4 ms·

I tried using your app on an iPhone (with Add to Home Screen). - If I press the settings gear, the text on the settings page is about twice as wide as the scre

by comex 7y ago

I tried using your app on an iPhone (with Add to Home Screen). - If I press the settings gear, the text on the settings page is about twice as wide as the screen, requiring horizontal scrolling. - On the front page, if I open the color picker, it's partially offscreen. - On all pages, if I do a scroll gesture in the wrong direction, it scrolls the entire UI rather than just the scrollable part. Admittedly, iOS has long made this hard to avoid without hacky JavaScript, but it's been doable, and it's much easier now [1]. - The hamburger button on the left opens a modal view that covers all of the screen but a small margin on the right, making it unreasonably hard to exit. - If I try to create a tag or folder, the name prompt appears under the other modal view and is improperly sized. - Oh, and the UI looks thoroughly non-native, e.g. Google-style floating action button, UI not covering the status bar, bottom tab buttons too short, etc. The animations are also haphazard. My point is not just to nitpick. It's just that while I sympathize with the idea of PWAs in principle, almost every single time I see someone talk about theirs, the PWA in question has immediately obvious glaring UI defects that have nothing to do with browser limitations, and leave it far below the standard of a good native app, or even a bad one. I honestly don't know why this is, but experiencing it over and over makes it hard for me to care about PWAs. [1] https://benfrain.com/preventing-body-scroll-for-modals-in-ios/ https://benfrain.com/preventing-body-scroll-for-modals-in-io...

jdauriemma 7y ago
There are some fantastic PWAs out there. Twitter is the one I use most regularly. I think one of the reasons we see a lot of less-polished PWAs is that the idea of the PWA appeals to businesses at certain stages. Larger shops can afford to ship native binaries to more than one platform, but a smaller operation can't. PWAs are presumably tempting to those types of product teams: you get multi-platform reach while truly only writing for the web. The fact that their UIs have rough edges are probably a result of having an MVP-stage product.
- jfkebwjsbx 7y ago
  Writing for the web and trying to be consistent with native UI is a nightmare. It is not about MVP-stage or not, it is simply not worth it.
  - jdauriemma 7y ago
    There's no rule that says that an app UI must be consistent with native app conventions.
- Twisell 7y ago
  Is Twitter really a PWA or just a nicely done responsive website? At this point the boundary is a unclear. Beside Twitter rely on server side storage and pretty much only store session token in the PWA "local storage" (largely speaking). And as a user I rather installed iOS native App to keep finer grained control on permissions. (I also use multi accounts not sure the PWA Handel that?)
  - enos_feedler 7y ago
    This highlights a longstanding issue of PWA definition and how to position it against modern web practices and features. What is a PWA? Why is it even a thing?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - jdauriemma 7y ago
    It is absolutely a PWA, and an excellent one at that. You can add it to your home screen on the desktop and mobile platforms that support it; they have all the trappings of a native application including notifications support, background refresh, etc.
- dmitriid 7y ago
  Twitter's "PWA" is crap. It has an unending stream of glaring UX/UI errors that only get worse over time. I'm just gonna link to a small subset of failures we've documented: https://www.google.se/search?q=twitter+site:grumpy.website https://www.google.se/search?q=twitter+site:grumpy.website
  - jdauriemma 7y ago
    Why enclose PWA in quotes? Just curious. I use Twitter's PWA weekly on more than one platform and it works great for me, but that's just one person's opinion. I prefer it over their native clients for a lot of reasons, but the main value-add is that I don't have to give Twitter access to detailed information about my system while still using a full-featured, first-party client.
    - dmitriid 7y ago
      > Why enclose PWA in quotes? It's twitter's mobile site that they extended to cover both desktop and PWA. As a result, it's quite bad on all fronts and judging by the number of bugs that are lingering with no fixes, abandoned. At least they managed to almost fix the epileptic scroll position [1] > I don't have to give Twitter access to detailed information about my system while still using a full-featured, first-party client. Yes, this is, without a doubt, the best value-proposition of PWAs. [1] https://grumpy.website/post/0RQvmdNmN https://grumpy.website/post/0RQvmdNmN
fragmede 7y ago
Are you sure that's not a catch-22? The reason you've not seen any good PWAs is because the ecosystem doesn't exist for making good PWAs, which doesn't exist because there aren't any good PWAs. Any sane technologist is going to look at the shortcomings of PWAs, and choose a different technology to build their app. Choose boring technology[0], and unless your product is a PWA toolkit, the app UI library isn't the place to get creative. The single issue with PWAs, on iOS, is how do I add a PWA app to the home screen? I go to the app store and search... and your app isn't there. As developers we innately understand why that's so, but our users don't and shouldn't need to understand the difference. [0] https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology

by comex 7y ago

jdauriemma 7y ago

There are some fantastic PWAs out there. Twitter is the one I use most regularly. I think one of the reasons we see a lot of less-polished PWAs is that the idea of the PWA appeals to businesses at certain stages. Larger shops can afford to ship native binaries to more than one platform, but a smaller operation can't. PWAs are presumably tempting to those types of product teams: you get multi-platform reach while truly only writing for the web. The fact that their UIs have rough edges are probably a result of having an MVP-stage product.

jfkebwjsbx 7y ago
Writing for the web and trying to be consistent with native UI is a nightmare. It is not about MVP-stage or not, it is simply not worth it.
- jdauriemma 7y ago
  There's no rule that says that an app UI must be consistent with native app conventions.
Twisell 7y ago
Is Twitter really a PWA or just a nicely done responsive website? At this point the boundary is a unclear. Beside Twitter rely on server side storage and pretty much only store session token in the PWA "local storage" (largely speaking). And as a user I rather installed iOS native App to keep finer grained control on permissions. (I also use multi accounts not sure the PWA Handel that?)
- enos_feedler 7y ago
  This highlights a longstanding issue of PWA definition and how to position it against modern web practices and features. What is a PWA? Why is it even a thing?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- jdauriemma 7y ago
  It is absolutely a PWA, and an excellent one at that. You can add it to your home screen on the desktop and mobile platforms that support it; they have all the trappings of a native application including notifications support, background refresh, etc.
dmitriid 7y ago
Twitter's "PWA" is crap. It has an unending stream of glaring UX/UI errors that only get worse over time. I'm just gonna link to a small subset of failures we've documented: https://www.google.se/search?q=twitter+site:grumpy.website https://www.google.se/search?q=twitter+site:grumpy.website
- jdauriemma 7y ago
  Why enclose PWA in quotes? Just curious. I use Twitter's PWA weekly on more than one platform and it works great for me, but that's just one person's opinion. I prefer it over their native clients for a lot of reasons, but the main value-add is that I don't have to give Twitter access to detailed information about my system while still using a full-featured, first-party client.
  - dmitriid 7y ago
    > Why enclose PWA in quotes? It's twitter's mobile site that they extended to cover both desktop and PWA. As a result, it's quite bad on all fronts and judging by the number of bugs that are lingering with no fixes, abandoned. At least they managed to almost fix the epileptic scroll position [1] > I don't have to give Twitter access to detailed information about my system while still using a full-featured, first-party client. Yes, this is, without a doubt, the best value-proposition of PWAs. [1] https://grumpy.website/post/0RQvmdNmN https://grumpy.website/post/0RQvmdNmN

fragmede 7y ago

Are you sure that's not a catch-22? The reason you've not seen any good PWAs is because the ecosystem doesn't exist for making good PWAs, which doesn't exist because there aren't any good PWAs. Any sane technologist is going to look at the shortcomings of PWAs, and choose a different technology to build their app. Choose boring technology[0], and unless your product is a PWA toolkit, the app UI library isn't the place to get creative. The single issue with PWAs, on iOS, is how do I add a PWA app to the home screen? I go to the app store and search... and your app isn't there. As developers we innately understand why that's so, but our users don't and shouldn't need to understand the difference. [0] https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology