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They are terrible because Apple sabotages the ecosystem that enables them by crippling the necessary APIs in Safari. PWAs can be a great experience, and they a

by meibo 6y ago

They are terrible because Apple sabotages the ecosystem that enables them by crippling the necessary APIs in Safari. PWAs can be a great experience, and they already are on android and desktop when they're well done.

throw14082020 6y ago
can you provide some examples, preferably the best you can find. I'm curious what great experiences of PWAs actually mean, as I myself have not found any.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  I don't know if it's a PWA by some strict definition, but Fastmail has always been the best web app I've seen.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Little Alchemy 2 is a PWA and it’s been great since I installed it on my home screen.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  Tinder is a good example from a mainstream company. Also Facebook: better tha there mobile app.
  - valuearb 6y ago
    Facebook is only better in the web in that it’s harder to track you. Uploading images, videos etc anything complex sucks. I say this as someone who deleted the Facebook app and only uses web because of tracking.
- matwood 6y ago
  I don't know about great, but using Twitter as PWA on the iPad was better than the app b/c the iPad app was so bad. The app has since gotten better though.
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  Looking at the replies to your comment, it appears there is a certain category of app that is better on the web (although it sounds like in many of those cases it is because their native app is so poorly implemented). So, we're not likely to see video editing software on the web surpass native any time soon.
asutekku 6y ago
PWAs are far from good experience. The user experience just in clicking a button in a PWA vs native app is miles away from each other and that does not even need any special APIs. Sure, it’s easy to develop but it’s inferior to native apps as long as the web rendering tech is not on the same level as native
- numpad0 6y ago
  Is PWA bad or is the _whole web_ built on top of a Text Markup Language just bad
  - valuearb 6y ago
    Yes.
- jiofih 6y ago
  It’s been at least four years since the artificial 300ms for pointer events has been removed.
- holoduke 6y ago
  I would argue that the render engine of web (CSS) is much more sufisticated than Apple's and Android's UI component frameworks. A well written single page fully clientside rendered web app can be as fast and good-looking as a native app. In my opinion it's easier to develop as well.
  - jamil7 6y ago
    I've done a lot of web development and iOS development (not so much Android so can't comment too much). I don't really agree with most of this statement at all. The web is a powerful platform for a lot of reasons but I don't agree that it's easy to develop for, iOS is a much less hostile and predicatble environment to run client side code in. I also don't believe that CSS/HTML are particularly well suited to rich mobile applications in comparison to UIKit or SwiftUI. I still write PWAs and native apps and don't see why they can't coexist. Proponents of the PWA approach seem to really want PWAs to replace native development. There is a lot of functionality and APIs that native apps have access to on both platforms, I'm not sure I see the point in browser developers implementing every single one of them when a subset can cover 70% of JSON-viewer type app needs, the remaining niche can be written as native apps.

by meibo 6y ago

throw14082020 6y ago

can you provide some examples, preferably the best you can find. I'm curious what great experiences of PWAs actually mean, as I myself have not found any.

StavrosK 6y ago
I don't know if it's a PWA by some strict definition, but Fastmail has always been the best web app I've seen.
Aeolun 6y ago
Little Alchemy 2 is a PWA and it’s been great since I installed it on my home screen.
nicoburns 6y ago
Tinder is a good example from a mainstream company. Also Facebook: better tha there mobile app.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Facebook is only better in the web in that it’s harder to track you. Uploading images, videos etc anything complex sucks. I say this as someone who deleted the Facebook app and only uses web because of tracking.
matwood 6y ago
I don't know about great, but using Twitter as PWA on the iPad was better than the app b/c the iPad app was so bad. The app has since gotten better though.
JKCalhoun 6y ago
Looking at the replies to your comment, it appears there is a certain category of app that is better on the web (although it sounds like in many of those cases it is because their native app is so poorly implemented). So, we're not likely to see video editing software on the web surpass native any time soon.

asutekku 6y ago

PWAs are far from good experience. The user experience just in clicking a button in a PWA vs native app is miles away from each other and that does not even need any special APIs. Sure, it’s easy to develop but it’s inferior to native apps as long as the web rendering tech is not on the same level as native

numpad0 6y ago
Is PWA bad or is the _whole web_ built on top of a Text Markup Language just bad
- valuearb 6y ago
  Yes.
jiofih 6y ago
It’s been at least four years since the artificial 300ms for pointer events has been removed.
holoduke 6y ago
I would argue that the render engine of web (CSS) is much more sufisticated than Apple's and Android's UI component frameworks. A well written single page fully clientside rendered web app can be as fast and good-looking as a native app. In my opinion it's easier to develop as well.
- jamil7 6y ago
  I've done a lot of web development and iOS development (not so much Android so can't comment too much). I don't really agree with most of this statement at all. The web is a powerful platform for a lot of reasons but I don't agree that it's easy to develop for, iOS is a much less hostile and predicatble environment to run client side code in. I also don't believe that CSS/HTML are particularly well suited to rich mobile applications in comparison to UIKit or SwiftUI. I still write PWAs and native apps and don't see why they can't coexist. Proponents of the PWA approach seem to really want PWAs to replace native development. There is a lot of functionality and APIs that native apps have access to on both platforms, I'm not sure I see the point in browser developers implementing every single one of them when a subset can cover 70% of JSON-viewer type app needs, the remaining niche can be written as native apps.