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I hate using web apps. On desktop, mobile, wherever. The author's list of things they want supported by Mobile Safari is just aggravating: > Here are a list of

I hate using web apps. On desktop, mobile, wherever. The author's list of things they want supported by Mobile Safari is just aggravating: > Here are a list of things you still can’t do with mobile safari due to Apple’s refusal to support them: > > Create an app loading screen > Use push notifications > Add offline support > Create an initial app UI to load instantly > Prompt installation to the home screen through browser-guided dialog Why do I want these things, as a user. App loading screens? I love the web. I love hyperlinks, text and images. The web of connections that lead you to information. Everything in that list is detrimental to a good experience on the web. I don't want push notifications, I barely enable them for native apps. And it bugs the hell out of me when every second website in desktop Safari prompts to send me push notifications. No. Why would I want this on mobile? Same thing with the home screen. I love the fact that the address bar in my web browser is my history, my reminders, my bookmarks, my open tabs. I start typing what I want and I'm there. Finding native apps on my home screen is only just getting to the same place with Spotlight, why would I want to make the web worse by sticking icons for pages on my home screen? And browser-guided dialogs to put more icons on my home screen? Seriously? This author's post is a great argument against web apps on mobile.

fredley 9y ago
Push notifications and home-screen icons are strictly opt-in. If you don't want them, don't opt, simple as. I use webapps for several things because I can much better protect myself from tracking and data-harvesting with a well-configured browser than I can using a native app.
- interpol_p 9y ago
  As I said, desktop Safari allows websites to prompt me for push notifications. I can't stand it: that a web site has the ability to display a modal prompt sheet that I have to cancel.
  - fredley 9y ago
    It's not modal (like `alert`), it doesn't steal focus, at least not on any browser I've used.
  - marpstar 9y ago
    This isn't new. Desktop browsers have been showing modal prompts via the javascript `prompt()` method for quite some time.
    - falcolas 9y ago
      It's not coincidental that the ability to do so has been actively limited by so many browsers (with opt-out forever options in some cases).
    - santaclaus 9y ago
      > This isn't new. Just because it is old doesn't make it a good user experience.
  - jasonlotito 9y ago
    Disable it. It's a feature some people like and use. I like getting notifications from some services I use without needing to keep a browser window open on that page to get notified. And I like not having to download and install yet another flipping app to get that feature.
    - Spivak 9y ago
      I cant imagine a service that you frequent enough to want push notifications but not enough that you would be willing to install a native app for a smoother experience.
      - jdauriemma 9y ago
        One where the developer does not have enough resources to develop for and support multiple platforms?
        Spivak 9y ago
        Right, but the parent's argument is that web notifications are a way to avoid installing a native app.
        jasonlotito 9y ago
        My argument is not limited to some thin line you define. Please don't speak for me or put words in my mouth that are not true.
        jasonlotito 9y ago
        You get it.
      - fenomas 9y ago
        > I cant imagine a service that you frequent enough to want push notifications but not enough that you would be willing to install a native app for a smoother experience. Um. Email?
      - 9y ago
  - matthewmacleod 9y ago
    There's a preference to disable this, though. Don't get me wrong - it's awful and I hate it. But I'm sure there are valid use-cases for people who use e.g. webmail.
archagon 9y ago
Agreed -- squeezing these native app elements into the document-based paradigm of the web is a horrid, Frankenstein's monster of an idea. It's like doing app development in Excel. If native web apps are to be more of a universal thing, I believe there ought to be a blank-canvas "meta-browser" layer that sits above the browser and that all web apps (including today's browsers) are built on top of. Basically a lightweight, sandboxed pseudo-OS that offers a robust standard library, a URL scheme and easy networking support, some sort of bytecode, maybe a UI toolkit, etc. Web apps would still take up the same amount of space and would still be able to run without installing, but they would now be endowed with native performance, app-specific features, and a consistent, functional UI. (Quiz: how often do your back/forward buttons fail when using, for example, your bank's website? The fact that these two ubiquitous controls simply break the web more often than not should be telling.) Shoehorning all that stuff into a hyperlinked, navigable document browser is insanity, and you can always feel it unless your web-app has basically reimplemented the DOM from scratch[1]. The web is currently layered upside-down and I think web apps won't lose their reputation until this is fixed. [1]: http://engineering.flipboard.com/2015/02/mobile-web http://engineering.flipboard.com/2015/02/mobile-web
- _pdp_ 9y ago
  Literally all businesses are run on top of Excel, which, if you like, is sort of a generic app development environment.
  - archagon 9y ago
    I know, that's why I brought it up! Imagine if the user-facing app ecosystem of the future had to be built on top of that platform.
agmcleod 9y ago
I don't care much for notifications either. Offline support is pretty great though. Even when online, page load speed tends to be faster.
pas 9y ago
> Why do I want these things, as a user. App loading screens? Maybe because it's a business app, and the loading screen checks whether you are on intranet (corp wifi) or not. > I don't want push notifications, I barely enable them for native apps. I would enable them for important apps (eg. business apps), so I want the technology, but I absolutely hate the popups on news sites for notifications. So nobody wants that on mobile, but they still want to be able to use notifications when they start using an app from which they want to get notifications. It's that simple. Let's say a fitness app. Let's say a basic simple fucking calendar app. Or a whatever run of the mill business workflow shit app, that requires your attention from time to time. And it'd be easier if there were no need to build for every fucking platform. > why would I want to make the web worse by sticking icons for pages on my home screen? Maybe people have great spatial memory (I like organizing icons on my home screen on Android), maybe you don't want to type? > And browser-guided dialogs to put more icons on my home screen? Seriously? Yeah. Consistent UX and security. Why not? It can be OS provided.
