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Hyperview – Native mobile apps, as easy as creating a website

hyperview.org

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Re: Hyperview – Native mobile apps, as easy as creating a website

#91

I overlooked it at first even though it’s right there on the landing page but this is ultimately still React Native with all the baggage that entails.

I briefly investigated using React Native on a project. Obscure installation and linking process which no one seems to understand exactly, no SPM support on iOS, incomplete documentation that from the start pushes to adopt yet another layer on top (such as Expo, and I suppose Hyperview is now another option)… It felt like I am adopting some rusty legacy software, and not in a good way (more full of quirks than mature, well-documented and time-tested). Judging by discussions, most people would somehow get it working and then not touch it again until it breaks. My intuition was to stay away and to recommend, if PWA is not an option and resources are limited, to go with a native app for one platform (whichever more familiar) & later pay someone to port it for the other.

Re: Hyperview – Native mobile apps, as easy as creating a website

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because there are multiple technologies does not make it complicated per se. Indeed, something could evolve to a simpler model, which it seems RSC on RN is.

Doesn’t it require Expo’s servers for a development environment? All these companies have given up on the gold rush long ago and are just slinging fancy shovels.

No, they can run locally.

Re: Hyperview – Native mobile apps, as easy as creating a website

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just build it on the web. It takes a very insignificantly small amount of JavaScript to make a website a Progressive Web App, which iirc can be listed on app stores. If you dont use React or any fancy frameworks, I believe last time I ever did such a project our JS was under 50 lines of code to have our PWA working fully offline. There were some odd hacks, like detecting network connectivity.

Not on iOS. You gave to use this WebKit hack https://blog.pwabuilder.com/posts/publish-your-pwa-to-the-io... .

That's specifically to be listed right? I mean I guess that's fair. Thanks for the link, saving that.

Re: Hyperview – Native mobile apps, as easy as creating a website

#94
post #11

Not even a day after the post about HTMX not living up to its promise! There are only two certainties in life, death and frontend churn.

> frontend churn. Frontend churn hasn't been as much of a thing for years now, see e.g. https://2022.stateofjs.com/en-US/libraries/front-end-framewo... . If you stuck with Angular or React 10 years ago, you're still good today. jQuery is even older but still on 75% of websites ( https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/javascript_library ), and Bootstrap is on nearly a quarter. Frontend churn is only a thing if you…

Angular of 10 years ago... you mean the 1.0 framework that's wholly incompatible with 2+ because it was a ground up re-write?

Re: Hyperview – Native mobile apps, as easy as creating a website

#95

Using web technology to build "native" mobile apps has been around almost as long as mobile apps themselves. I used Appcelerator Titanium and Phonegap to do this beginning in 2012 (maybe even 2011) before eventually trying Native development later after finding these options underwhelming. I have a reasonable amount of experience doing both, and my opinion is that development tools aren't really the problem. The bigg…

> Just build it on the web. It takes a very insignificantly small amount of JavaScript to make a website a Progressive Web App, which iirc can be listed on app stores. If you dont use React or any fancy frameworks, I believe last time I ever did such a project our JS was under 50 lines of code to have our PWA working fully offline. There were some odd hacks, like detecting network connectivity.

Is there a super simple tool for turning statically served websites into PWAs?

Last time I looked all of the simple tools had been deprecated in favour of complex tools that do way more than I need.

If I had a site in a directory that works fine from

    >cd MyWebApp
    >python3 -m http.server
I would like a command line tool That worked like

    >becomepwa MyWebApp
Which produced a PWA that downloaded everything on install and could be run henceforth offline.

I thought this would be a common use case, but I failed to find anything that supported it without intruding on my workflow.

Re: Hyperview – Native mobile apps, as easy as creating a website

#96
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, just to clarify — I meant examples of services that "feel" nice to interact with in the app; not examples of what they can be used for.

It's a bit like asking which power company has pretty technicians.

