7 ms·

I hate to say it but this just demonstrates, all in one place, how far behind PWAs are from native apps. Does anyone have an example of a PWA (hosted here or el

I hate to say it but this just demonstrates, all in one place, how far behind PWAs are from native apps. Does anyone have an example of a PWA (hosted here or elsewhere) that rivals the best apps seen in native app stores? I’m talking about beautiful animations, native-feeling navigation, and an overall immersive, cohesive experience?

mattpearl 6y ago
PWA's have room to grow but have a lot of benefits over native apps
- Nicksil 6y ago
  >PWA's have room to grow but have a lot of benefits over native apps Just gonna leave us hangin'?
  - p1necone 6y ago
    Biggest thing for me would be instant installs and no/much less space taken on local storage.
    - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
      In addition: not having to install at all to be able to try it out.
    - fidelramos 6y ago
      Most important thing for me is sandboxing, no abuse of the device's data and sensors. I hate how most native apps invade your privacy.
      - Nicksil 6y ago
        >Most important thing for me is sandboxing, no abuse of the device's data and sensors. I hate how most native apps invade your privacy. User abuse is rampant on the Web. For example, those APIs you mention are used to fingerprint machines. If you're genuinely concerned with abuse of privacy, you'd do yourself a huge favor by researching the history and current mechanisms for such abuse by websites and, by extension, PWAs.
        fidelramos 6y ago
        I'm well aware of browser fingerprinting, I take my privacy seriously and do my best to protect it. Both on desktop and mobile I use an array of browser extensions to limit online tracking and fingerprinting. On Android I use Webapps Sandboxed Browser [1] to log in to webapps without leaking the logged in status to other websites. I feel that with the web I get a fighting chance, while native apps are designed for tracking you. [1] https://f-droid.org/app/com.tobykurien.webapps https://f-droid.org/app/com.tobykurien.webapps
    - Nicksil 6y ago
      >Biggest thing for me would be instant installs[...] That's relative to the size of the thing you're installing, no? Wouldn't it then be comparable to software of the same size being installed on the host system? >no/much less space taken on local storage. Isn't this, too, relative to the size of the application or the data it is persisting?
  - torgoguys 6y ago
    Single codebase for multiple platforms, no app store approvals/revenue share required, openable via a link, works to the webs' strengths, etc. That sort of stuff. It has its own set of disadvantages too of course.
    - FridgeSeal 6y ago
      Hasn’t pretty much every Silicon Valley tech company that tried to use single-condensed Cross platform apps essentially come to the conclusion that they’re not worth it, or better than OS-specific codebases and proper separation of UI and logic?
      - Drew_ 6y ago
        Native is obviously better and always will be. Making cross platform apps is not worth it only if you can easily afford to go native. This is obviously not true for everyone.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      No revenue share, sure. What’s the likelihood that people are going to put their credit card information into some unknown website compared to using Apple/Google for payments? Every “advantage” you mentioned is better for the developer not the user. That’s why PWA’s will never take off.
      - kevincox 6y ago
        You can take payments powered by Apple or Google on websites. The UX is quite similar for the user.
      - filleduchaos 6y ago
        > What’s the likelihood that people are going to put their credit card information into some unknown website compared to using Apple/Google for payments? Outside of HN's bubble, people do that all the time. Or at worst they will use PayPal or an equivalent to make payments.
  - kevincox 6y ago
    Cross platform support is nice for users as well. I have a number of apps that I can't use on my desktop which is quite annoying. When I use a PWA I know that I can access it from whatever device I am on.
  - pier25 6y ago
    - No store needed - Crossplatform (in use and development) - No store/developer fees to pay - CSS and HTML are capable of things native can only dream of like real reusable responsive UIs across many types of devices. https://medium.com/missive-app/our-dirty-little-secret-cross-platform-email-client-with-nothing-but-html-aa12fc33bb02 https://medium.com/missive-app/our-dirty-little-secret-cross... - Until SwiftUI web front end was way more advanced in terms of reactive programming of UIs