- interpol_p 9y ago
  > Let's say a fitness app. Let's say a basic simple fucking calendar app. Or a whatever run of the mill business workflow shit app, that requires your attention from time to time. And it'd be easier if there were no need to build for every fucking platform. Yeah I wouldn't have been a Mac or iOS user if I wasn't anal about every single app on my system being a good citizen. From the simple fucking calendar app, fitness app, or whatever. I expect the developers of those apps to be as passionate about the pixels I interact with as I am. Attention to detail is a reason these platforms are so loved. Encouraging "simple fucking calendar" apps to disregard the platform in their design is exactly the opposite reason I chose this platform to begin with. > And it'd be easier if there were no need to build for every fucking platform. It's easier to build badly for every platform. But no matter what technology stack you choose, if you want to build well for every platform then you are in for a lot of work. Cross platform is not going to make it easier because writing code is not the hard part.
  - pas 9y ago
    With cross-platform [Web or even native but shimmed] APIs even the "badly" written apps could be better. I want to be passionate, but - let's say - I know CSS/HTML/Java and a bit of C#, and so while I could spend time building an Android app and maybe fiddle a bit with a Windows Phone app, but there's no way in hell that I want to venture into OS X territory, ObjectiveC creeps me out more than Haskell and f#, so I can't. (Okay, Swift is nice, but I'm still not allowed in the closed garden, because I don't have access to Xcode.) I would gladly pay the 100 USD for the Apple Store Developer privilege if I'd get to use nice Web APIs. It can be whitelisted on the Store settings, and it can even integrate into the store, that'd be almost better.
criley2 9y ago
I completely disagree, to be frank. Why do I need a native binary, tens of thousands of lines of code, an app with a massive permissions access to my device... To read a news article? To book a flight? To comment on an internet post? Adding a few more "app features" to light web pages sounds a whole lot more attractive than banishing all useful functionality into the den of apps, where only larger teams and more experienced developers can roll out even basic functionality.
- quickben 9y ago
  There is that, and then there are performance intensive apps, and everything in between. Apple is ensuring that most of its ecosystem is fast and pleasant.
  - pmontra 9y ago
    Fast and pleasant are useful tools to Apple's goal of making a lot of money, which is not bad per se. The author got it right: > Apple treats web apps like second class citizens because they don’t generate money like native apps in the app store. There won't be good support for web apps unless they find a way to make money out of them. If the day comes that native apps don't make money anymore, maybe because everybody gives them for free as front end to services paid outside the Apple Store (think Slack), then Apple could improve Safari and live only with revenues from the hardware. It's going to be a hard fight because the goals of Apple and the goals of developers (and maybe also the goal of their customers) are not aligned and they own the platform.
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  Why do I need a native binary, tens of thousands of lines of code, an app with a massive permissions access to my device... You don't – but why do you need loading screens, push notifications, or any of that other stuff either? The web is great in concept for document-oriented information and some application uses. Mobile applications are greater for richer user interfaces and more device integration. They both have their strengths, and I think it's okay to accept that.
jaffathecake 9y ago
I use the Facebook site added to my homescreen rather than a native app. Uses way less space & does everything I want Facebook to be able to do. I don't want push notifications from every site, but in this case it's valuable. I wish it worked offline-first, but I know it's something they're looking at.
- johnny_reilly 9y ago
  I'm the same - I've generally taking to avoiding native apps wherever it's possible. So I don't have the Twitter app anymore as Twitter is now a PWA: https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-source/2017/how-we-built-twitter-lite.html https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-sourc... Similarly Facebook is just fine without the app and I'm happy with it. It has notifications etc. I'd like it if it was offline first but I'm more than happy with it as is.
- dccoolgai 9y ago
  Native apps are the new desktop apps. OK for gaming, overkill and gaping privacy hole for everything else.
  - sidlls 9y ago
    Because web apps are certainly very good at protecting privacy.
    - dccoolgai 9y ago
      "To read news on this site, you must give permission to: Your phone Your camera All your files " I've never seen that on a web app, but it's de rigeur for native mobile.
      - sidlls 9y ago
        Meanwhile webapps can potentially report on everything you do that touches your browser and at most you might have to acknowledge a cookie stored on your browser. News readers requesting that level of access is bad, but at least they tell you when they're invading your privacy.
ohitsdom 9y ago
"The web" is a broad concept, but we should break it down to two distinct things: websites and web apps. You don't need all these extra features for a website. However, they are useful and needed for many web apps. Just because websites sometimes abuse these features doesn't make them bad.
- bo1024 9y ago
  I think this is such an important distinction that we should build it into web standards. A site should label itself as either a "plain site" or a "web app". "Sites" may only use a limited subset and amount of javascript (perhaps none?!). Browsers, search engines, and plugins can treat plain sites and web apps differently.
  - krapp 9y ago
