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Native phone apps don’t render their initial screen server-side. Why should web apps? They’re pretty much the same as phone apps, just on a different runtime.

Native phone apps don’t render their initial screen server-side. Why should web apps? They’re pretty much the same as phone apps, just on a different runtime. I make a distinction between web apps and web sites. Web sites should be server-side rendered (at least the initial render) for obvious reasons.

no_wizard 6y ago
Native apps deliver 80-100% of their application at most once, all things being equal. Web applications do not do this, even with aggressive caching and using service workers. I’d also argue that the web is far more accessible than native apps, in that it’s cross platform and independent of any one vendor, currently. So there are valid reasons for considering the page load price of websites/web apps. Also, know your target audience. I’m decidedly not okay with non application sites loading megabytes of JS just to function. However I’m okay with complex functionality provider by my very good and feature rich web based email client need a few MBs of JS to work on initial load, because the features justify the cost in that case It’s not all or nothing
wtallis 6y ago
> I make a distinction between web apps and web sites. This is an important distinction to make. But far too many web sites try to place themselves in the "web app" category when they really don't belong. Using a heavyweight JS framework does not automatically make your blog or news site into an app; it just makes your blog or news site slow. I've long thought that browsers should move to formalize the distinction between traditional web sites, and web apps. Apps should get access to the richer, more invasive APIs but only when the user instructs the browser to grant app-level permissions to the site, and at the expense of having stricter security and privacy policies enforced (ie. no third-party cookies, and probably no third-party scripts). > Native phone apps don’t render their initial screen server-side. Why should web apps? An extra RTT to local storage is pretty much always quicker than an extra RTT to a server. And it's not exactly unheard of for a mobile OS to cache a raster image of an app's screen to use the next time the user launches that app or browses through their collection of running apps.
- kittiepryde 6y ago
  I second that. Browser distinction between web apps and web pages is an awesome idea. I think the hard part is preventing users from learning to always click 'yes' to web-app level permissions just because the page instructs the browser to do so. I don't know the solution to this.
  - wtallis 6y ago
    > I think the hard part is preventing users from learning to always click 'yes' to web-app level permissions just because the page instructs the browser to do so. I don't know the solution to this. The key requirement is that putting a site into app mode must be a tradeoff, not a mere expansion of capabilities/permissions. There has to be a disincentive to discourage non-app sites from unnecessarily requesting app-mode permissions. The most natural way to accomplish this would be restrictions that make it less practical and more expensive to exploit broader permissions to abuse users. Eg. if you want the browser to prompt me to give your site access to my location data, your site should have to surrender the ability to load trackers and ads from somebody else's servers—you should have to serve that up yourself from your own domain, or not at all. This would obviously break a lot about how things are commonly done on the current web, but most of what would be broken is the creepy stuff that we probably shouldn't be tolerating to begin with, like the monstrosity that reCAPTCHA has turned into under Google's stewardship.

no_wizard 6y ago

Native apps deliver 80-100% of their application at most once, all things being equal. Web applications do not do this, even with aggressive caching and using service workers. I’d also argue that the web is far more accessible than native apps, in that it’s cross platform and independent of any one vendor, currently. So there are valid reasons for considering the page load price of websites/web apps. Also, know your target audience. I’m decidedly not okay with non application sites loading megabytes of JS just to function. However I’m okay with complex functionality provider by my very good and feature rich web based email client need a few MBs of JS to work on initial load, because the features justify the cost in that case It’s not all or nothing

wtallis 6y ago

> I make a distinction between web apps and web sites. This is an important distinction to make. But far too many web sites try to place themselves in the "web app" category when they really don't belong. Using a heavyweight JS framework does not automatically make your blog or news site into an app; it just makes your blog or news site slow. I've long thought that browsers should move to formalize the distinction between traditional web sites, and web apps. Apps should get access to the richer, more invasive APIs but only when the user instructs the browser to grant app-level permissions to the site, and at the expense of having stricter security and privacy policies enforced (ie. no third-party cookies, and probably no third-party scripts). > Native phone apps don’t render their initial screen server-side. Why should web apps? An extra RTT to local storage is pretty much always quicker than an extra RTT to a server. And it's not exactly unheard of for a mobile OS to cache a raster image of an app's screen to use the next time the user launches that app or browses through their collection of running apps.

kittiepryde 6y ago
I second that. Browser distinction between web apps and web pages is an awesome idea. I think the hard part is preventing users from learning to always click 'yes' to web-app level permissions just because the page instructs the browser to do so. I don't know the solution to this.
- wtallis 6y ago
  > I think the hard part is preventing users from learning to always click 'yes' to web-app level permissions just because the page instructs the browser to do so. I don't know the solution to this. The key requirement is that putting a site into app mode must be a tradeoff, not a mere expansion of capabilities/permissions. There has to be a disincentive to discourage non-app sites from unnecessarily requesting app-mode permissions. The most natural way to accomplish this would be restrictions that make it less practical and more expensive to exploit broader permissions to abuse users. Eg. if you want the browser to prompt me to give your site access to my location data, your site should have to surrender the ability to load trackers and ads from somebody else's servers—you should have to serve that up yourself from your own domain, or not at all. This would obviously break a lot about how things are commonly done on the current web, but most of what would be broken is the creepy stuff that we probably shouldn't be tolerating to begin with, like the monstrosity that reCAPTCHA has turned into under Google's stewardship.