    - Nicksil 6y ago
      >- No store needed Software was distributed long before those walled gardens popped up. Native applications need no store. >- Crossplatform (in use and development) Cross-platform frameworks exist for native applications. >- No store/developer fees to pay Same goes for native applications >- CSS and HTML are capable of things native can only dream of like real reusable responsive UIs across many types of devices. >https://medium.com/missive-app/our-dirty-little-secret-cross.. https://medium.com/missive-app/our-dirty-little-secret-cross.... This is just an incredibly odd statement. First of all, if such layouts are rendering on your machine then of course native applications are also capable of such a feat. Web browsers capabilities are limited to the resources being made available on the host machine. The same goes for any software running on the machine. And second: Qt. >- Until SwiftUI web front end was way more advanced in terms of reactive programming of UIs I don't understand what you mean here.
      - pier25 6y ago
        > Native applications need no store On iOS they do. On Android 99% of users won't use a different store. > Cross-platform frameworks exist for native applications. Nothing really good though. Best ones are RN and Flutter which do not get you there 100%. A PWA will consume less memory and will be smaller than a RN or Flutter app. > Same goes for native applications Not on iOS. > if such layouts are rendering on your machine then of course native applications are also capable of such a feat Theoretically, yes. > And second: Qt. Remind me again how much a QT license costs? > I don't understand what you mean here. For the last 10 or so years UI development for the web has gone from archaic jQuery imperative DOM manipulation to a new paradigm with data binding and reactive data. UI data binding in the native world exists but is extremely complicated and tedious. AFAIK the only thing that is similar to what we have now in web dev is SwiftUI.
- FridgeSeal 6y ago
  Like inferior performance, support and integration with the rest of the OS.
candiddevmike 6y ago
Checkout our product, Domestica. It's an offline capable PWA to help you manage tasks, budgeting, cooking, shopping, and more. You can even self host it. https://domestica.app https://domestica.app
- omniscient_oce 6y ago
  The UI is not pleasing to look at all. Also I can't even see what your app does without registering - Major red flag.
  - candiddevmike 6y ago
    Sorry to hear that, I'd really appreciate your feedback if you're willing to provide it (mikeatcandid.dev). There's an about button at the top that will take you to the about/landing page. I was debating on linking to that instead, but it's not a PWA, just a simple static site.
nattaylor 6y ago
The Instagram PWA is excellent
- jonnyscholes 6y ago
  This is particularly true on iPads. Instagram has clearly decided it's not worth the engineering effort to adapt Instagram (a multi billion dollar asset) for iPad. No matter - add the PWA to your homescreen!
steren 6y ago
Twitter
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Twitter is awful (slow, loses scrolling position all the time, breaks common functionality like copying URLs or opening in a new tab) but that's due to bad engineering and user-hostile design and not a flaw of PWAs.
  - pxtail 6y ago
    > loses scrolling position all the time I managed to convince myself that I'm not using twitter website correctly because it happens to me all the time - after digging into some comment/thread I want to return to 'main' thread and it returns to the beginning, after that I often give up and just close tab, this is incredibly frustrating and infuriating! I'm pretty sure that's somehow my fault because it would be insane that one of most frequently used service in the world and company which employs most skilled 10x workforce is unwilling or incapable to deal with problem like this.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      Twitter's criteria for using the Twitter website correctly is to be looking at ads. Seeing useful content in between the ads is a side-effect only necessary to keep you there so you can look at ads. They have absolutely no incentive in making your usage of Twitter more efficient as it would 1) decrease the "engagement" metrics and 2) give you less opportunities to look at ads if you just see the content you want directly. Social networks need to strike a fine balance between extracting the maximum value out of the user (profit) while giving them the least possible value (expense). They believe the current system achieves this balance, which I sadly have to agree with because the average user's bullshit tolerance is orders of magnitude higher than ours and they will put up with a lot of shit without leaving the platform. > which employs most skilled 10x workforce There are still scammers replying to high-profile accounts with obvious spam such as fake cryptocurrency giveaways, something which can be filtered out with simple regular expressions. I would like to add a very big "[citation needed]" to Twitter having significant skill in house, whether it's engineering or management. Whatever skill they had when they initially built & scaled the platform seems to be long gone.