    >A site should label itself as either "just a site" or a "web app". "Sites" may only use a limited subset and amount of javascript (perhaps none?!). Browsers, search engines, and plugins can treat sites and web apps differently. I too dislike the fact that web developers have the freedom to make design decisions with which I disagree.
    - bo1024 9y ago
      If the goal is to let developers make more design decisions, shouldn't we give websites root access to the machine by default?
  - mgkimsal 9y ago
    any site with a login is probably already self-identifying to some degree.
sidlls 9y ago
This mirrors my view as well. Using the browser as a terrible, partially functional app server as though it were some kind of gimpy VM is one of the worst things to have happened in this industry. Building what should be simple dynamic websites as native apps is as bad. Many things that are "appified" seem to me to be too complicated when developed as web apps and have too simplistic a use case when developed as native ones for mobile.
dccoolgai 9y ago
Sometimes I, too, pine for the days of "hyperlinks, text and images"-only web. So I turn off Javascript. You can too, if that's how you want to consume the web. That's the beauty of it - it allows for that by design. What I don't like is the position you are taking that "because I only want to consume the web that way, the Web itself should be hamstrung to my limited view of how it should work." There is no good reason - when the capability exists - that the Web as a platform should be chaste with things like Offline-first and even push messages (which IMHO are a big privacy win over the current mode of getting updates about things you're interested in, because you can't ungive someone your email address but you can easily turn off notification channels.) "Because that's not the way I want to consume the web" is not a good enough reason to deny the rest of us who want to see the Web continue as a modern and relevant platform. If you feel like shouting "get off my lawn" at the kids using those things, just flip off JS.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  There is one good reason. The web is a large ecosystem, and we're all living in it. You have a right to express your opinion about its development, and as a responsible inhabitant of that ecosystem, you should exercise that right. Or, in other words, since we live in it, if the web turns into shit (even more than it already has), we'll have to live in that shit.
  - dccoolgai 9y ago
    I said they couldn't express their opinion? No - I even validated it by saying "sometimes I feel like that, too" and prescribed a simple remedy that would cure the problem: turn off JS. My opinion, since we're expressing them as responsible inhabitants of the Web, is that bringing the web to feature parity with mobile apps - in a responsible and well-governed way as I believe the standards committees who worked on the ServiceWorker spec have done - does more to keep it relevant and provide good User Experiences than forcing devs to try to match user expectations without the facilities. Since we're expressing opinions, here's another one: Apple is purposefully dragging their feet by not implementing these things fully on Safari because they want to protect their precious walled garden as long as they can to the detriment of everyone else using the web. Back to the original point I made - if you are concerned about the things being bolted on to the web "turning it to shit" you can turn them off. Maybe the UA vendors should make that easier to do, or easier to do selectively? That's an opinion you could express to them.
meesterdude 9y ago
As a developer, I would love push notifications in safari. The only alternative is a native app, which is much more work.
- criddell 9y ago
  As a user, I think crappy or unethical web developers would ruin it for everybody. At least with native apps, there's a somewhat consistent way for me to manage notifications (and I have 95% of them turned off).
  - meesterdude 9y ago
    whats the issue if you're granting permission for them though? just say no if it's from Buzzfeed, yes if it's from my XYZ service - that's all it takes. And - I would expect notification management would need to be similarly accessible. Notifications are tough to do as is - and a core user need. You and I might turn them off, but many people rely on them heavily. If I have responsive web app with notifications - that's the dream for me. because I don't want to have to build a native app JUST for that. Nor, should many others need to.
    - criddell 9y ago
      I may be wrong about this, but it seems like waking up a web app periodically to check for notifications would use a lot more power (and maybe data) than it does for a native app. Web apps in general are going to be less efficient, aren't they? So a web app is easier for you, but aren't you really just transferring the cost to your users in the form of battery and data consumption?
      - meesterdude 9y ago
        Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say a lot more power - and apple could potentially integrate it with their existing push service. Would it be, in a way, pushing costs onto users? potentially. But, it's a matter of shipping something that works at the loss of some battery and data usage (minimal) or spending 6 months to a year learning and developing a native app which is more efficient for end users. But both approaches are subject to market validation - one lets you reach validation quickly, the other requires quite a detour. So, I'd rather not throw away all that time. If I can get notifications that work, even if only checked every 10 minutes vs. instant, I would be happy. Then, if there is market fit and proper demand, I can likely afford the time/money to build out a native experience.
jdauriemma 9y ago
The answer is, you don't want those things. 95% of web applications shouldn't use push notifications, add to home screen dialogs or app loading screens. They're annoying. Now imagine a world where PWA is substantially implemented across all major browsers. Given this scenario, let's pretend Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook in that environment. There's the case for PWA - some apps are more engaging (for better or worse) with push notifications, home screen access, offline functionality, and optimistic UI updates. Do I care if my favorite blogs have push notifications? No. Do I care if my favorite social networks and messaging apps have push notifications? Yes.
wuliwong 9y ago
I was wondering what prevents someone from sending an initial app UI?

