7 ms·

Can someone point me to a successful PWA in the wild? I hear a lot of them as a web developer (usually the first thing I do after create-react-app is delete the

by fyp 7y ago

Can someone point me to a successful PWA in the wild? I hear a lot of them as a web developer (usually the first thing I do after create-react-app is delete the service worker) but I don't think I have ever seen/used one.

vbitz 7y ago
I use the Twitter PWA rather than the Android client.
giancarlostoro 7y ago
Wikipedia is one. I also use my American Express Savings bank page as a PWA. Its a very minimal PWA too which I love.
davec 7y ago
we recently converted Hookpad, our chord and melody sketchpad for teaching and writing music, to a PWA. Prior to being a PWA users often had to redownload samples each time they visited the site, and now they only have to download a sample once (our AWS bill has gotten smaller as a result). It was also really nice to suddenly be able to install the app locally and be able to use it without an internet connection. Getting all that capability just by adding a manifest file and a service worker was pretty cool. I won't comment on the pros and cons of just releasing a native app (we are in a lot of schools that prefer a web interface so this made sense for us), but we are very happy with the added functionality and don't see any downsides. https://hookpad.hooktheory.com https://hookpad.hooktheory.com
xfalcox 7y ago
I only use Twitter via their PWA installed on my phone. Also Discourse (where I work) is PWA compatible out of the box, so you can read previously visited topics offline, and install to browse in full screen.
- dragonsh 7y ago
  In my view PWA has a limited scope in terms of kind of application which can be made with it. The number of things one need to deal with to build a PWA is just complex, troublesome hard to maintain and hard to debug. Like PWA relying on complex tooling (typical with JS front-end development), implementing local db and associated complexity and security implications (like what to use indexdb or localstorage or something else), making sure relevant data is always in sync with the servers. So it's much easier to build a native cross-platform app instead of a PWA which is neither optimized for desktop web nor for mobile web (its a hybrid with it's own set of limitations on both the sides). I think framework like flutter is one viable way to build a cross platform desktop and mobile application including web (although it has it's own set of complication for building webapp). Still I feel the best approach is to build a webapp for desktop browsers and do a mobile cross-platform development using technology like flutter (react native and others are still not very good when it comes to mobile apps). If the mobile app is sufficiently complex than just use SwiftUI or Kotlin directly with common services layer.
  - zdragnar 7y ago
    There are real drawbacks to native apps: - 30% app store payment cut - users don't like dealing with updating apps all the time - employees don't like installing apps on their phones for work unless it is a work phone (not as common anymore) - cross-platform frameworks have their own bugs and performance issues - dealing with app rejections / takedowns / searchability on the app store There is a lot of accidental complexity in web technologies, but it isn't insurmountable, and there are of course plenty of successful native apps and apps written on cross-platform technologies. At the end of the day, the technology matters less than whether you are solving the problems your customers want you to solve. Many of the technical issues you list are also true for other technologies, cross-platform or not, and picking something that you and your team are comfortable with is almost always the right decision (assuming you aren't trying to do something at the hardware level that PWAs don't have API access to do, of course).
    - jamil7 7y ago
      iOS / Android both auto update apps these days.
mxmilkb 7y ago
https://suttacentral.net/offline https://suttacentral.net/offline https://github.com/suttacentral https://github.com/suttacentral
scrollaway 7y ago
I have a couple of CRA-based PWAs I wrote that are in production today, but I systematically do delete the service worker as well. My fear of dealing with caching issues related to it kind of stops me from taking the time to dig into how to deal with it properly.
