to make, the exact same applies to "native" apps. Every app "is only as good of a user experience as the d…
> This is a very strange argument to make, the exact same applies to "native" apps.
Which is the point I was making. The parent and gp were making the argument that PWAs were positively better than native apps, which I was pushing back on.
None of your links disagree with my points, except the last one which suffers from survivor bias.
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#738Earlier quoted context omitted.
>PWAs are only as good of a user experience as the developer programs it to be. The average local TV news affiliate website spends 5MB-20MB of bandwidth within a minute of downloading 1 page. My last iOS app was only 5MB shipped and only consumes a few KB of bandwidth per session. This is a very strange argument to make, the exact same applies to "native" apps. Every app "is only as good of a user experience as the d…
> This is a very strange argument to make, the exact same applies to "native" apps. Which is the point I was making. The parent and gp were making the argument that PWAs were positively better than native apps, which I was pushing back on. None of your links disagree with my points, except the last one which suffers from survivor bias.
You made factually incorrect claims that were debunked, like this:
> There are massive convenience features that native apps support which aren’t available to browser APIs. Auth, payments, notifications, parental controls, power efficiency, and perhaps security and privacy...
Re: Do not download the app, use the website
#739Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People just really like apps! I would say people really hate websites on mobile. The browsers are horrible, the pages are slow and oftentimes broken in some way. You get all these popups everywhere, ads are much more intrusive. It's just bad experience, so of course people would prefer app for something they use. I avoid the browser on mobile as much as possible and I don't remember ever having a good time using it…
Thats because you don't use mobile firefox with ublock origin (on android). I very much prefer sites for stuff I do, they provide 100% of same experience, with one exception - can't easily block ads in apps. Thus mobile is often even a better experience.
Your experience matches that of roughly 0% of users, unfortunately. Usable browser was one of the many things I missed when switching from Android to iOS.