fredley 9y ago

Push notifications and home-screen icons are strictly opt-in. If you don't want them, don't opt, simple as. I use webapps for several things because I can much better protect myself from tracking and data-harvesting with a well-configured browser than I can using a native app.

interpol_p 9y ago
As I said, desktop Safari allows websites to prompt me for push notifications. I can't stand it: that a web site has the ability to display a modal prompt sheet that I have to cancel.
- fredley 9y ago
  It's not modal (like `alert`), it doesn't steal focus, at least not on any browser I've used.
- marpstar 9y ago
  This isn't new. Desktop browsers have been showing modal prompts via the javascript `prompt()` method for quite some time.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    It's not coincidental that the ability to do so has been actively limited by so many browsers (with opt-out forever options in some cases).
  - santaclaus 9y ago
    > This isn't new. Just because it is old doesn't make it a good user experience.
- jasonlotito 9y ago
  Disable it. It's a feature some people like and use. I like getting notifications from some services I use without needing to keep a browser window open on that page to get notified. And I like not having to download and install yet another flipping app to get that feature.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    I cant imagine a service that you frequent enough to want push notifications but not enough that you would be willing to install a native app for a smoother experience.
    - jdauriemma 9y ago
      One where the developer does not have enough resources to develop for and support multiple platforms?
      - Spivak 9y ago
        Right, but the parent's argument is that web notifications are a way to avoid installing a native app.
        jasonlotito 9y ago
        My argument is not limited to some thin line you define. Please don't speak for me or put words in my mouth that are not true.
      - jasonlotito 9y ago
        You get it.
    - fenomas 9y ago
      > I cant imagine a service that you frequent enough to want push notifications but not enough that you would be willing to install a native app for a smoother experience. Um. Email?
    - 9y ago
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  There's a preference to disable this, though. Don't get me wrong - it's awful and I hate it. But I'm sure there are valid use-cases for people who use e.g. webmail.