kylemh 6y ago
Twitter's The topics of judgement you mentioned are all entirely subjective, but they run near identically for me.
- dlbucci 6y ago
  Does the native app also constantly fail to load tweets linked from Reddit? And then you click the "retry" button and it fails again? Cause that's my general Twitter website experience...
  - dudus 6y ago
    Yes it does.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    I think that’s some sort of bug/poor interaction with anti-tracking features.
    - alias_neo 6y ago
      I think this is correct. My experience has been that when it's using a tracking url it fails (I Ad block and Tracker block) and I see the tracker url in the address bar, but when I click again, it just goes directly to the real URL; presumably some fallback Twitter put in to deal with people like myself :D
    - dudus 6y ago
      I don't use any anti tracking or ad blockers. I have the normal Reddit all and Twitter app on my pixel 3a and every time I click on a Twitter link it opens in an in app browser that can't log me in.
- blkhp19 6y ago
  Just tried it, and the difference between Twitter native and Twitter PWA is night and day. The PWA has absolutely 0 polish. No animations, no transitions, nothing. The tab bar at the bottom misses hits if you tap quickly / right after the PWA opens. The pull-to-refresh doesn't use the native scroll physics. The search tab's tab bar horizontal scrolling can interfere / combine with the vertical scrolling, causing really funky interactions. Does it browse twitter? Yes. Is it good? Well, maybe if all you ever uses are PWAs, this is considered "good."
codegladiator 6y ago
There is flipkart (the Indian ecommerce site) which was also used as a case study by Google https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/2016/flipkart https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/2016/flipkart
- adz_6891 6y ago
  Yes, I think this example highlights a point many aren't picking up on. PWAs have been biggest in emerging markets. I think Ali Baba also used them to great effect. Ever tried to get users in emerging markets on old Android devices to discover, download and update your native app? It's a world of pain.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    Old cheap android devices nearly always have no available storage space, which makes it almost impossible to install a native app. Freeing up 1MB of space isn't enough to allow you to install a 1MB app - typically you need to free up 1GB or more before the store will function at all, and there's a good chance on old devices that won't be possible at all, due to the way updates consume space, and old devices have a lot of updates... PWA's aren't the perfect solution here - on those same old devices, theres a good chance your user is running a 5+ year old browser engine, with a lot of bugs that are hard to even test against, considering how many combinations of screen size, phone, and browser software version there are.
kabacha 6y ago
Pixelfed [1] - decentralized instagram alternative is a brilliant example of well developed libre PWA. 1 - https://pixelfed.social/ https://pixelfed.social/
- backslashr 6y ago
  Weird how I can't join pixelfed.social. I tried looking up how to register and the registration link is supposed to be there on the homepage according to their help center, but all I see is a login form
  - fidelramos 6y ago
    They might be at capacity and closed new signups for the moment. Being a federated network you can find a different instance, or set up your own if you want. There is a Join link at https://pixelfed.org/ https://pixelfed.org/ by the way.
    - sefrost 6y ago
      How is my experience affected by being on a different instance to others?
      - fidelramos 6y ago
        This being a federated network you should be able to follow and interact with users in other instances. That's what ActivityPub is about. I haven't checked Pixelfed specifically but it's how Mastodon works.
  - kabacha 6y ago
