4 ms·

I built a PWA and published it in 3 app stores heres what I learned

23 points by oblib 4y ago

oblib 4y ago
I thought this was an interesting overview of the process. I was pondering about the current state of this and searching for independent "app stores" and there's no real independent outlet for real "web apps". So I did some searching for domain names for that and most of the obvious ones are taken, but there's no website.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  Why not only install signed apps directly from your services, as you gasp need them, not reflex-install them on an app store k-hole?
manuelabeledo 4y ago
> Final thoughts: The web always wins. It defeated Flash. It killed Silverlight. It destroyed native apps on desktop. The browser is the rich client platform. The OS is merely a browser-launcher and hardware-communicator. I really hope this is not the case. The web is fine, but nothing beats native implementations. Web apps are slow and bloated in comparison to a true native app. And I for one cannot believe that we have accepted that simple things like note taking or chat apps need several hundreds of megabytes of RAM to run. Madness.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  > Web apps are slow and bloated in comparison to a true native app. The webapps you have used are slow. This generalization is changing and will continue to change the better Apple/iOS treat PWAs.
  - xet7 4y ago
    Apple App Store appears to be widely removing apps that still work, but have not been recently updated, like native apps and PWAs, so treating better would be very welcome: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31148708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31148708 This kind of guidelines also kind of do not treat PWA style apps well, or could even prevent adding app that is similar to another app already existing at App Store: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ > 4.2 Minimum Functionality > Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website. If your app is not particularly useful, unique, or “app-like,” it doesn’t belong on the App Store. If your App doesn’t provide some sort of lasting entertainment value or adequate utility, it may not be accepted. Apps that are simply a song or movie should be submitted to the iTunes Store. Apps that are simply a book or game guide should be submitted to the Apple Books Store.
  - manuelabeledo 4y ago
    Slack, the new Outlook, and Spotify, are slow and bloated. VSCode is not really much better. Are there any widespread apps that are more efficient than these? I really would like to know.
- oblib 4y ago
  >>note taking or chat apps need several hundreds of megabytes of RAM to run. I have a fairly big app and while I'm not sure how to measure that I ran "about:memory" in Firefox and added up everything I saw for the app and it came out to be about 30mb. My Mac's Finder says the directory with all the code is 9.9 MB. That app is plenty fast, even on my old late `09 Mac Mini Mac running 10.11.6 with just 4gb ram.
  - manuelabeledo 4y ago
    That sounds anecdotal to me. Widespread apps like Slack, routinely use several hundred megabytes of RAM.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  PS Search "Electron alternative", because that's the root of the issue you're describing, and there are a couple now.
  - manuelabeledo 4y ago
    JavaScript is not going to suddenly become as fast and efficient as native frameworks. That's not going to happen, ever. So what kind of improvements are we looking at here?
xet7 4y ago
Original article from Apr 26, 2018, and it's here with comments: https://medium.com/free-code-camp/i-built-a-pwa-and-published-it-in-3-app-stores-heres-what-i-learned-7cb3f56daf9b https://medium.com/free-code-camp/i-built-a-pwa-and-publishe... What has changed since, is that https://www.pwabuilder.com https://www.pwabuilder.com also has template for iOS App Store app, etc. But I have not tried that iOS template yet, publishing to iOS requires so many more steps. I'm maintainer of WeKan Open Source kanban https://wekan.github.io https://wekan.github.io , source code for all platforms at https://github.com/wekan/wekan https://github.com/wekan/wekan . I created PWA apps for Play Store, Windows Desktop MS Store, and Ubuntu Touch OpenStore. In my experience, publishing to Play Store and MS Store required payment. Publishing to OpenStore was free. Links to PWA apps here: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Browser-compatibility-matrix https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Browser-compatibility-ma... Easiest was to OpenStore. No payment required. Source code here: https://github.com/wekan/wekan-openstore https://github.com/wekan/wekan-openstore In that Open Store app, no need to compile anything. It's just plain text, HTML, etc. URL to website is here: https://github.com/wekan/wekan-openstore/blob/master/wekan.desktop#L3 https://github.com/wekan/wekan-openstore/blob/master/wekan.d... If PWA app is not in some store, or WeKan (or other) app is self-hosted, it's possible to create app icon this way: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/PWA https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/PWA Additionally, PWA app requires web.manifest textfile, different icon sizes for different app stores, those files are at root of PWA website like https://app.example.com/web.manifest https://app.example.com/web.manifest , like these files here: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/tree/master/public https://github.com/wekan/wekan/tree/master/public
devandanger 4y ago
> From minor things like “iOS Safari won’t let you play audio without first interacting with the page” to major, show-stopping things like, “iOS Safari won’t let you play the next song if your app is in the background or if your screen is off.” Ugh... these are the sort of capabilities that I think people don't realize are often misused. iOS has been good about being pro-consumer first. This missing feature in iOS Safari is intentional for that reason.