thekyle 7y ago
I use the Uber PWA a lot.
enos_feedler 7y ago
For all those who responded positively on using PWAs in the wild, can you explain why you prefer the PWA over the native app (if available)? I am curious why someone would choose it.
- cglong 7y ago
  My favorite aspects: more restrictive hardware access (e.g. no tracking through Bluetooth or running in the background), having access via platforms that typically don't have apps (e.g. desktops), ability to modify behavior through extensions, caching can clear asset data if I don't use the app frequently (e.g. ridesharing)
- kenmorechalfant 7y ago
  The main thing isn't really about it being preferable, feature-wise - it's that it's the future of cross platform apps. If I could have apps like Photoshop or Ableton on Windows, Linux, Mac, ChromeOS, Android, etc - and they all work the same, that's a huge win all around.
  - dmitriid 7y ago
    First, you'd have to provide the web with 90% missing features that make such apps possible. And then make them available to PWAs. So no, it's not the future.
    - untog 7y ago
      The vast majority of native apps need next-to-no extra features on top of what the web provides. Facebook, Uber, Seamless, etc. etc... all they really need is an internet connection and location. And the web provides that.
      - dmitriid 7y ago
        The post I was replying to specifically said: > If I could have apps like Photoshop or Ableton... These apps require way way more than just internet connection and location. For example, you might have to implement your own renderers from scratch: https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-tool-on-the-web/ https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-to...
alert0 7y ago
I have a chat app that my girlfriend and I use. It's an installable pwa, has push notifications, does some caching of images and code, mobile and desktop views. Simple username and password signup and login so it's easy to use on a work computer. The big hindrance is that iPhone doesn't support browser notifications. So it is really only app-like on Android. I think they are awesome but you are missing half the market.
- ta999999171 7y ago
  > iPhone doesn't support browser notifications Wow. What a joke.
  - rickdg 7y ago
    Yeah, it also clears local storage if iOS is running out of space, which is common for a lot of these users.
  - me551ah 7y ago
    It's not a bad thing. I have an Android and sometimes it's easy to miss out and allow push notifications on a website. Next thing you know, you're getting bombarded with push notifications about "12 things cats like to do in spare time" . It's not exactly straightforward to revoke a website's push notification authorization either and you need to go into settings to do that.
    - chii 7y ago
      how do you not have the default set to 'deny all' for notifications in browser?
      - soneca 7y ago
        Non-HN users have it worst. My parents (~75yo) have Androids and they essentially ignore all notifications. They allowed notifications on a few clickbaity news websites that spam then with tens of notifications a day. So they just don't know what it is and ignore them all, including potential relevant ones (like Whatsapp messages from family). I, as a creator of a web app that would benefit a lot from notifications, would appreciate Apple adding push notifications to web. But I understand their choice
uhoh-itsmaciek 7y ago
Somewhat niche, but https://strummachine.com/app https://strummachine.com/app works great as a PWA.
dstaley 7y ago
Starbucks has a PWA! You can get to it via app.starbucks.com. I'm not sure why it's not the default experience, but they're definitely already sharing code between starbucks.com and the PWA since the ordering experience is exactly the same.
jillesvangurp 7y ago
We tried building one last year. The tools, standards, and documentation are a mess making this unnecessarily hard to test and develop. The experience of triggering the install button is downright inconsistent and surrounded by layers of indirection, validators that have to line up and a complete lack of any meaningful feedback when it doesn't work as you expect. Cross browser support is basically missing. Firefox does nothing productive with PWAs as far as I know and seems to be in no hurry to fix that. I'm not sure about safari/ios since we did not bother testing with that much. In any case, it's indeed extremely rare to encounter PWA buttons in the wild on Android and it seems like mainstream web sites are completely ignoring this feature other than maybe as a gimmick. IMHO major work to address all of the above is needed to change that.
