Bring back PWA (progressive web apps) | Hacker News Reader

Bring back PWA (progressive web apps)

connect.mozilla.org

34 points0xedb16 comments

I didn't even realize Firefox discontinued PWA support... We've been using this for our B2B web apps, mostly on Edge and Safari (iOS) clients to really good effect.

We used the Starbucks PWA as our guide/test case:

  https://app.starbucks.com

You'd think Apple's platform would be a huge PITA around this, but as of latest iOS version it actually gives us everything we need. We will be 100% free from the app stores and enterprise bullshit programs once we migrate our customers. Seems the anti-trust heat might be having some positive effects.

Overall, webapps are still king for the kind of business we do. Our users love the flexibility of multi-tab/monitor layouts when working with complex scenarios or concurrent items. Being able to ctrl+click a link is magical when trying to navigate the messier rabbit holes.

The PWA just makes the webapp even easier to use or deploy in a lot of settings. You can take my shiny PWA toys away all day and we will still figure out a way to make this work. Even a mildly inconvenient application startup procedure (i.e. Tap Safari -> visit this favorited URL vs 1-tap home screen icon) is worth the insane tradeoffs we get in flexibility & stability throughout. I'd be happy to get on a zoom training session titled "how to start the app" with our end users for 1 hour per month if it meant I could avoid having to hire iOS developers or deal with a native application ecosystem ever again.

I'll bet that we are all already using PWA's? Maybe the submitter of that forum post just doesn't know it?

While we're at it, let's bring Active Desktop back, too.

Bring back? Did PWAs ever take off?

The lack of mobile adoption compared to native apps, websites using notifications to spam users, the difficult discovery, and the lack of a huge advantage on desktop (window compared to tabs, sometimes a desktop icon) really hindered their adoption. I use zero PWAs today, and I don’t know anyone who has either, even on Chromebooks.

Isn’t every Electron app essentially a PWA? Or am I misunderstanding the definition of PWA?

A progressive web app does not require you to download an executable. You simply install it from the browser.

Here is an example https://mdn.github.io/pwa-examples/js13kpwa/

You should be prompted to install or add the app to your home screen, depending on the platform and browser you're using.

Another big example of a pwa I use is Twitter on the desktop.

The features that are core to how PWAs work really don't even need you to install the site per se. The caching and stuff works without installing it.

Correct. "Installing" is more like creating a shortcut that looks like any other app, at least on Android and Windows.

It seems close to pointless, but a dedicated window per PWA pinned to your taskbar/start menu is handy. It also doesn't get clustered together with other browser windows which I like. And the icon is visually different. If you don't want the feature then you just don't install the "app" (strong word for it). I like it for a couple of things (JIRA, email) but not others (social media). I wish they hadn't removed the feature and I'm probably going to switch browsers because of it although I'm loathe to do so.

With the potential for contextual menu, and some stored local data, mhmm.

It's really a UX thing.

So glad it's getting more attention.

Gotcha! That makes more sense to me now.

A PWA it's a lot better. With electron, each app had their own browser as a dependency. So if you have discord, vs code, slack, notion, Figma, you basically have 5 versions of chrome installed (like 60mb each minimum).

Instead a PWA it's more like a WebView/Direct access that uses the main browser with some extra APIs that a webpage doesn't have, but that's it. It's a lot safer as you don't need to install another version of chrome

How can we innovate and allow PWA to take off when they've been sabotaged by Apple and then Mozilla?

The "bring back" here is referring to Mozilla specifically which used to support them and then stopped.

How do you innovate when the concept is confusing and user interest isn’t there?

How does a browser with 10% marketshare somehow make a difference regarding adoption?

We are deploying it to businesses and they are loving it, it is confusing because of Apple mostly. Installing PWA in chrome is becoming better than native.

Considering the fact that my food ordering apps and e-commerce apps are all PWAs, I would say they definitely took off.

Maybe you're on iPhone AND that's the problem?

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