    The main instance is invite only for the time being but there are other open instances. Checkout full list here: https://fediverse.network/pixelfed?count=users https://fediverse.network/pixelfed?count=users The most popular english open one seems to be: https://pixfed.com https://pixfed.com right now
colordrops 6y ago
There is no reason PWAs couldn't run as well as native in most cases. The issue is that there are orders of magnitude more developers and money behind native apps, and giant corporations making their access super simple through app stores. If we saw the same amount of resources going into PWAs, they would be as good.
- verandaguy 6y ago
  >There is no reason PWAs couldn't run as well as native in most cases I mean, PWAs by definition run inside a VM that has to provide a very heavy runtime, don't they? This isn't a (comparatively) minimal like the JVM -- this is usually a Chromium instance, with the full V8 engine, Canvas and DOM support, and sandboxing. It's not reasonable to say that something with this much baggage should be able to run as quickly as a native application, which can often afford to have a much more minimal sandbox, no bytecode layer, a smaller memory footprint, and more deliberate and performant integration with underlying system APIs.
  - colordrops 6y ago
    Which is why I said "most cases". It's a small percentage of apps that require maxing out a device's resources. I even mention elsewhere in this thread that they are not as performant as native. You can make vague statements about VM characteristics but in practice they won't have a real impact on most use cases.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      Most Android devices are cheap and underpowered. It is not hard to max out the resources of your average $225 phone. That average includes the developed world. The average Android phone is even worse in the developing world.
  - z3t4 6y ago
    If you do not count the browser itself - a single web app has a very small memory footprint. For comparison you can have hundreds of web apps running at the same time - taking up less memory then one native app! Then there are Electonr/nw.js apps that all come with their own browser, but PWA's will reuse and share the existing browser.
cstrat 6y ago
Code-Server/Coder/Hosted VSCode https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server This is amazing. I mean it isn't a stretch considering the main VSCode app is Electron based, but having a hosted development environment like this has always been a dream...
osrec 6y ago
Take a look at Bx: https://usebx.com/app https://usebx.com/app
- canada_dry 6y ago
  +1 Very clean looking design. Am curious how well it's taken off. Also, how come you haven't shown it off via "Show HN"?
  - osrec 6y ago
    Thank you! I did, but it didn't get much traction, since Show HNs can be a bit of a lottery! After a fairly slow start, we're doing quite well in the UK now (7 figure MRR after 3 years).
tiborsaas 6y ago
https://proxx.app/ https://proxx.app/
nailer 6y ago
VScode, Slack, Instagram and WhatsApp all have excellent web apps * I don't make a distinction between 'manifest files and offline support' ('PWAs') and other web apps. I suspect most people don't either.
pier25 6y ago
> I’m talking about beautiful animations, native-feeling navigation, and an overall immersive, cohesive experience? A lot of people don't consider the economics of UI animation. Smooth animation only makes sense in powerful devices. For the past 10 years we've seen an increase in UI animations which required users to buy newer and more powerful devices to achieve smoother and more complex animations. Look at any phone/tablet review and you will see the reviewer try to open the app drawer or something similar to showcase performance. "Look how fluid it moves!" Perfectly fine devices are constantly being replaced and thrown away because they can't keep up with more and more demanding UI animations. Another aspect is energy consumption, battery production, etc, which I don't think is negligible when considering billions of devices being used for hours every day. And the sad truth is, very often UI animation is overused.
GrinningFool 6y ago
> I’m talking about beautiful animations, I turn off all the OS-level animations using my phone's accessibility settings. It is a much better usability experience and "feels" far more performant - I perceive less time spent waiting, anyway. I wish I could do it in apps too, so that I the time it takes to complete an action wasn't bounded by the duration of the "beautiful animation" someone felt it was helpful to include.
kshowkat 6y ago
shameless plug, give our PWA a whirl! superjumbo.tv (we're a daily prediction platform with cash prizes - think of us like a hybrid between HQ trivia, a sportsbook, and Jeopardy)