- ta999999171 7y ago
  Major work, as in, changing the dialog for installing the home screen icon from "Yes/No" into "Yes/No/Don't Ask Again"?
  - jillesvangurp 7y ago
    Major work as in making this a proper cross browser standard that results in people actually being able to use it instead of just talking about maybe using it some day when it stops sucking this much. The sad state of PWA is that if Chrome were to drop support for it tomorrow, very few people would even notice this and very few applications would stop working. My impression is that devloping and testing this stuff is unnecessarily hard. The UI experience around this is flaky/inconsistent even when it works and the difference between this being broken/misconfigured or a user error is basically very hard to pin down. IMHO this is completely unusable in its current form and that's probably the main reason basically most people that ought to be getting some value out of this are either unaware it exists because they've actually never seen a real world example on a real world website adding any value whatsoever; or have made the conscious decision it's not worth their time (because of all the above). I'm in the latter category. I would use it but in its current form that's not something I can sell to a product manager.
yegle 7y ago
The Starbucks PWA is really good. Also ft.com's WPA.
pjmlp 7y ago
Outlook, Starbucks, Twitter
kshowkat 7y ago
Plugging my company's PWA we recently shipped, with decent growth: http://superjumbo.tv http://superjumbo.tv. I was skeptical about going the PWA route for some of the reasons listed below (weird iOS restrictions, lack of Firefox support), but for our use-case I'm extremely happy with the results.
- vijaybritto 7y ago
  Looks like you are using suspense already in production?! How is it serving you?
- lwansbrough 7y ago
  Can I recommend something? We see much higher acceptance rates for location access when it is explained ahead of time. It's not clear what you need it for. But if you had a banner that explains why you need it in the right UI context, you can provide a button like "Enable sharing location" or whatever, and you'll get a much higher rate of success.
  - lucasverra 7y ago
    This is good UX
vijaybritto 7y ago
There are lots of apps in India. The ones that I can remember are : https://www.swiggy.com https://www.swiggy.com https://www.oyorooms.com https://www.oyorooms.com https://outlook.live.com https://outlook.live.com All these are massively successful companies
mintplant 7y ago
Uber and Lyft both have really, really well-done PWAs. I used them extensively while I was on an older phone that didn't handle their native apps well. https://m.uber.com https://m.uber.com https://m.lyft.com https://m.lyft.com
lwansbrough 7y ago
I guess we’re just plugging our own apps. Our company has spent a considerable amount of time optimizing our site for PWA compatibility. We have a lot of users so these kind of optimizations are worthwhile financially but also substantially ease the load on our front end and back end servers. https://tracker.gg/tft https://tracker.gg/tft PWA features: - Installable - Offline caching - Push Notifications - Server side rendering - Heavy use of edge caching (JS, CSS, images, JSON from our API), HTML caching coming soon - Auto WebP Images support - Preload/preconnect - WebShare, Web Payments (Apple/Android Pay) - Automatic image optimization using a custom edge-cached image manipulation service - Self updating: despite being cached it will immediately upgrade itself if a new build is detected
bitten 7y ago
I am working on one, and I am in the process of getting it on the Play Store as a TWA. https://veggiechallenge.app https://veggiechallenge.app It's an MVP and that's something that the PWA has delivered on. We are still testing and working out the product.. after the user research, getting it on the web to know that the product has an audience and that those interested would use it was a very cheap and quick experiment. It's a shame that iOS does not support notifications, and they do not accept TWAs on the App Store. Still have both of those to work out, and then I will be very happy with the experience.

