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> f multiple stores were possible/viable for iOS Or if PWA's were reasonably supported

by davorak 1y ago

madeofpalk 1y ago
What APIs is Safari/iOS lacking for ICEBlock to function as a website?
- bitpush 1y ago
  Many, but one that comes to mind right now - you cant have an "app" icon on the home page. Which reduces discoverability a lot.
  - madeofpalk 1y ago
    Yes you can. You’ve been able to do that since before the App Store.
watermelon0 1y ago
Why would we want to limit ourselves to PWAs? Being able to run arbitrary executable file has been the core feature of general-purpose computers since the beginning. I'd consider smart phones as being general-purposes, same as laptops/desktops/servers.
- fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
  In this case, so that you don't get kicked out of the App Store with no recourse.
- xorvoid 1y ago
  The way they're lock down make them really not general-purpose. Smart phones really were envisioned as thin-clients to cloud servers. When you start getting too far away from that, everything starts fighting you.
CharlesW 1y ago
This is an old chestnut that's no longer true. Safari's PWA support is better than Firefox's today, on both mobile and desktop. Two examples off the top of my head: Safari has better Web Push support, and supports the W3C's Badging API.
- davorak 1y ago
  I could not find the indexdb bug on safari that stopped me from using it at work, but I was able to find something from 2021: https://gist.github.com/pesterhazy/4de96193af89a6dd5ce682ce2adff49a https://gist.github.com/pesterhazy/4de96193af89a6dd5ce682ce2... My impression for the last ~10+ years is that you could not depend on index db in safari, not for heavy use cases, and doubly so for ios and there was not a viable alternative whenever I checked. I would be happy to know that things are looking better for PWAs on ios though if things are now viable.
  - CharlesW 1y ago
    Thanks for the additional background, I'll dig into that! FYI, based in part on our exchange, I created pwascore.com to scratch the itch of wanting a reasonably-objective "score" for browser PWA support.

> f multiple stores were possible/viable for iOS Or if PWA's were reasonably supported

madeofpalk 1y ago

What APIs is Safari/iOS lacking for ICEBlock to function as a website?

bitpush 1y ago
Many, but one that comes to mind right now - you cant have an "app" icon on the home page. Which reduces discoverability a lot.
- madeofpalk 1y ago
  Yes you can. You’ve been able to do that since before the App Store.

watermelon0 1y ago

Why would we want to limit ourselves to PWAs? Being able to run arbitrary executable file has been the core feature of general-purpose computers since the beginning. I'd consider smart phones as being general-purposes, same as laptops/desktops/servers.

fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
In this case, so that you don't get kicked out of the App Store with no recourse.
xorvoid 1y ago
The way they're lock down make them really not general-purpose. Smart phones really were envisioned as thin-clients to cloud servers. When you start getting too far away from that, everything starts fighting you.

CharlesW 1y ago

This is an old chestnut that's no longer true. Safari's PWA support is better than Firefox's today, on both mobile and desktop. Two examples off the top of my head: Safari has better Web Push support, and supports the W3C's Badging API.

davorak 1y ago
I could not find the indexdb bug on safari that stopped me from using it at work, but I was able to find something from 2021: https://gist.github.com/pesterhazy/4de96193af89a6dd5ce682ce2adff49a https://gist.github.com/pesterhazy/4de96193af89a6dd5ce682ce2... My impression for the last ~10+ years is that you could not depend on index db in safari, not for heavy use cases, and doubly so for ios and there was not a viable alternative whenever I checked. I would be happy to know that things are looking better for PWAs on ios though if things are now viable.
- CharlesW 1y ago
  Thanks for the additional background, I'll dig into that! FYI, based in part on our exchange, I created pwascore.com to scratch the itch of wanting a reasonably-objective "score" for browser PWA support.