mattpearl 6y ago

PWA's have room to grow but have a lot of benefits over native apps

Nicksil 6y ago
>PWA's have room to grow but have a lot of benefits over native apps Just gonna leave us hangin'?
- p1necone 6y ago
  Biggest thing for me would be instant installs and no/much less space taken on local storage.
  - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
    In addition: not having to install at all to be able to try it out.
  - fidelramos 6y ago
    Most important thing for me is sandboxing, no abuse of the device's data and sensors. I hate how most native apps invade your privacy.
    - Nicksil 6y ago
      >Most important thing for me is sandboxing, no abuse of the device's data and sensors. I hate how most native apps invade your privacy. User abuse is rampant on the Web. For example, those APIs you mention are used to fingerprint machines. If you're genuinely concerned with abuse of privacy, you'd do yourself a huge favor by researching the history and current mechanisms for such abuse by websites and, by extension, PWAs.
      - fidelramos 6y ago
        I'm well aware of browser fingerprinting, I take my privacy seriously and do my best to protect it. Both on desktop and mobile I use an array of browser extensions to limit online tracking and fingerprinting. On Android I use Webapps Sandboxed Browser [1] to log in to webapps without leaking the logged in status to other websites. I feel that with the web I get a fighting chance, while native apps are designed for tracking you. [1] https://f-droid.org/app/com.tobykurien.webapps https://f-droid.org/app/com.tobykurien.webapps
  - Nicksil 6y ago
    >Biggest thing for me would be instant installs[...] That's relative to the size of the thing you're installing, no? Wouldn't it then be comparable to software of the same size being installed on the host system? >no/much less space taken on local storage. Isn't this, too, relative to the size of the application or the data it is persisting?
- torgoguys 6y ago
  Single codebase for multiple platforms, no app store approvals/revenue share required, openable via a link, works to the webs' strengths, etc. That sort of stuff. It has its own set of disadvantages too of course.
  - FridgeSeal 6y ago
    Hasn’t pretty much every Silicon Valley tech company that tried to use single-condensed Cross platform apps essentially come to the conclusion that they’re not worth it, or better than OS-specific codebases and proper separation of UI and logic?
    - Drew_ 6y ago
      Native is obviously better and always will be. Making cross platform apps is not worth it only if you can easily afford to go native. This is obviously not true for everyone.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    No revenue share, sure. What’s the likelihood that people are going to put their credit card information into some unknown website compared to using Apple/Google for payments? Every “advantage” you mentioned is better for the developer not the user. That’s why PWA’s will never take off.
    - kevincox 6y ago
      You can take payments powered by Apple or Google on websites. The UX is quite similar for the user.
    - filleduchaos 6y ago
      > What’s the likelihood that people are going to put their credit card information into some unknown website compared to using Apple/Google for payments? Outside of HN's bubble, people do that all the time. Or at worst they will use PayPal or an equivalent to make payments.
- kevincox 6y ago
  Cross platform support is nice for users as well. I have a number of apps that I can't use on my desktop which is quite annoying. When I use a PWA I know that I can access it from whatever device I am on.
- pier25 6y ago
  - No store needed - Crossplatform (in use and development) - No store/developer fees to pay - CSS and HTML are capable of things native can only dream of like real reusable responsive UIs across many types of devices. https://medium.com/missive-app/our-dirty-little-secret-cross-platform-email-client-with-nothing-but-html-aa12fc33bb02 https://medium.com/missive-app/our-dirty-little-secret-cross... - Until SwiftUI web front end was way more advanced in terms of reactive programming of UIs
  - Nicksil 6y ago
    >- No store needed Software was distributed long before those walled gardens popped up. Native applications need no store. >- Crossplatform (in use and development) Cross-platform frameworks exist for native applications. >- No store/developer fees to pay Same goes for native applications >- CSS and HTML are capable of things native can only dream of like real reusable responsive UIs across many types of devices. >https://medium.com/missive-app/our-dirty-little-secret-cross.. https://medium.com/missive-app/our-dirty-little-secret-cross.... This is just an incredibly odd statement. First of all, if such layouts are rendering on your machine then of course native applications are also capable of such a feat. Web browsers capabilities are limited to the resources being made available on the host machine. The same goes for any software running on the machine. And second: Qt. >- Until SwiftUI web front end was way more advanced in terms of reactive programming of UIs I don't understand what you mean here.
    - pier25 6y ago
      > Native applications need no store On iOS they do. On Android 99% of users won't use a different store. > Cross-platform frameworks exist for native applications. Nothing really good though. Best ones are RN and Flutter which do not get you there 100%. A PWA will consume less memory and will be smaller than a RN or Flutter app. > Same goes for native applications Not on iOS. > if such layouts are rendering on your machine then of course native applications are also capable of such a feat Theoretically, yes. > And second: Qt. Remind me again how much a QT license costs? > I don't understand what you mean here. For the last 10 or so years UI development for the web has gone from archaic jQuery imperative DOM manipulation to a new paradigm with data binding and reactive data. UI data binding in the native world exists but is extremely complicated and tedious. AFAIK the only thing that is similar to what we have now in web dev is SwiftUI.
FridgeSeal 6y ago
Like inferior performance, support and integration with the rest of the OS.

candiddevmike 6y ago

Checkout our product, Domestica. It's an offline capable PWA to help you manage tasks, budgeting, cooking, shopping, and more. You can even self host it. https://domestica.app https://domestica.app

omniscient_oce 6y ago
The UI is not pleasing to look at all. Also I can't even see what your app does without registering - Major red flag.
- candiddevmike 6y ago
  Sorry to hear that, I'd really appreciate your feedback if you're willing to provide it (mikeatcandid.dev). There's an about button at the top that will take you to the about/landing page. I was debating on linking to that instead, but it's not a PWA, just a simple static site.

nattaylor 6y ago

The Instagram PWA is excellent

jonnyscholes 6y ago
This is particularly true on iPads. Instagram has clearly decided it's not worth the engineering effort to adapt Instagram (a multi billion dollar asset) for iPad. No matter - add the PWA to your homescreen!