archagon 9y ago

Agreed -- squeezing these native app elements into the document-based paradigm of the web is a horrid, Frankenstein's monster of an idea. It's like doing app development in Excel. If native web apps are to be more of a universal thing, I believe there ought to be a blank-canvas "meta-browser" layer that sits above the browser and that all web apps (including today's browsers) are built on top of. Basically a lightweight, sandboxed pseudo-OS that offers a robust standard library, a URL scheme and easy networking support, some sort of bytecode, maybe a UI toolkit, etc. Web apps would still take up the same amount of space and would still be able to run without installing, but they would now be endowed with native performance, app-specific features, and a consistent, functional UI. (Quiz: how often do your back/forward buttons fail when using, for example, your bank's website? The fact that these two ubiquitous controls simply break the web more often than not should be telling.) Shoehorning all that stuff into a hyperlinked, navigable document browser is insanity, and you can always feel it unless your web-app has basically reimplemented the DOM from scratch[1]. The web is currently layered upside-down and I think web apps won't lose their reputation until this is fixed. [1]: http://engineering.flipboard.com/2015/02/mobile-web http://engineering.flipboard.com/2015/02/mobile-web

_pdp_ 9y ago
Literally all businesses are run on top of Excel, which, if you like, is sort of a generic app development environment.
- archagon 9y ago
  I know, that's why I brought it up! Imagine if the user-facing app ecosystem of the future had to be built on top of that platform.

agmcleod 9y ago

I don't care much for notifications either. Offline support is pretty great though. Even when online, page load speed tends to be faster.

pas 9y ago

> Why do I want these things, as a user. App loading screens? Maybe because it's a business app, and the loading screen checks whether you are on intranet (corp wifi) or not. > I don't want push notifications, I barely enable them for native apps. I would enable them for important apps (eg. business apps), so I want the technology, but I absolutely hate the popups on news sites for notifications. So nobody wants that on mobile, but they still want to be able to use notifications when they start using an app from which they want to get notifications. It's that simple. Let's say a fitness app. Let's say a basic simple fucking calendar app. Or a whatever run of the mill business workflow shit app, that requires your attention from time to time. And it'd be easier if there were no need to build for every fucking platform. > why would I want to make the web worse by sticking icons for pages on my home screen? Maybe people have great spatial memory (I like organizing icons on my home screen on Android), maybe you don't want to type? > And browser-guided dialogs to put more icons on my home screen? Seriously? Yeah. Consistent UX and security. Why not? It can be OS provided.

interpol_p 9y ago
> Let's say a fitness app. Let's say a basic simple fucking calendar app. Or a whatever run of the mill business workflow shit app, that requires your attention from time to time. And it'd be easier if there were no need to build for every fucking platform. Yeah I wouldn't have been a Mac or iOS user if I wasn't anal about every single app on my system being a good citizen. From the simple fucking calendar app, fitness app, or whatever. I expect the developers of those apps to be as passionate about the pixels I interact with as I am. Attention to detail is a reason these platforms are so loved. Encouraging "simple fucking calendar" apps to disregard the platform in their design is exactly the opposite reason I chose this platform to begin with. > And it'd be easier if there were no need to build for every fucking platform. It's easier to build badly for every platform. But no matter what technology stack you choose, if you want to build well for every platform then you are in for a lot of work. Cross platform is not going to make it easier because writing code is not the hard part.
- pas 9y ago
  With cross-platform [Web or even native but shimmed] APIs even the "badly" written apps could be better. I want to be passionate, but - let's say - I know CSS/HTML/Java and a bit of C#, and so while I could spend time building an Android app and maybe fiddle a bit with a Windows Phone app, but there's no way in hell that I want to venture into OS X territory, ObjectiveC creeps me out more than Haskell and f#, so I can't. (Okay, Swift is nice, but I'm still not allowed in the closed garden, because I don't have access to Xcode.) I would gladly pay the 100 USD for the Apple Store Developer privilege if I'd get to use nice Web APIs. It can be whitelisted on the Store settings, and it can even integrate into the store, that'd be almost better.