23 points by oblib 4y ago

I thought this was an interesting overview of the process. I was pondering about the current state of this and searching for independent "app stores" and there's no real independent outlet for real "web apps". So I did some searching for domain names for that and most of the obvious ones are taken, but there's no website.

aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
Why not only install signed apps directly from your services, as you gasp need them, not reflex-install them on an app store k-hole?

manuelabeledo 4y ago

> Final thoughts: The web always wins. It defeated Flash. It killed Silverlight. It destroyed native apps on desktop. The browser is the rich client platform. The OS is merely a browser-launcher and hardware-communicator. I really hope this is not the case. The web is fine, but nothing beats native implementations. Web apps are slow and bloated in comparison to a true native app. And I for one cannot believe that we have accepted that simple things like note taking or chat apps need several hundreds of megabytes of RAM to run. Madness.

aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
> Web apps are slow and bloated in comparison to a true native app. The webapps you have used are slow. This generalization is changing and will continue to change the better Apple/iOS treat PWAs.
- xet7 4y ago
  Apple App Store appears to be widely removing apps that still work, but have not been recently updated, like native apps and PWAs, so treating better would be very welcome: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31148708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31148708 This kind of guidelines also kind of do not treat PWA style apps well, or could even prevent adding app that is similar to another app already existing at App Store: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ > 4.2 Minimum Functionality > Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website. If your app is not particularly useful, unique, or “app-like,” it doesn’t belong on the App Store. If your App doesn’t provide some sort of lasting entertainment value or adequate utility, it may not be accepted. Apps that are simply a song or movie should be submitted to the iTunes Store. Apps that are simply a book or game guide should be submitted to the Apple Books Store.
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  Slack, the new Outlook, and Spotify, are slow and bloated. VSCode is not really much better. Are there any widespread apps that are more efficient than these? I really would like to know.
oblib 4y ago
>>note taking or chat apps need several hundreds of megabytes of RAM to run. I have a fairly big app and while I'm not sure how to measure that I ran "about:memory" in Firefox and added up everything I saw for the app and it came out to be about 30mb. My Mac's Finder says the directory with all the code is 9.9 MB. That app is plenty fast, even on my old late `09 Mac Mini Mac running 10.11.6 with just 4gb ram.
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  That sounds anecdotal to me. Widespread apps like Slack, routinely use several hundred megabytes of RAM.
aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
PS Search "Electron alternative", because that's the root of the issue you're describing, and there are a couple now.
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  JavaScript is not going to suddenly become as fast and efficient as native frameworks. That's not going to happen, ever. So what kind of improvements are we looking at here?

xet7 4y ago

Original article from Apr 26, 2018, and it's here with comments: https://medium.com/free-code-camp/i-built-a-pwa-and-published-it-in-3-app-stores-heres-what-i-learned-7cb3f56daf9b https://medium.com/free-code-camp/i-built-a-pwa-and-publishe... What has changed since, is that https://www.pwabuilder.com https://www.pwabuilder.com also has template for iOS App Store app, etc. But I have not tried that iOS template yet, publishing to iOS requires so many more steps. I'm maintainer of WeKan Open Source kanban https://wekan.github.io https://wekan.github.io , source code for all platforms at https://github.com/wekan/wekan https://github.com/wekan/wekan . I created PWA apps for Play Store, Windows Desktop MS Store, and Ubuntu Touch OpenStore. In my experience, publishing to Play Store and MS Store required payment. Publishing to OpenStore was free. Links to PWA apps here: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Browser-compatibility-matrix https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Browser-compatibility-ma... Easiest was to OpenStore. No payment required. Source code here: https://github.com/wekan/wekan-openstore https://github.com/wekan/wekan-openstore In that Open Store app, no need to compile anything. It's just plain text, HTML, etc. URL to website is here: https://github.com/wekan/wekan-openstore/blob/master/wekan.desktop#L3 https://github.com/wekan/wekan-openstore/blob/master/wekan.d... If PWA app is not in some store, or WeKan (or other) app is self-hosted, it's possible to create app icon this way: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/PWA https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/PWA Additionally, PWA app requires web.manifest textfile, different icon sizes for different app stores, those files are at root of PWA website like https://app.example.com/web.manifest https://app.example.com/web.manifest , like these files here: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/tree/master/public https://github.com/wekan/wekan/tree/master/public

devandanger 4y ago

> From minor things like “iOS Safari won’t let you play audio without first interacting with the page” to major, show-stopping things like, “iOS Safari won’t let you play the next song if your app is in the background or if your screen is off.” Ugh... these are the sort of capabilities that I think people don't realize are often misused. iOS has been good about being pro-consumer first. This missing feature in iOS Safari is intentional for that reason.