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paxys

Neat site, but the "Why PWA's?" section is laughable.

> FREE to install

> HTTPS is required meaning you data is secure

> Takes up less storage on your phone. No need to pay extra money for higher storage

> No in app purchases or ads. Just a clean and simple app experience

> Has an offline mode. Apps can be used in areas where this is no internet connection

All of them are either misleading or completely wrong. The comparison randomly switches from websites to phone apps whenever convenient.

It would be a lot better to provide a more objective description of what PWAs even are.

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Agree had no clue what is pwa until I started reading comments here.

The number one reason to choose PWA over native is performance.

No way are they more performant than native apps. Their big advantages are write once run anywhere, no vendor lock in, easier install, and more control, privacy and sandboxing since they are web apps.

If performance means performantly hogging resources performing the most basic of task, then sure.

That's the reason to choose PWA over other web technologies, not native.

What other technologies?

I'm assuming they're talking about a standard SPA (or even a conventional full-page-reload web app), or React Native or Electron on the desktop or similar. In the former case, a PWA can use service workers and caching and so on to get better network performance. In the latter case, they can leverage a preexisting Chromium/other browser instance to get most of the advantages of "write once, run everywhere" without bundling a whole browser instance with your app. I can't wait for full PWA support in Firefox, especially on desktop!

Could you elaborate on that? Performance of what exactly?

Loading times and responsiveness.

For example, Twitter’s native iOS app is about 115 MB, while their PWA is a tiny fraction of that, probably not more than a few MB. This unsurprisingly reflects on performance.

Wow thats huge. I haven't used twitter in years, I wonder if it was always so bloated.

It must be performance of your developers being able to develop for one codebase.

The whole idea of debating PWA and native apps is really old. I wish Google would just come out and say "we tried this idea, it wasn't the right one, we're sorry, PWAs are dead." Until this happens this idea will never die. Google is happy to kill good products but won't kill terrible ideas!

How is it terrible?

Apparently a controversial question considering the downvotes. PWAs are not AMP or some proprietary technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_application

I don't see how it is a terrible idea that needs to be killed. Sounds like a technological regression if support were to be removed. It's not like you're not allowed to still build native apps so please make me understand this argument.

Hard to say whether the down votes are because of my attitude or the true belief that PWAs are a viable alternative that should be weighed against native apps.

And yes, I am advocating for a technical regression. I think the web platform has pushed things unnecessarily too far because it cared more about competing with apps then embracing what the web is good for.

If you want proof this is true, look no further than technologies such as AMP that trade away the general usage of these advanced web technologies for something the end user actually wants: a good user experience.

You could also look at the numerous native apps that have mini apps and games that are developed using web technologies. If the web platform delivered features developers needed, these mini experiences could run in embedded web controllers. Instead they are custom webviews with hooks into the native platform to bridge the gap to what developers actually need.

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