criley2 9y ago

I completely disagree, to be frank. Why do I need a native binary, tens of thousands of lines of code, an app with a massive permissions access to my device... To read a news article? To book a flight? To comment on an internet post? Adding a few more "app features" to light web pages sounds a whole lot more attractive than banishing all useful functionality into the den of apps, where only larger teams and more experienced developers can roll out even basic functionality.

quickben 9y ago
There is that, and then there are performance intensive apps, and everything in between. Apple is ensuring that most of its ecosystem is fast and pleasant.
- pmontra 9y ago
  Fast and pleasant are useful tools to Apple's goal of making a lot of money, which is not bad per se. The author got it right: > Apple treats web apps like second class citizens because they don’t generate money like native apps in the app store. There won't be good support for web apps unless they find a way to make money out of them. If the day comes that native apps don't make money anymore, maybe because everybody gives them for free as front end to services paid outside the Apple Store (think Slack), then Apple could improve Safari and live only with revenues from the hardware. It's going to be a hard fight because the goals of Apple and the goals of developers (and maybe also the goal of their customers) are not aligned and they own the platform.
matthewmacleod 9y ago
Why do I need a native binary, tens of thousands of lines of code, an app with a massive permissions access to my device... You don't – but why do you need loading screens, push notifications, or any of that other stuff either? The web is great in concept for document-oriented information and some application uses. Mobile applications are greater for richer user interfaces and more device integration. They both have their strengths, and I think it's okay to accept that.

jaffathecake 9y ago

I use the Facebook site added to my homescreen rather than a native app. Uses way less space & does everything I want Facebook to be able to do. I don't want push notifications from every site, but in this case it's valuable. I wish it worked offline-first, but I know it's something they're looking at.

johnny_reilly 9y ago
I'm the same - I've generally taking to avoiding native apps wherever it's possible. So I don't have the Twitter app anymore as Twitter is now a PWA: https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-source/2017/how-we-built-twitter-lite.html https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-sourc... Similarly Facebook is just fine without the app and I'm happy with it. It has notifications etc. I'd like it if it was offline first but I'm more than happy with it as is.
dccoolgai 9y ago
Native apps are the new desktop apps. OK for gaming, overkill and gaping privacy hole for everything else.
- sidlls 9y ago
  Because web apps are certainly very good at protecting privacy.
  - dccoolgai 9y ago
    "To read news on this site, you must give permission to: Your phone Your camera All your files " I've never seen that on a web app, but it's de rigeur for native mobile.
    - sidlls 9y ago
      Meanwhile webapps can potentially report on everything you do that touches your browser and at most you might have to acknowledge a cookie stored on your browser. News readers requesting that level of access is bad, but at least they tell you when they're invading your privacy.

ohitsdom 9y ago

"The web" is a broad concept, but we should break it down to two distinct things: websites and web apps. You don't need all these extra features for a website. However, they are useful and needed for many web apps. Just because websites sometimes abuse these features doesn't make them bad.

bo1024 9y ago
I think this is such an important distinction that we should build it into web standards. A site should label itself as either a "plain site" or a "web app". "Sites" may only use a limited subset and amount of javascript (perhaps none?!). Browsers, search engines, and plugins can treat plain sites and web apps differently.
- krapp 9y ago
  >A site should label itself as either "just a site" or a "web app". "Sites" may only use a limited subset and amount of javascript (perhaps none?!). Browsers, search engines, and plugins can treat sites and web apps differently. I too dislike the fact that web developers have the freedom to make design decisions with which I disagree.
  - bo1024 9y ago
    If the goal is to let developers make more design decisions, shouldn't we give websites root access to the machine by default?
- mgkimsal 9y ago
  any site with a login is probably already self-identifying to some degree.

sidlls 9y ago

This mirrors my view as well. Using the browser as a terrible, partially functional app server as though it were some kind of gimpy VM is one of the worst things to have happened in this industry. Building what should be simple dynamic websites as native apps is as bad. Many things that are "appified" seem to me to be too complicated when developed as web apps and have too simplistic a use case when developed as native ones for mobile.