steren 6y ago

Twitter

Nextgrid 6y ago
Twitter is awful (slow, loses scrolling position all the time, breaks common functionality like copying URLs or opening in a new tab) but that's due to bad engineering and user-hostile design and not a flaw of PWAs.
- pxtail 6y ago
  > loses scrolling position all the time I managed to convince myself that I'm not using twitter website correctly because it happens to me all the time - after digging into some comment/thread I want to return to 'main' thread and it returns to the beginning, after that I often give up and just close tab, this is incredibly frustrating and infuriating! I'm pretty sure that's somehow my fault because it would be insane that one of most frequently used service in the world and company which employs most skilled 10x workforce is unwilling or incapable to deal with problem like this.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    Twitter's criteria for using the Twitter website correctly is to be looking at ads. Seeing useful content in between the ads is a side-effect only necessary to keep you there so you can look at ads. They have absolutely no incentive in making your usage of Twitter more efficient as it would 1) decrease the "engagement" metrics and 2) give you less opportunities to look at ads if you just see the content you want directly. Social networks need to strike a fine balance between extracting the maximum value out of the user (profit) while giving them the least possible value (expense). They believe the current system achieves this balance, which I sadly have to agree with because the average user's bullshit tolerance is orders of magnitude higher than ours and they will put up with a lot of shit without leaving the platform. > which employs most skilled 10x workforce There are still scammers replying to high-profile accounts with obvious spam such as fake cryptocurrency giveaways, something which can be filtered out with simple regular expressions. I would like to add a very big "[citation needed]" to Twitter having significant skill in house, whether it's engineering or management. Whatever skill they had when they initially built & scaled the platform seems to be long gone.

kylemh 6y ago

Twitter's The topics of judgement you mentioned are all entirely subjective, but they run near identically for me.

dlbucci 6y ago
Does the native app also constantly fail to load tweets linked from Reddit? And then you click the "retry" button and it fails again? Cause that's my general Twitter website experience...
- dudus 6y ago
  Yes it does.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I think that’s some sort of bug/poor interaction with anti-tracking features.
  - alias_neo 6y ago
    I think this is correct. My experience has been that when it's using a tracking url it fails (I Ad block and Tracker block) and I see the tracker url in the address bar, but when I click again, it just goes directly to the real URL; presumably some fallback Twitter put in to deal with people like myself :D
  - dudus 6y ago
    I don't use any anti tracking or ad blockers. I have the normal Reddit all and Twitter app on my pixel 3a and every time I click on a Twitter link it opens in an in app browser that can't log me in.
blkhp19 6y ago
Just tried it, and the difference between Twitter native and Twitter PWA is night and day. The PWA has absolutely 0 polish. No animations, no transitions, nothing. The tab bar at the bottom misses hits if you tap quickly / right after the PWA opens. The pull-to-refresh doesn't use the native scroll physics. The search tab's tab bar horizontal scrolling can interfere / combine with the vertical scrolling, causing really funky interactions. Does it browse twitter? Yes. Is it good? Well, maybe if all you ever uses are PWAs, this is considered "good."

codegladiator 6y ago

There is flipkart (the Indian ecommerce site) which was also used as a case study by Google https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/2016/flipkart https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/2016/flipkart

adz_6891 6y ago
Yes, I think this example highlights a point many aren't picking up on. PWAs have been biggest in emerging markets. I think Ali Baba also used them to great effect. Ever tried to get users in emerging markets on old Android devices to discover, download and update your native app? It's a world of pain.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  Old cheap android devices nearly always have no available storage space, which makes it almost impossible to install a native app. Freeing up 1MB of space isn't enough to allow you to install a 1MB app - typically you need to free up 1GB or more before the store will function at all, and there's a good chance on old devices that won't be possible at all, due to the way updates consume space, and old devices have a lot of updates... PWA's aren't the perfect solution here - on those same old devices, theres a good chance your user is running a 5+ year old browser engine, with a lot of bugs that are hard to even test against, considering how many combinations of screen size, phone, and browser software version there are.