by fyp 7y ago

vbitz 7y ago

I use the Twitter PWA rather than the Android client.

giancarlostoro 7y ago

Wikipedia is one. I also use my American Express Savings bank page as a PWA. Its a very minimal PWA too which I love.

davec 7y ago

we recently converted Hookpad, our chord and melody sketchpad for teaching and writing music, to a PWA. Prior to being a PWA users often had to redownload samples each time they visited the site, and now they only have to download a sample once (our AWS bill has gotten smaller as a result). It was also really nice to suddenly be able to install the app locally and be able to use it without an internet connection. Getting all that capability just by adding a manifest file and a service worker was pretty cool. I won't comment on the pros and cons of just releasing a native app (we are in a lot of schools that prefer a web interface so this made sense for us), but we are very happy with the added functionality and don't see any downsides. https://hookpad.hooktheory.com https://hookpad.hooktheory.com

xfalcox 7y ago

I only use Twitter via their PWA installed on my phone. Also Discourse (where I work) is PWA compatible out of the box, so you can read previously visited topics offline, and install to browse in full screen.

dragonsh 7y ago
In my view PWA has a limited scope in terms of kind of application which can be made with it. The number of things one need to deal with to build a PWA is just complex, troublesome hard to maintain and hard to debug. Like PWA relying on complex tooling (typical with JS front-end development), implementing local db and associated complexity and security implications (like what to use indexdb or localstorage or something else), making sure relevant data is always in sync with the servers. So it's much easier to build a native cross-platform app instead of a PWA which is neither optimized for desktop web nor for mobile web (its a hybrid with it's own set of limitations on both the sides). I think framework like flutter is one viable way to build a cross platform desktop and mobile application including web (although it has it's own set of complication for building webapp). Still I feel the best approach is to build a webapp for desktop browsers and do a mobile cross-platform development using technology like flutter (react native and others are still not very good when it comes to mobile apps). If the mobile app is sufficiently complex than just use SwiftUI or Kotlin directly with common services layer.
- zdragnar 7y ago
  There are real drawbacks to native apps: - 30% app store payment cut - users don't like dealing with updating apps all the time - employees don't like installing apps on their phones for work unless it is a work phone (not as common anymore) - cross-platform frameworks have their own bugs and performance issues - dealing with app rejections / takedowns / searchability on the app store There is a lot of accidental complexity in web technologies, but it isn't insurmountable, and there are of course plenty of successful native apps and apps written on cross-platform technologies. At the end of the day, the technology matters less than whether you are solving the problems your customers want you to solve. Many of the technical issues you list are also true for other technologies, cross-platform or not, and picking something that you and your team are comfortable with is almost always the right decision (assuming you aren't trying to do something at the hardware level that PWAs don't have API access to do, of course).
  - jamil7 7y ago
    iOS / Android both auto update apps these days.

mxmilkb 7y ago

https://suttacentral.net/offline https://suttacentral.net/offline https://github.com/suttacentral https://github.com/suttacentral

scrollaway 7y ago

I have a couple of CRA-based PWAs I wrote that are in production today, but I systematically do delete the service worker as well. My fear of dealing with caching issues related to it kind of stops me from taking the time to dig into how to deal with it properly.

thekyle 7y ago

I use the Uber PWA a lot.

enos_feedler 7y ago

For all those who responded positively on using PWAs in the wild, can you explain why you prefer the PWA over the native app (if available)? I am curious why someone would choose it.

cglong 7y ago
My favorite aspects: more restrictive hardware access (e.g. no tracking through Bluetooth or running in the background), having access via platforms that typically don't have apps (e.g. desktops), ability to modify behavior through extensions, caching can clear asset data if I don't use the app frequently (e.g. ridesharing)
kenmorechalfant 7y ago
The main thing isn't really about it being preferable, feature-wise - it's that it's the future of cross platform apps. If I could have apps like Photoshop or Ableton on Windows, Linux, Mac, ChromeOS, Android, etc - and they all work the same, that's a huge win all around.
- dmitriid 7y ago
  First, you'd have to provide the web with 90% missing features that make such apps possible. And then make them available to PWAs. So no, it's not the future.
  - untog 7y ago
    The vast majority of native apps need next-to-no extra features on top of what the web provides. Facebook, Uber, Seamless, etc. etc... all they really need is an internet connection and location. And the web provides that.
    - dmitriid 7y ago
      The post I was replying to specifically said: > If I could have apps like Photoshop or Ableton... These apps require way way more than just internet connection and location. For example, you might have to implement your own renderers from scratch: https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-tool-on-the-web/ https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-to...

alert0 7y ago

I have a chat app that my girlfriend and I use. It's an installable pwa, has push notifications, does some caching of images and code, mobile and desktop views. Simple username and password signup and login so it's easy to use on a work computer. The big hindrance is that iPhone doesn't support browser notifications. So it is really only app-like on Android. I think they are awesome but you are missing half the market.

ta999999171 7y ago
> iPhone doesn't support browser notifications Wow. What a joke.
- rickdg 7y ago
  Yeah, it also clears local storage if iOS is running out of space, which is common for a lot of these users.
- me551ah 7y ago
  It's not a bad thing. I have an Android and sometimes it's easy to miss out and allow push notifications on a website. Next thing you know, you're getting bombarded with push notifications about "12 things cats like to do in spare time" . It's not exactly straightforward to revoke a website's push notification authorization either and you need to go into settings to do that.
  - chii 7y ago
    how do you not have the default set to 'deny all' for notifications in browser?
    - soneca 7y ago
      Non-HN users have it worst. My parents (~75yo) have Androids and they essentially ignore all notifications. They allowed notifications on a few clickbaity news websites that spam then with tens of notifications a day. So they just don't know what it is and ignore them all, including potential relevant ones (like Whatsapp messages from family). I, as a creator of a web app that would benefit a lot from notifications, would appreciate Apple adding push notifications to web. But I understand their choice

uhoh-itsmaciek 7y ago

Somewhat niche, but https://strummachine.com/app https://strummachine.com/app works great as a PWA.

dstaley 7y ago

Starbucks has a PWA! You can get to it via app.starbucks.com. I'm not sure why it's not the default experience, but they're definitely already sharing code between starbucks.com and the PWA since the ordering experience is exactly the same.

