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Ugh, no. It's bad enough they can pop "THIS SITE IS BETTER IN THE APP" shit. The last thing we need are more ways for a site to shove things in front of me to m

Ugh, no. It's bad enough they can pop "THIS SITE IS BETTER IN THE APP" shit. The last thing we need are more ways for a site to shove things in front of me to make my day worse. Keep it user-driven.

lxgr 4y ago
I mean, given that we already have "GO GET OUR APP NOW OR ELSE" prompts, would PWA prompts make things any worse? And very often I'd actually prefer a PWA, e.g. if I know that I'll be using a given site/service exactly once. Common example: A flight or train ride with a carrier I know I won't be using again anytime soon, but still would like to get notifications relevant to my trip.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Yes, there'd be way more of them, because the barrier to entry (and justifiable motivation for needing an "app" in the first place) would be even lower.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    I agree, every random site will almost certainly be vying for notification screen space via PWA install, which will make these banners practically omnipresent on the commercial web. It wouldn't surprise me if the trend we've been seeing in iOS where notifications are deprioritized continues in iOS 17, including some kind of mechanism that deprioritizes notifications from the spammiest apps and sites unless the user has explicitly marked them as important.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Uuuuugh the last thing I want is notifications becoming like email, where it's so spammy and impossible to deal with that automated tools have to start categorizing spam and affecting message visibility, and then important messages start to get lost in the shuffle.
      - kitsunesoba 4y ago
        That seems like the unfortunate but inevitable outcome of any unregulated channel between devs and users once it's passed a certain popularity threshold. Time to move on from push notifications to whatever the next thing is to enjoy a decent signal:noise ratio there for the 2-3 years before it catches on with the masses.
  - danShumway 4y ago
    > and justifiable motivation for needing an "app" in the first place I don't understand this at all. Lack of push notifications is one of the biggest reasons why I still have a number of native apps installed, apps that could be sandboxed webapps otherwise. I have heard push notifications on iOS used as justification for building a native app instead of a webapp so many times. I have talked with users about how there are certain services (Facebook, Twitter, etc...) that I refuse to install on my phone, and their response has been, "well, I'm installing the native app because otherwise I won't get a notification when I'm messaged." I have a hard time believing that lack of notifications or the barrier entry to building iOS apps has made companies more likely to build websites. My experience has always been the opposite, if I ask a developer why they're building a native app instead of a website, there is a really high chance that push notifications are the reason they give me. ---- And there's honestly not a lot of reason for most apps to be native apps at all except that: A) data storage is unreliable and can get deleted unrecoverably without user prompts. B) push notifications are unreliable on Android and don't work on iOS. Email, timers, alarms, every social media site, etc... How many native apps are on your phone -- apps that have much greater access to your hardware and that can fingerprint you with a lot more ease -- that realistically never needed low-level access to your hardware in the first place, and are only native because that's the only way to provide notifications or work reliably without a server? Honestly, my biggest criticism of push notifications (and part of the reason why I think they're less powerful than people are making them out to be) is that they're server-centric; the push notifications standard has all the fingerprints of Google saying "well, why would anyone ever make a webapp that didn't have a backend?" If there was a reliable way to schedule notifications/alarms offline without ever going through a server at all, and if there was a reliable way to store user information where I didn't have to worry it would magically vanish unless I backed it up to a cloud, I think I would be able to uninstall something like 50% of the apps on my phone and replace them with trivially small Javascript apps. And whenever a company tried to give me some bloated mess, I could run an adblocker on top of it or just deploy my own replacement. And that would be a really good thing. It's good that (for example) Wordle is a PWA because I can run an adblocker on top of it. Wordle is far better as a PWA than it would be as a native app. Similarly I honestly should not have to install an alarm app on my phone; that does not need direct access to my hardware, it can be a webapp. Except it can't, because there's no way for a user to allow a website to schedule an alarm. I too want to just use mostly websites instead of native phone apps, and I too don't want my data sent to a bunch of random servers someplace. I don't understand how people think that blocking basic functionality makes companies less likely to require native apps though. The reasoning does not make sense to me; I don't know what I'm missing but the argument seems like it's saying that