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Progressive web apps suffer from an ergonomic issue where people have to read 2-3 tutorials to figure out how to put a site on their homescreen. If that hurdle

Progressive web apps suffer from an ergonomic issue where people have to read 2-3 tutorials to figure out how to put a site on their homescreen. If that hurdle vanished and was more intuitive and didn't require reading tutorials, PWAs would gain more traction. This is why people who are developing PWAs need to evangelize for better, more intuitive deployment of PWAs on popular mobile OSes like iOS and Android.

bob1029 4y ago
PWA also suffers in the enterprise space. It took me a solid week to figure out how to publish a PWA home screen icon using Azure InTune MDM for iOS devices. Being required to build custom apple XML documents to get this to work seems a bit ridiculous. That said, if you do have a need for this, it does work pretty well - assuming you can figure it out.
- easrng 4y ago
  Webclips aren't exactly the same as what you get adding a PWA to the homescreen. They don't have all the same metadata for splash screens and such.
k__ 4y ago
Either the user creates a bookmark on their home screen or the app asks with a popup if it should be added to the home screen. How much simpler can we make this process?
- nvrspyx 4y ago
  I think they're referring to iOS specifically, which doesn't support the latter.
  - EGreg 4y ago
    Pretty soon it will support native notifications, which will be far more serious than the home screen icons. Home screen and bookmarks are for pull Notifications are for push What the OS or browser needs to do is manage those far better so it’s working on your behalf (user agent) and safeguarding your attention. Probably notifications should cost something, in fact an auction. Why don’t people earn currency for their attention? It’s a zero-sum game with publishers paying for users’ attention as an investment. Isn’t that what BAT aas supposed to be? Did it work? Click fraud is an issue but then the publishers would require someone like Apple and Google to make available webauthn attestation (web credentials) that this was a real device that was purchsed!
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      > Probably notifications should cost something, in fact an auction. Why don’t people earn currency for their attention? Ah yes, genius! And then just like Brave, Apple/Google can take 30% of the revenue from selling your attention, and then continue to print money like nobodies business! I kid (even though people will try to defend that business model), the real solution is just having well-engineered notification settings. iOS' notifications are years behind the curve, on Android I can stop an app from sending me notifications simply by long-pressing the notification. iOS makes this process substantially harder, so you're right that it would probably turn into a predatory feature. Again though, we should be encouraging Apple to do the right thing here, not rev up their money printers again.
      - EGreg 4y ago
        Well, I personally am against closed centralized platforms (app stores, Big Tech platforms) and centralized monetization (patreon, deplatforming). I think Web3,4,5 has a lot of promise to disrupt the gatekeepers, who currently can control our transactiosn and even influence our democracies. This will become even more significant as the next generation will be immersed for hours a day in VR, XR, metaverse with glasses followed by neuralink. I don’t want corporations extracting rents like you described here and managing us like the Borg. But somehow, so many people on HN believe (much like Bitcoin maxis but with Web2) that no new decentralized technology can be good enough to actually adopt or get involved with, they downvote and bury everything that even slightly innovates in this area. Even stuff like FileCoin and MaidSAFE are derided. Watch, here is totally free open source code that took us half a million dollars to produce and people can fork and build on, but if I post the link what will happen: https://intercoin.org/applications https://intercoin.org/applications And here is a detailed write-up of what it would be like to own your OWN server and charge people for your attention in your OWN currency: https://qbix.com/ecosystem https://qbix.com/ecosystem … feel free to build upon it. I just coined a word for people who knee-jerk downvote anything on HN that gets away from centralized gatekeepers or uses blockchain: Web2 maximalists
        smoldesu 4y ago
- favourable 4y ago
  > How much simpler can we make this process? An app store for PWAs would be nice. Users are not aware they can add sites to their home screen and automagically transform a site into an app. Nerdy types may be aware of it, but for the average user they're simply not aware of PWAs.
onion2k 4y ago
Progressive web apps suffer from an ergonomic issue where people have to read 2-3 tutorials to figure out how to put a site on their homescreen. I strongly believe that the overwhelming majority of users don't want apps on their homescreen, whether they're PWA or native, unless they're things they use pretty much daily. They definitely don't want to install some crappy app for a business they use a few times a year. Most things should be plain old boring websites.
- ip26 4y ago
  That’s basically what a PWA is, a boring website that continues to work properly on a terrible datalink. It’s not installed, just properly designed & cached.
  - rchaud 4y ago
    > just properly designed & cached. If only. There's no standardization, no PWA seal of approval. Most website vendors that even bother with a "Add to Home Screen" button on mobile displays aren't interested in anything besides getting a shortcut displayed on their 'desktop'. They certainly aren't doing things like configuring service workers to cache and serve the website offline.
depressedpanda 4y ago
> Progressive web apps suffer from an ergonomic issue where people have to read 2-3 tutorials to figure out how to put a site on their homescreen. Only for iPhone, and that's because Apple wants the experience to be bad. This is just one of many reasons why it's a bad thing that users can only either use Safari or reskinned Safari on iOS. On Android (Chrome) you install a PWA with two taps.