Well, do those WeChat services have competition? That's where I've seen the push for better UX: it's a signal to users that your product is overall higher quality. So not so much 'pretty power company technicians' and more 'Is the lobby of the hotel clean?'.

Re: Hyperview – Native mobile apps, as easy as creating a website

#97
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just build it on the web. It takes a very insignificantly small amount of JavaScript to make a website a Progressive Web App, which iirc can be listed on app stores. If you dont use React or any fancy frameworks, I believe last time I ever did such a project our JS was under 50 lines of code to have our PWA working fully offline. There were some odd hacks, like detecting network connectivity.

Is there a super simple tool for turning statically served websites into PWAs? Last time I looked all of the simple tools had been deprecated in favour of complex tools that do way more than I need. If I had a site in a directory that works fine from >cd MyWebApp >python3 -m http.server I would like a command line tool That worked like >becomepwa MyWebApp Which produced a PWA that downloaded everything on install and…

Three things you need:

* Manifest file

* HTTPS - for localhost I dont remember the workaround, browsers have made this increasingly more complicated from recent experiences

* Service Worker - This is where I said I had maybe 60 lines of JavaScript.

If you have these three things, a browser should pick up that your sites a PWA and server running it should be irrelevant... So you MUST have a minimal amount of JavaScript, but I did it using pure vanilla JS, you dont need a fancy framework.

On that same note, there might be a tool that could inject the bare JS necessary for this, but I dont think it exists, certainly could be built.

Re: Hyperview – Native mobile apps, as easy as creating a website

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like you can choose in the West either, either :). Number one goal of any software service today is to make its offering exclusive in some way - exclusive content, exclusive deals, exclusive integrations, exclusive set of participants (network effects), going super-broad super fast because infinite VC money lets you keep operating at a loss indefinitely, etc.

You're making it sound as if the difference in choice between China and western countries is negligible. Surely that's not the case? If every VC company tries to pull you into their walled garden, I can still choose from among a variety of said walled gardens. I could be wrong of course, since I don't know how many AliPay and WeChat competitors there are.

> If every VC company tries to pull you into their walled garden, I can still choose from among a variety of said walled gardens.

When they play it right, you're forced to choose all of them, or at least a significant subset of them, so that their partially overlapping offering add up to the actual thing you need.

Re: Hyperview – Native mobile apps, as easy as creating a website

#99
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a super simple tool for turning statically served websites into PWAs? Last time I looked all of the simple tools had been deprecated in favour of complex tools that do way more than I need. If I had a site in a directory that works fine from >cd MyWebApp >python3 -m http.server I would like a command line tool That worked like >becomepwa MyWebApp Which produced a PWA that downloaded everything on install and…

Three things you need: * Manifest file * HTTPS - for localhost I dont remember the workaround, browsers have made this increasingly more complicated from recent experiences * Service Worker - This is where I said I had maybe 60 lines of JavaScript. If you have these three things, a browser should pick up that your sites a PWA and server running it should be irrelevant... So you MUST have a minimal amount of JavaScrip…

The service worker thing is a weird amount of boilerplate. Every time I go back to making a PWA, I skip through 10 search results explaining what a service worker is (idc) until I just find whatever .js code I have to copy. And it's not some trivial one-liner.

I get that in theory a PWA can do offline stuff and whatever, but 99% of the time someone is only making a PWA to make the app installable on a phone home screen.

Re: Hyperview – Native mobile apps, as easy as creating a website

#100
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, just to clarify — I meant examples of services that "feel" nice to interact with in the app; not examples of what they can be used for.

I mean those 1st party integrations directly listed in WeChat services page are probably good examples of services that "feel" nice to interact, because they are used by millions of people everyday and they are need to optimized and polished to be able to serve millions of users. Here's a screenshot of the list, if you want to Google and check out some of them: https://imgur.com/a/KKEdliE

That's all fine if the particular customers you want to reach are among the millions used to WeChat services.
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