zlacker

>>jaffat+(OP)
I hate using web apps. On desktop, mobile, wherever. The author's list of things they want supported by Mobile Safari is just aggravating:

> Here are a list of things you still can’t do with mobile safari due to Apple’s refusal to support them:

>

> Create an app loading screen

> Use push notifications

> Add offline support

> Create an initial app UI to load instantly

> Prompt installation to the home screen through browser-guided dialog

Why do I want these things, as a user. App loading screens?

I love the web. I love hyperlinks, text and images. The web of connections that lead you to information. Everything in that list is detrimental to a good experience on the web.

I don't want push notifications, I barely enable them for native apps. And it bugs the hell out of me when every second website in desktop Safari prompts to send me push notifications. No. Why would I want this on mobile?

Same thing with the home screen. I love the fact that the address bar in my web browser is my history, my reminders, my bookmarks, my open tabs. I start typing what I want and I'm there. Finding native apps on my home screen is only just getting to the same place with Spotlight, why would I want to make the web worse by sticking icons for pages on my home screen?

And browser-guided dialogs to put more icons on my home screen? Seriously?

This author's post is a great argument against web apps on mobile.

>>interp+W9
Sometimes I, too, pine for the days of "hyperlinks, text and images"-only web. So I turn off Javascript.

You can too, if that's how you want to consume the web. That's the beauty of it - it allows for that by design.

What I don't like is the position you are taking that "because I only want to consume the web that way, the Web itself should be hamstrung to my limited view of how it should work." There is no good reason - when the capability exists - that the Web as a platform should be chaste with things like Offline-first and even push messages (which IMHO are a big privacy win over the current mode of getting updates about things you're interested in, because you can't ungive someone your email address but you can easily turn off notification channels.) "Because that's not the way I want to consume the web" is not a good enough reason to deny the rest of us who want to see the Web continue as a modern and relevant platform. If you feel like shouting "get off my lawn" at the kids using those things, just flip off JS.

>>dccool+8m
There is one good reason. The web is a large ecosystem, and we're all living in it. You have a right to express your opinion about its development, and as a responsible inhabitant of that ecosystem, you should exercise that right.

Or, in other words, since we live in it, if the web turns into shit (even more than it already has), we'll have to live in that shit.

>>TeMPOr+Dp
I said they couldn't express their opinion? No - I even validated it by saying "sometimes I feel like that, too" and prescribed a simple remedy that would cure the problem: turn off JS.

My opinion, since we're expressing them as responsible inhabitants of the Web, is that bringing the web to feature parity with mobile apps - in a responsible and well-governed way as I believe the standards committees who worked on the ServiceWorker spec have done - does more to keep it relevant and provide good User Experiences than forcing devs to try to match user expectations without the facilities.

Since we're expressing opinions, here's another one: Apple is purposefully dragging their feet by not implementing these things fully on Safari because they want to protect their precious walled garden as long as they can to the detriment of everyone else using the web.

Back to the original point I made - if you are concerned about the things being bolted on to the web "turning it to shit" you can turn them off. Maybe the UA vendors should make that easier to do, or easier to do selectively? That's an opinion you could express to them.