dccoolgai 9y ago

Sometimes I, too, pine for the days of "hyperlinks, text and images"-only web. So I turn off Javascript. You can too, if that's how you want to consume the web. That's the beauty of it - it allows for that by design. What I don't like is the position you are taking that "because I only want to consume the web that way, the Web itself should be hamstrung to my limited view of how it should work." There is no good reason - when the capability exists - that the Web as a platform should be chaste with things like Offline-first and even push messages (which IMHO are a big privacy win over the current mode of getting updates about things you're interested in, because you can't ungive someone your email address but you can easily turn off notification channels.) "Because that's not the way I want to consume the web" is not a good enough reason to deny the rest of us who want to see the Web continue as a modern and relevant platform. If you feel like shouting "get off my lawn" at the kids using those things, just flip off JS.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
There is one good reason. The web is a large ecosystem, and we're all living in it. You have a right to express your opinion about its development, and as a responsible inhabitant of that ecosystem, you should exercise that right. Or, in other words, since we live in it, if the web turns into shit (even more than it already has), we'll have to live in that shit.
- dccoolgai 9y ago
  I said they couldn't express their opinion? No - I even validated it by saying "sometimes I feel like that, too" and prescribed a simple remedy that would cure the problem: turn off JS. My opinion, since we're expressing them as responsible inhabitants of the Web, is that bringing the web to feature parity with mobile apps - in a responsible and well-governed way as I believe the standards committees who worked on the ServiceWorker spec have done - does more to keep it relevant and provide good User Experiences than forcing devs to try to match user expectations without the facilities. Since we're expressing opinions, here's another one: Apple is purposefully dragging their feet by not implementing these things fully on Safari because they want to protect their precious walled garden as long as they can to the detriment of everyone else using the web. Back to the original point I made - if you are concerned about the things being bolted on to the web "turning it to shit" you can turn them off. Maybe the UA vendors should make that easier to do, or easier to do selectively? That's an opinion you could express to them.

meesterdude 9y ago

As a developer, I would love push notifications in safari. The only alternative is a native app, which is much more work.

criddell 9y ago
As a user, I think crappy or unethical web developers would ruin it for everybody. At least with native apps, there's a somewhat consistent way for me to manage notifications (and I have 95% of them turned off).
- meesterdude 9y ago
  whats the issue if you're granting permission for them though? just say no if it's from Buzzfeed, yes if it's from my XYZ service - that's all it takes. And - I would expect notification management would need to be similarly accessible. Notifications are tough to do as is - and a core user need. You and I might turn them off, but many people rely on them heavily. If I have responsive web app with notifications - that's the dream for me. because I don't want to have to build a native app JUST for that. Nor, should many others need to.
  - criddell 9y ago
    I may be wrong about this, but it seems like waking up a web app periodically to check for notifications would use a lot more power (and maybe data) than it does for a native app. Web apps in general are going to be less efficient, aren't they? So a web app is easier for you, but aren't you really just transferring the cost to your users in the form of battery and data consumption?
    - meesterdude 9y ago
      Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say a lot more power - and apple could potentially integrate it with their existing push service. Would it be, in a way, pushing costs onto users? potentially. But, it's a matter of shipping something that works at the loss of some battery and data usage (minimal) or spending 6 months to a year learning and developing a native app which is more efficient for end users. But both approaches are subject to market validation - one lets you reach validation quickly, the other requires quite a detour. So, I'd rather not throw away all that time. If I can get notifications that work, even if only checked every 10 minutes vs. instant, I would be happy. Then, if there is market fit and proper demand, I can likely afford the time/money to build out a native experience.

jdauriemma 9y ago

The answer is, you don't want those things. 95% of web applications shouldn't use push notifications, add to home screen dialogs or app loading screens. They're annoying. Now imagine a world where PWA is substantially implemented across all major browsers. Given this scenario, let's pretend Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook in that environment. There's the case for PWA - some apps are more engaging (for better or worse) with push notifications, home screen access, offline functionality, and optimistic UI updates. Do I care if my favorite blogs have push notifications? No. Do I care if my favorite social networks and messaging apps have push notifications? Yes.

wuliwong 9y ago

I was wondering what prevents someone from sending an initial app UI?