making something easier will make fewer people do it? I don't understand that logic. ---- Edit: Ok, charitably, if the argument is that this will make more of the limited webapps that exist today ask for additional permissions, then yeah, I see that. But A: most of those companies were trying to get you to install native apps before B: having those companies hand you a webapp gives you much more control over what they're doing, including doing things like blocking prompts and setting up extensions to block their nag methods, which you can't do natively. And C: it sounds like Apple is basically duplicating their install permissions for notifications anyway, which I think is a very sensible approach. It would be good for push notification to be revisited as a standard, because I think it's a kind of terrible standard? But it would be good to revisit notifications in general. And Apple's approach, which explicitly wires push notifications up to obey the same permissions and settings as native apps, seems like a good step in that direction.
saurik 4y ago
OK, then the mechanism that let's websites prompts to install apps should be removed so apps are on the same level as web apps. Otherwise, the situation is part of the anti-competitive lock-in. If that won't be removed--and we know it won't be--then this feature needs to be added and will not make the situation worse: it will just mean that there is a hope that some of these websites prompt you to install a website instead of an app. If you want to stop getting prompted to install anything at all, then you need to either remove support for push notifications from apps--which obviously will never happen--or add support for push notifications to random "uninstalled" websites. (And if you don't like being prompted to activate push notifications for things, there should be a global switch to disable that feature... as they say: this isn't rocket science.)
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I'd love that, 90% of the ones I see are just from forum sites that use software that automatically provides some terrible "app" that no-one in their right mind would want, anyway. IIRC (and I may be mis-remembering) they mostly just added that in the first place because sites were hacking in their own (which, on its own, might be fine), and other sites were abusing that dynamic for phishing or otherwise scummy purposes (not fine), since there was no standard look & behavior for those prompts. As long as installing PWAs requires user initiation with actions in the browser chrome, and can't be initiated by a link in site content, that shouldn't be a problem with PWAs.
  - coder543 4y ago
    > As long as installing PWAs requires user initiation with actions in the browser chrome, and can't be initiated by a link in site content, that shouldn't be a problem with PWAs. And that’s all anyone is asking for, which would make PWAs equal to native apps in that regard. Your fervent opposition higher in the thread seems like a different position.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      I don't want INSTALL THE PWA spam-prompts everywhere. But, I like being able to open app store links from the browser. My ideal world is not terribly friendly to PWAs. I might use them, but I do not want them to be able to prompt installation actions in the browser. My persona UX is best if they cannot, but if "real" apps can. Second-best would be if neither can (and that's not that much worse—I'd be OK with this). Worst, by a long shot, is if both can. If both require "share -> install app" or "share -> install web app" (depending on what the site offers) that would be probably my single most-favored solution. Totally fine, both on equal footing. I do not want PWAs to be able to trigger prompts or provide links that initiate PWA installation, even if native apps continue to be able to do so, "fairness" be damned (fairness, in this case, harms my UX because this functionality is guaranteed to be spammy—the "install the native app" prompts are already spammy enough, I don't need more of that). That would definitely make the mobile web even worse than it already is. What I'm opposed to is letting PWAs prompt for installation. That would be bad, no question. Removing native apps' ability to do so is fine too, IMO, but would also require removing the ability to link to the app store at all to not open up other potential issues. If that's the cost of keeping PWAs from being able to prompt, cool, go for it. But please no PWA "click to install" prompts. No no no.
encryptluks2 4y ago
The install option on Chrome isn't in your face nor interrupting. It is a small icon and text on the URL bar.
- Vinnl 4y ago
  The crucial element here is that this indeed needn't be > more ways for a site to shove things in front of me The prompt can be provided by the browser, at a moment of choice for that browser, in a standardised way, and with the option to be disabled globally. For example, a browser could choose to only show the option once for websites you use often and provide a manifest file, and/or when you bookmark them, and/or just show an icon in the address bar. So many ways to do this in a nonobtrusive way, that still makes sure that people who would be interested in adding it to the home screen (i.e. a subset of the people installing an app today) actually know they can do that.
presentation 4y ago
How about a system preference of “don’t show me these”?
dbbk 4y ago
It should probably be surfaced when you go to bookmark a site.