kabacha 6y ago

Pixelfed [1] - decentralized instagram alternative is a brilliant example of well developed libre PWA. 1 - https://pixelfed.social/ https://pixelfed.social/

backslashr 6y ago
Weird how I can't join pixelfed.social. I tried looking up how to register and the registration link is supposed to be there on the homepage according to their help center, but all I see is a login form
- fidelramos 6y ago
  They might be at capacity and closed new signups for the moment. Being a federated network you can find a different instance, or set up your own if you want. There is a Join link at https://pixelfed.org/ https://pixelfed.org/ by the way.
  - sefrost 6y ago
    How is my experience affected by being on a different instance to others?
    - fidelramos 6y ago
      This being a federated network you should be able to follow and interact with users in other instances. That's what ActivityPub is about. I haven't checked Pixelfed specifically but it's how Mastodon works.
- kabacha 6y ago
  The main instance is invite only for the time being but there are other open instances. Checkout full list here: https://fediverse.network/pixelfed?count=users https://fediverse.network/pixelfed?count=users The most popular english open one seems to be: https://pixfed.com https://pixfed.com right now

colordrops 6y ago

There is no reason PWAs couldn't run as well as native in most cases. The issue is that there are orders of magnitude more developers and money behind native apps, and giant corporations making their access super simple through app stores. If we saw the same amount of resources going into PWAs, they would be as good.

verandaguy 6y ago
>There is no reason PWAs couldn't run as well as native in most cases I mean, PWAs by definition run inside a VM that has to provide a very heavy runtime, don't they? This isn't a (comparatively) minimal like the JVM -- this is usually a Chromium instance, with the full V8 engine, Canvas and DOM support, and sandboxing. It's not reasonable to say that something with this much baggage should be able to run as quickly as a native application, which can often afford to have a much more minimal sandbox, no bytecode layer, a smaller memory footprint, and more deliberate and performant integration with underlying system APIs.
- colordrops 6y ago
  Which is why I said "most cases". It's a small percentage of apps that require maxing out a device's resources. I even mention elsewhere in this thread that they are not as performant as native. You can make vague statements about VM characteristics but in practice they won't have a real impact on most use cases.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Most Android devices are cheap and underpowered. It is not hard to max out the resources of your average $225 phone. That average includes the developed world. The average Android phone is even worse in the developing world.
- z3t4 6y ago
  If you do not count the browser itself - a single web app has a very small memory footprint. For comparison you can have hundreds of web apps running at the same time - taking up less memory then one native app! Then there are Electonr/nw.js apps that all come with their own browser, but PWA's will reuse and share the existing browser.

cstrat 6y ago

Code-Server/Coder/Hosted VSCode https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server This is amazing. I mean it isn't a stretch considering the main VSCode app is Electron based, but having a hosted development environment like this has always been a dream...

osrec 6y ago

Take a look at Bx: https://usebx.com/app https://usebx.com/app

canada_dry 6y ago
+1 Very clean looking design. Am curious how well it's taken off. Also, how come you haven't shown it off via "Show HN"?
- osrec 6y ago
  Thank you! I did, but it didn't get much traction, since Show HNs can be a bit of a lottery! After a fairly slow start, we're doing quite well in the UK now (7 figure MRR after 3 years).

tiborsaas 6y ago

https://proxx.app/ https://proxx.app/

nailer 6y ago

VScode, Slack, Instagram and WhatsApp all have excellent web apps * I don't make a distinction between 'manifest files and offline support' ('PWAs') and other web apps. I suspect most people don't either.

pier25 6y ago

> I’m talking about beautiful animations, native-feeling navigation, and an overall immersive, cohesive experience? A lot of people don't consider the economics of UI animation. Smooth animation only makes sense in powerful devices. For the past 10 years we've seen an increase in UI animations which required users to buy newer and more powerful devices to achieve smoother and more complex animations. Look at any phone/tablet review and you will see the reviewer try to open the app drawer or something similar to showcase performance. "Look how fluid it moves!" Perfectly fine devices are constantly being replaced and thrown away because they can't keep up with more and more demanding UI animations. Another aspect is energy consumption, battery production, etc, which I don't think is negligible when considering billions of devices being used for hours every day. And the sad truth is, very often UI animation is overused.

GrinningFool 6y ago

> I’m talking about beautiful animations, I turn off all the OS-level animations using my phone's accessibility settings. It is a much better usability experience and "feels" far more performant - I perceive less time spent waiting, anyway. I wish I could do it in apps too, so that I the time it takes to complete an action wasn't bounded by the duration of the "beautiful animation" someone felt it was helpful to include.

kshowkat 6y ago

shameless plug, give our PWA a whirl! superjumbo.tv (we're a daily prediction platform with cash prizes - think of us like a hybrid between HQ trivia, a sportsbook, and Jeopardy)