zlacker

>>jaffat+(OP)
As an iOS user, I'm actually quite glad that websites can't send me push notifications on it. And app loading screens are a feature?

If people _insist_ on making phone apps as websites, there's Cordova and all that. Such apps are never very good, of course. I still haven't seen a website-based desktop/phone app that wasn't a clunky non-native-looking resource-hogging mess.

>>rsynno+E4
That exact argument can be applied to native apps. Should native apps have push notifications removed?

Why not? Because they can actually be extremely useful. Such as for receiving emails, Facebook messages, Slack pings, or news updates you've subscribed to. Maybe somebody tweeted you. Any of these apps could work as progressive webapps.

Regardless if the platform is native or web-based, the feature remains opt-in. If you don't want them, then don't subscribe to them.

>>Square+Ka
Yes but supporting the feature encourages developers to make web apps. Why would you want to encourage that?

>>interp+rb
Why wouldn't you want that? PWAs are seamless (no downloading/installing), allow native features, can be saved offline for later, run in a secure sandbox, and are completely open and cross-platform.

>>Square+bd
I'm pretty sure it boils down to "we're fancy iOS users who want nothing to do with those peasants over in the Android world". It seems like the majority of the comments opposing web apps oppose them because they're cross-platform and not written specifically for their chosen platform, which is a very silly stance to have.

There are some more coherent arguments in play, don't get me wrong (in particular, the argument that web apps are a bastardization of what the World Wide Web was intended to be for; I agree with that wholeheartedly), but a lot of the rhetoric around here really reeks of elitism.

>>yellow+ng
I've written quite a few apps for both iOS and Android.

While I'm not an Android user, when I build an Android app I try to embrace the platform's strengths. I try to understand best practice, and follow the designs encouraged by Google. The resulting apps often look and behave completely differently between iOS and Android because the platforms are so different.

I have mixed opinions about a lot of Android's design philosophy, but there's no way I would build an Android app that didn't conform to the platform. Because I expect Android users enjoy consistency too.

There's probably some elitism in there. But there still is no web app on macOS or iOS that feels good, consistent and integrated in the same way that a good native app feels.

>>interp+Ph
> But there still is no web app on macOS or iOS that feels good, consistent and integrated in the same way that a good native app feels.

Part of that though is because they _don't_ allow PWAs. Contrast that with Android, where it's now entirely possible to make a PWA so deeply integrated into the OS that the average user can't even tell it's not a native app: https://blog.chromium.org/2017/02/integrating-progressive-we...

>>Ajedi3+hl
> Contrast that with Android, where it's now entirely possible to make a PWA so deeply integrated into the OS that the average user can't even tell it's not a native app

Oh, but quite many will be able to tell after 5 seconds of using it. The rest will realize the moment the Internet connection drops temporarily.

>>TeMPOr+Ym
> The rest will realize the moment the Internet connection drops temporarily.

Nope. A properly-written PWA will continue working just fine when the user goes offline, just like a native app would.

>>Ajedi3+Ms
Most native apps that rely on a web service backend are pretty unusable when the connection goes offline.