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This comes up from time to time and I still don't see it. The idea of packaged web apps and web sites is as old as the smartphone (and older on some platforms)
by Arainach 10y ago
This comes up from time to time and I still don't see it. The idea of packaged web apps and web sites is as old as the smartphone (and older on some platforms). Even today, I can tell what experience on my devices are packaged web apps and I don't enjoy them. UI elements don't look right, navigation elements don't behave properly, keyboard shortcuts are wrong. Web apps can be sufficient for some scenarios, but they don't lack the magical feeling of native apps.
- bryanlarsen 10y agoPackaged web apps are the worst of both worlds: the inconvenience of apps and the speed of web sites. But the article isn't talking about packaged web apps, it's talking about browsers, and has an interesting redefinition of that term.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jchendy 10y agoWhat is the inconvenience of apps?
- nsomaru 10y agoNeeding to install, open and update an application to use a service as opposed to the 'convenience' of just entering a URL in a browser.
- rimantas 10y agoWeb page does not need opening? Interesting… Updates happen automatically now.
- maelito 10y agoAfter installing it, you need to open it (ok, it's easy). Updates frequently require approval of new permissions (android).
- mdadm 10y agoBut the alternative seems to be browser exposing APIs for all those permissions through Javascript and the end-user not really having any control over that. Perhaps I'm just naive about it, since I really don't do Javascript-based development, but this seems to be a worse idea than apps.
- technomancy 10y agoWeb pages don't require uninstalling when you decide they're not worth it.
- Touche 10y agoHaving to install them, remember what screen and folder it's in, etc.
- rimantas 10y agoHow much work is installing the app? Single tap? The same of less than opening a web page? No need to remember screen and folder, just use global search on your phone.
- Touche 10y agoSimilar, but web pages are usable before fully "installed". Data has repeated shown that users quickly abandon websites that don't load extremely fast. Apps are like that, but even slower. It's simple, when you want to do X, you want to do X, you don't want to do a lot of setup work before you start doing X.
- rimantas 10y agoIn what world native apps are slower than web apps? And where do you find "extremely fast" websites, with all this JS frameworks crap and gazillion of trackers being pushed to your poor browser?
- Touche 10y agoIn ever world since you have to install them and you don't have to install web apps.
- imtringued 10y agoWhere do you find those extremely small native apps that are smaller than a website?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- uryga 10y agoWell, it's not a lot of work. But it feels like way more work. It's visible even in the way we talk about it - "viewing a website" vs "getting an app". Looking at something is effortless, getting it implies effort. Often, too much of it, if I just want to check some stuff out quickly. Also, I feel like after installing an app, it takes more time to get to the actual content, because every app has a few screens of "Welcome to Foo! Here's how you do stuff in here." Websites are pretty instant compared to that.
- molf 10y agoBesides having to wait for the installation, one important recurring inconvenience for me (on iOS) is the lack of autofill. Especially autofilled user names and passwords.
- johncolanduoni 10y agoI really wish Apple would add a password-manager extension point to iOS. Since they're trying to push iCloud Keychain I'm not optimistic about this happening, but it would be a really nice way to make password managers more attractive.
- strange_quark 10y agoMaybe it's just specific apps integrating with 1Password, but Mint, among other apps, already can do this (and it brings up what appears to be an iOS share sheet). But this feature has largely become irrelevant to me thanks to almost every app I use that requires sign-in supporting Touch ID.
- djrogers 10y ago> I really wish Apple would add a password-manager extension point to iOS. They kinda have in 2 ways - as of iOS 9 or 10 your app can utilize login credentials from your web domain name if certain requirements are met, and there's touchID for instant login after the first authentication.
- rahoulb 10y agoI use Lastpass and a lot of apps offer a weird icon next to the password box that opens a share sheet with LastPass as an option.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- maelito 10y agoOn lots of old android devices: having to remove apps to make room for a new one
- michaelmrose 10y agoEven when you have tons of spaces on a huge sdcard even. This is incredibly frustrating as some devices were shipped with very very little space and too much of that taken up by the stuff that shipped with the phone that for whatever reason cannot be moved to your relatively large sdcard. I think merged storage is either here in the latest version of android or coming which will hopefully let us stop worrying about storage again but many devices will sadly never see the update.