Ugh, no. It's bad enough they can pop "THIS SITE IS BETTER IN THE APP" shit. The last thing we need are more ways for a site to shove things in front of me to make my day worse. Keep it user-driven.

lxgr 4y ago

I mean, given that we already have "GO GET OUR APP NOW OR ELSE" prompts, would PWA prompts make things any worse? And very often I'd actually prefer a PWA, e.g. if I know that I'll be using a given site/service exactly once. Common example: A flight or train ride with a carrier I know I won't be using again anytime soon, but still would like to get notifications relevant to my trip.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Yes, there'd be way more of them, because the barrier to entry (and justifiable motivation for needing an "app" in the first place) would be even lower.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  I agree, every random site will almost certainly be vying for notification screen space via PWA install, which will make these banners practically omnipresent on the commercial web. It wouldn't surprise me if the trend we've been seeing in iOS where notifications are deprioritized continues in iOS 17, including some kind of mechanism that deprioritizes notifications from the spammiest apps and sites unless the user has explicitly marked them as important.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Uuuuugh the last thing I want is notifications becoming like email, where it's so spammy and impossible to deal with that automated tools have to start categorizing spam and affecting message visibility, and then important messages start to get lost in the shuffle.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      That seems like the unfortunate but inevitable outcome of any unregulated channel between devs and users once it's passed a certain popularity threshold. Time to move on from push notifications to whatever the next thing is to enjoy a decent signal:noise ratio there for the 2-3 years before it catches on with the masses.
- danShumway 4y ago
  > and justifiable motivation for needing an "app" in the first place I don't understand this at all. Lack of push notifications is one of the biggest reasons why I still have a number of native apps installed, apps that could be sandboxed webapps otherwise. I have heard push notifications on iOS used as justification for building a native app instead of a webapp so many times. I have talked with users about how there are certain services (Facebook, Twitter, etc...) that I refuse to install on my phone, and their response has been, "well, I'm installing the native app because otherwise I won't get a notification when I'm messaged." I have a hard time believing that lack of notifications or the barrier entry to building iOS apps has made companies more likely to build websites. My experience has always been the opposite, if I ask a developer why they're building a native app instead of a website, there is a really high chance that push notifications are the reason they give me. ---- And there's honestly not a lot of reason for most apps to be native apps at all except that: A) data storage is unreliable and can get deleted unrecoverably without user prompts. B) push notifications are unreliable on Android and don't work on iOS. Email, timers, alarms, every social media site, etc... How many native apps are on your phone -- apps that have much greater access to your hardware and that can fingerprint you with a lot more ease -- that realistically never needed low-level access to your hardware in the first place, and are only native because that's the only way to provide notifications or work reliably without a server? Honestly, my biggest criticism of push notifications (and part of the reason why I think they're less powerful than people are making them out to be) is that they're server-centric; the push notifications standard has all the fingerprints of Google saying "well, why would anyone ever make a webapp that didn't have a backend?" If there was a reliable way to schedule notifications/alarms offline without ever going through a server at all, and if there was a reliable way to store user information where I didn't have to worry it would magically vanish unless I backed it up to a cloud, I think I would be able to uninstall something like 50% of the apps on my phone and replace them with trivially small Javascript apps. And whenever a company tried to give me some bloated mess, I could run an adblocker on top of it or just deploy my own replacement. And that would be a really good thing. It's good that (for example) Wordle is a PWA because I can run an adblocker on top of it. Wordle is far better as a PWA than it would be as a native app. Similarly I honestly should not have to install an alarm app on my phone; that does not need direct access to my hardware, it can be a webapp. Except it can't, because there's no way for a user to allow a website to schedule an alarm. I too want to just use mostly websites instead of native phone apps, and I too don't want my data sent to a bunch of random servers someplace. I don't understand how people think that blocking basic functionality makes companies less likely to require native apps though. The reasoning does not make sense to me; I don't know what I'm missing but the argument seems like it's saying that making something easier will make fewer people do it? I don't understand that logic. ---- Edit: Ok, charitably, if the argument is that this will make more of the limited webapps that exist today ask for additional permissions, then yeah, I see that. But A: most of those companies were trying to get you to install native apps before B: having those companies hand you a webapp gives you much more control over what they're doing, including doing things like blocking prompts and setting up extensions to block their nag methods, which you can't do natively. And C: it sounds like Apple is basically duplicating their install permissions for notifications anyway, which I think is a very sensible approach. It would be good for push notification to be revisited as a standard, because I think it's a kind of terrible standard? But it would be good to revisit notifications in general. And Apple's approach, which explicitly wires push notifications up to obey the same permissions and settings as native apps, seems like a good step in that direction.