bob1029 4y ago

PWA also suffers in the enterprise space. It took me a solid week to figure out how to publish a PWA home screen icon using Azure InTune MDM for iOS devices. Being required to build custom apple XML documents to get this to work seems a bit ridiculous. That said, if you do have a need for this, it does work pretty well - assuming you can figure it out.

easrng 4y ago
Webclips aren't exactly the same as what you get adding a PWA to the homescreen. They don't have all the same metadata for splash screens and such.

k__ 4y ago

Either the user creates a bookmark on their home screen or the app asks with a popup if it should be added to the home screen. How much simpler can we make this process?

nvrspyx 4y ago
I think they're referring to iOS specifically, which doesn't support the latter.
- EGreg 4y ago
  Pretty soon it will support native notifications, which will be far more serious than the home screen icons. Home screen and bookmarks are for pull Notifications are for push What the OS or browser needs to do is manage those far better so it’s working on your behalf (user agent) and safeguarding your attention. Probably notifications should cost something, in fact an auction. Why don’t people earn currency for their attention? It’s a zero-sum game with publishers paying for users’ attention as an investment. Isn’t that what BAT aas supposed to be? Did it work? Click fraud is an issue but then the publishers would require someone like Apple and Google to make available webauthn attestation (web credentials) that this was a real device that was purchsed!
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    > Probably notifications should cost something, in fact an auction. Why don’t people earn currency for their attention? Ah yes, genius! And then just like Brave, Apple/Google can take 30% of the revenue from selling your attention, and then continue to print money like nobodies business! I kid (even though people will try to defend that business model), the real solution is just having well-engineered notification settings. iOS' notifications are years behind the curve, on Android I can stop an app from sending me notifications simply by long-pressing the notification. iOS makes this process substantially harder, so you're right that it would probably turn into a predatory feature. Again though, we should be encouraging Apple to do the right thing here, not rev up their money printers again.
    - EGreg 4y ago
      Well, I personally am against closed centralized platforms (app stores, Big Tech platforms) and centralized monetization (patreon, deplatforming). I think Web3,4,5 has a lot of promise to disrupt the gatekeepers, who currently can control our transactiosn and even influence our democracies. This will become even more significant as the next generation will be immersed for hours a day in VR, XR, metaverse with glasses followed by neuralink. I don’t want corporations extracting rents like you described here and managing us like the Borg. But somehow, so many people on HN believe (much like Bitcoin maxis but with Web2) that no new decentralized technology can be good enough to actually adopt or get involved with, they downvote and bury everything that even slightly innovates in this area. Even stuff like FileCoin and MaidSAFE are derided. Watch, here is totally free open source code that took us half a million dollars to produce and people can fork and build on, but if I post the link what will happen: https://intercoin.org/applications https://intercoin.org/applications And here is a detailed write-up of what it would be like to own your OWN server and charge people for your attention in your OWN currency: https://qbix.com/ecosystem https://qbix.com/ecosystem … feel free to build upon it. I just coined a word for people who knee-jerk downvote anything on HN that gets away from centralized gatekeepers or uses blockchain: Web2 maximalists
      - smoldesu 4y ago
favourable 4y ago
> How much simpler can we make this process? An app store for PWAs would be nice. Users are not aware they can add sites to their home screen and automagically transform a site into an app. Nerdy types may be aware of it, but for the average user they're simply not aware of PWAs.

onion2k 4y ago

Progressive web apps suffer from an ergonomic issue where people have to read 2-3 tutorials to figure out how to put a site on their homescreen. I strongly believe that the overwhelming majority of users don't want apps on their homescreen, whether they're PWA or native, unless they're things they use pretty much daily. They definitely don't want to install some crappy app for a business they use a few times a year. Most things should be plain old boring websites.

ip26 4y ago
That’s basically what a PWA is, a boring website that continues to work properly on a terrible datalink. It’s not installed, just properly designed & cached.
- rchaud 4y ago
  > just properly designed & cached. If only. There's no standardization, no PWA seal of approval. Most website vendors that even bother with a "Add to Home Screen" button on mobile displays aren't interested in anything besides getting a shortcut displayed on their 'desktop'. They certainly aren't doing things like configuring service workers to cache and serve the website offline.

depressedpanda 4y ago

> Progressive web apps suffer from an ergonomic issue where people have to read 2-3 tutorials to figure out how to put a site on their homescreen. Only for iPhone, and that's because Apple wants the experience to be bad. This is just one of many reasons why it's a bad thing that users can only either use Safari or reskinned Safari on iOS. On Android (Chrome) you install a PWA with two taps.