jillesvangurp 7y ago

We tried building one last year. The tools, standards, and documentation are a mess making this unnecessarily hard to test and develop. The experience of triggering the install button is downright inconsistent and surrounded by layers of indirection, validators that have to line up and a complete lack of any meaningful feedback when it doesn't work as you expect. Cross browser support is basically missing. Firefox does nothing productive with PWAs as far as I know and seems to be in no hurry to fix that. I'm not sure about safari/ios since we did not bother testing with that much. In any case, it's indeed extremely rare to encounter PWA buttons in the wild on Android and it seems like mainstream web sites are completely ignoring this feature other than maybe as a gimmick. IMHO major work to address all of the above is needed to change that.

ta999999171 7y ago
Major work, as in, changing the dialog for installing the home screen icon from "Yes/No" into "Yes/No/Don't Ask Again"?
- jillesvangurp 7y ago
  Major work as in making this a proper cross browser standard that results in people actually being able to use it instead of just talking about maybe using it some day when it stops sucking this much. The sad state of PWA is that if Chrome were to drop support for it tomorrow, very few people would even notice this and very few applications would stop working. My impression is that devloping and testing this stuff is unnecessarily hard. The UI experience around this is flaky/inconsistent even when it works and the difference between this being broken/misconfigured or a user error is basically very hard to pin down. IMHO this is completely unusable in its current form and that's probably the main reason basically most people that ought to be getting some value out of this are either unaware it exists because they've actually never seen a real world example on a real world website adding any value whatsoever; or have made the conscious decision it's not worth their time (because of all the above). I'm in the latter category. I would use it but in its current form that's not something I can sell to a product manager.

yegle 7y ago

The Starbucks PWA is really good. Also ft.com's WPA.

pjmlp 7y ago

Outlook, Starbucks, Twitter

kshowkat 7y ago

Plugging my company's PWA we recently shipped, with decent growth: http://superjumbo.tv http://superjumbo.tv. I was skeptical about going the PWA route for some of the reasons listed below (weird iOS restrictions, lack of Firefox support), but for our use-case I'm extremely happy with the results.

vijaybritto 7y ago
Looks like you are using suspense already in production?! How is it serving you?
lwansbrough 7y ago
Can I recommend something? We see much higher acceptance rates for location access when it is explained ahead of time. It's not clear what you need it for. But if you had a banner that explains why you need it in the right UI context, you can provide a button like "Enable sharing location" or whatever, and you'll get a much higher rate of success.
- lucasverra 7y ago
  This is good UX

vijaybritto 7y ago

There are lots of apps in India. The ones that I can remember are : https://www.swiggy.com https://www.swiggy.com https://www.oyorooms.com https://www.oyorooms.com https://outlook.live.com https://outlook.live.com All these are massively successful companies

mintplant 7y ago

Uber and Lyft both have really, really well-done PWAs. I used them extensively while I was on an older phone that didn't handle their native apps well. https://m.uber.com https://m.uber.com https://m.lyft.com https://m.lyft.com

lwansbrough 7y ago

I guess we’re just plugging our own apps. Our company has spent a considerable amount of time optimizing our site for PWA compatibility. We have a lot of users so these kind of optimizations are worthwhile financially but also substantially ease the load on our front end and back end servers. https://tracker.gg/tft https://tracker.gg/tft PWA features: - Installable - Offline caching - Push Notifications - Server side rendering - Heavy use of edge caching (JS, CSS, images, JSON from our API), HTML caching coming soon - Auto WebP Images support - Preload/preconnect - WebShare, Web Payments (Apple/Android Pay) - Automatic image optimization using a custom edge-cached image manipulation service - Self updating: despite being cached it will immediately upgrade itself if a new build is detected

bitten 7y ago

I am working on one, and I am in the process of getting it on the Play Store as a TWA. https://veggiechallenge.app https://veggiechallenge.app It's an MVP and that's something that the PWA has delivered on. We are still testing and working out the product.. after the user research, getting it on the web to know that the product has an audience and that those interested would use it was a very cheap and quick experiment. It's a shame that iOS does not support notifications, and they do not accept TWAs on the App Store. Still have both of those to work out, and then I will be very happy with the experience.