saurik 4y ago

OK, then the mechanism that let's websites prompts to install apps should be removed so apps are on the same level as web apps. Otherwise, the situation is part of the anti-competitive lock-in. If that won't be removed--and we know it won't be--then this feature needs to be added and will not make the situation worse: it will just mean that there is a hope that some of these websites prompt you to install a website instead of an app. If you want to stop getting prompted to install anything at all, then you need to either remove support for push notifications from apps--which obviously will never happen--or add support for push notifications to random "uninstalled" websites. (And if you don't like being prompted to activate push notifications for things, there should be a global switch to disable that feature... as they say: this isn't rocket science.)

yamtaddle 4y ago
I'd love that, 90% of the ones I see are just from forum sites that use software that automatically provides some terrible "app" that no-one in their right mind would want, anyway. IIRC (and I may be mis-remembering) they mostly just added that in the first place because sites were hacking in their own (which, on its own, might be fine), and other sites were abusing that dynamic for phishing or otherwise scummy purposes (not fine), since there was no standard look & behavior for those prompts. As long as installing PWAs requires user initiation with actions in the browser chrome, and can't be initiated by a link in site content, that shouldn't be a problem with PWAs.
- coder543 4y ago
  > As long as installing PWAs requires user initiation with actions in the browser chrome, and can't be initiated by a link in site content, that shouldn't be a problem with PWAs. And that’s all anyone is asking for, which would make PWAs equal to native apps in that regard. Your fervent opposition higher in the thread seems like a different position.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    I don't want INSTALL THE PWA spam-prompts everywhere. But, I like being able to open app store links from the browser. My ideal world is not terribly friendly to PWAs. I might use them, but I do not want them to be able to prompt installation actions in the browser. My persona UX is best if they cannot, but if "real" apps can. Second-best would be if neither can (and that's not that much worse—I'd be OK with this). Worst, by a long shot, is if both can. If both require "share -> install app" or "share -> install web app" (depending on what the site offers) that would be probably my single most-favored solution. Totally fine, both on equal footing. I do not want PWAs to be able to trigger prompts or provide links that initiate PWA installation, even if native apps continue to be able to do so, "fairness" be damned (fairness, in this case, harms my UX because this functionality is guaranteed to be spammy—the "install the native app" prompts are already spammy enough, I don't need more of that). That would definitely make the mobile web even worse than it already is. What I'm opposed to is letting PWAs prompt for installation. That would be bad, no question. Removing native apps' ability to do so is fine too, IMO, but would also require removing the ability to link to the app store at all to not open up other potential issues. If that's the cost of keeping PWAs from being able to prompt, cool, go for it. But please no PWA "click to install" prompts. No no no.

encryptluks2 4y ago

The install option on Chrome isn't in your face nor interrupting. It is a small icon and text on the URL bar.

Vinnl 4y ago
The crucial element here is that this indeed needn't be > more ways for a site to shove things in front of me The prompt can be provided by the browser, at a moment of choice for that browser, in a standardised way, and with the option to be disabled globally. For example, a browser could choose to only show the option once for websites you use often and provide a manifest file, and/or when you bookmark them, and/or just show an icon in the address bar. So many ways to do this in a nonobtrusive way, that still makes sure that people who would be interested in adding it to the home screen (i.e. a subset of the people installing an app today) actually know they can do that.

presentation 4y ago

How about a system preference of “don’t show me these”?

dbbk 4y ago

It should probably be surfaced when you go to bookmark a site.