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Comment by serial_dev | Hacker News Reader

It’s because if a webview app experience is good, you don’t notice it, you only notice if it’s bad.

A while ago saw a blog link on HN that explained how Apple uses it everywhere and we never notice it because they are done well. Of course I can’t find that link now, I summon the HN gods…

View on HN

Maybe this https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/inspecting-web-views-in-ma... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30648424?

On mobile the webview app experience is crap and it's immediately obvious that an app is not native. Simply nobody asks customers how they like it. The management assumes that as long as nobody complains and the users don't leave in droves, the experience must be impeccable.

It's often easy to tell, but my concern has shifted from "Why isn't this native? It's ugly/slow" to "Why isn't this a goddamn webpage? It can't justify neither its permissions nor its space".

from the comments:

> Definitely every one of these is sluggish at best on a very modern machine but they are also full of UI annoyances.

> It’s because if a webview app experience is good, you don’t notice it, you only notice if it’s bad.

Aside from Apple’s apps (which imo are noticeably worse than the old ones, but that’s beside the point), what are some good WebView apps on iOS right now?

Somebody scraped the play store and checked the framework, so a list for Android WebView apps, built with capacitor, is here: https://capgo.app/top_capacitor_app/ Maybe an equivalent is there on iOS for the same app...

Sadly i couldn’t find a reliable way to do it on Apple Store, it’s pretty hard to download from the store outside of apple device. If anyone know how i can do it too

It might not be possible but others have scraped just the app store and matched based on Android meta data: https://people.ece.ubc.ca/amesbah/resources/papers/mobilesof...

lichess is really good. Thanks for the info, I'm not surprised to learn it's a webview app, but it is really good.

It doesn't look native but who even cares. I think when a UI sucks or is unintuitive or buggy then "it's not native" is a sort of catchall easy complaint. Native is a crutch. Sometimes it's a good crutch (accessibility etc). But that's more about developer efficiency and bare minimums of polish.

Yes, Apple's apps are really really bad - including the app store. I am not even sure whether that app store can be considered a stand alone app or we should call it part of the OS.

A webview app is by design bad. Webviews were made for one thing - web views.

The app store is the only application that I am aware of that you can't find through spotlight search. You can search the app store directly from spotlight search, but it will never list the App Store as an app. Very annoying.

I just opened spotlight and typed “ap” and App Store came up as the first option.

Thanks for this comment. I was able to fix this issue, finally. Had to toggle the switch in setting> apps> App Store > search and restart my devices. :)

I thought it was some legal thing about App Store competition.

Is this what you mean? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45250759

(In the context of "Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects to web content")

Yes, thank you!

> It stands to reason that Apple wouldn't have developed this feature [liquid glass css property] if they weren't using it. Where? We have no idea. But they must be using it somewhere. The fact that none of us have noticed exactly where suggests that we're interacting with webviews in our daily use of iOS without ever even realising it.

There's some jump from _a property exists_ to _it must be used_, but a massive one from _a property exists_ to _Apple uses it everywhere and we never notice it because they are done well_.

> Apple uses it everywhere and we never notice it because they are done well.

Done well as in: laggy, non-performant, break OS conventions and you can see elements load with the naked eye?

See App Store as an example: https://grumpy.website/post/0RsaxCu3P or Apple Arcade: https://grumpy.website/618 or...

The Arcade video, taking several seconds to load a few low resolution images, causes me pain.

It is immediately obvious when you are using a web view app, as it uses browser layout and non-native controls. And I have never found one to be as intuitive or nice an experience as native controls.

If Apple are using it for the AppStore - then I defo Italy do notice it. The AppStore runs so badly.

I would be interested in any links to Webview apps that run really well, I’ve never seen one that I’m aware of but so many that I am aware of and are bad!

Not really. The difference between high quality web app and native app is very noticeable.

And between average native and average web view - it is night and day.

99% of web apps in desktop browser are laggy. And on mobile it feels like crap.

Sure if you are an expert in top1% you can probably get it working really good. But this is true only for 1 in 100 if not less.

Apple’s app experience has also been going in the toilet for the last five-six years so there’s that. It’s like slowly boiling the frog.

Can you give examples of good webview apps on iOS?

A webview app can be good, but finding one is harder than finding russel's teapot :D

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