- bryanlarsen 10y agoIf you see an interesting link on the web, you generally feel safe clicking on it, and often click on it. Sometimes you get rick-rolled or whatever, but you just hit back. If you see an ad or pop-up article about an app, what are the chances you install it, even if it looks interesting?
- millstone 10y agoI feel very safe installing apps on my iOS devices. The sandboxing and app store review process gives me confidence that it's not going to be malware. I click on links more than I install apps because loading web pages is a lot faster than installing apps. The flip side is that I hardly ever return to those "interesting links," while I use my installed apps frequently.
- pswilson14 10y agoMost people only use 4-6 apps a day, or less. Users are spending more and more time in fewer apps. I reckon a good bit of that is the friction of installing new apps.
- frankzinger 10y ago> The sandboxing and app store review process gives me confidence that it's not going to be malware. I would re-evaluate that stance if I were you: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/xcode-apple-app-store-hack http://www.wired.co.uk/article/xcode-apple-app-store-hack. Hundreds of apps injected with malware by a compromised version of Xcode made it through the App Store review process.
- TuringTest 10y agoWait until mobile OSes start building a native presentation layer built on WebAssembly. Apple already tried that approach with the iPhone one. It failed because the technology wasn't mature, but there have been nothing but advances since then. The web is a more flexible and portable platform, so the economic incentives will always be there. And while native toolkits are still based on 1970's lab research, the web as a platform benefits from mainstream usage by the whole world. At some point, the new tech will overcome and replace the old approach. The gap is getting smaller every day even if the old approach has decades of advantage, and all major tech providers are pushing for it.
- chejazi 10y ago> Wait until mobile OSes start building a native presentation layer built on WebAssembly. Is there any active project you can link to regarding this?
- adamnemecek 10y agoWebAssembly is too new for this to be a thing yet.
- icebraining 10y agoWhy haven't they built a native UI toolkit for JS, though? What will WebAssembly give them that makes it worthwhile?
- johncolanduoni 10y agoThe ability to leverage more native capabilities than JS can. A more generalized, less platform specific format for executable code already seems to be a goal for iOS and Android. Android of course has always used Java (well, Dalvik technically) bytecode, and Apple recently has started pushing their LLVM-based bitcode to reduce dependence on specific architectures. If WebAssembly does a good job of exposing features needed for high-performance code, it could become feasible to move everything to WebAssembly and ditch support for native code on both platforms.
- Touche 10y agoIt doesn't matter; worse is better. 1999 Yahoo Mail was not a good user experience, but it (and other web-based mail services) destroyed the likes of Eudora. Ubiquity >>>>> UX.
- digi_owl 10y agoWell its that, and that the users didn't need to configure a single thing when using the web thingy. Problem is, imo, that so much of the web assumes a mouse and keyboard. I keep running into "mobile" sites that are so crammed with links and other tap targets that i have no chance to hit the right one on first try with consistency.
- Theodores 10y ago...so HN is your first point of call, where the tap targets are so easy on the web first interface... Content is King
- Analemma_ 10y agoNot for me: HN is awful on a mobile browser, so I use an app (MiniHack). It's so much better than the mobile site that it has become my go-to counterargument whenever someone insists that the mobile web is going to displace apps any day now.
- girvo 10y agoThough, being fair, MiniHack is literally one of the best and most focused apps on my phone! Such an amazing product, was well worth the couple dollars.
- technomancy 10y agoHN is an outlier because there's no business model or team of OSS maintainers with motivation to improve it. I can't think of any other sites I visit in the same position.
- GrumpyNl 10y agoYou are one of the exceptions, most of us are happy with it.
- huntermonk 10y agoI agree. Mobile is already maturing. By the time web technology is good enough to create a native-feeling experience, we will be on to the next runtime. (Disclaimer: I do iOS consulting, so hugely biased)
- orbitur 10y agoI don't understand why people love websites so much. If a site is plaintext and has minimal JS, it's usually fine on a mobile device. But the moment there are interactive elements or menus or web fonts or whatever else, things are visibly broken, or they become broken once you start scrolling. Even relatively inoffensive websites with simple menubars have stuttering scrolling animation. Any decent native app doesn't animate that poorly. I'm an iOS user because design and UX are clearly valued by (non-shovelware) iOS developers. Having buttons jump around the screen or some weird JS stealing scrolling momentum would be unacceptable if it were in an app, but I visit at least one popular website a day where that's one of the problems.