zlacker

>>samwil+(OP)
I’m truly scared of Chrome.

It pushes proprietary features, from what I know it starts enforcing some analytics/ads without possibility to block it out and there are other thing too, but since I’m not really an user I don’t track them deeply.

Based on my personal experiences with IE, ActiveX, Adobe Flash and not being able to fill my taxes without Microsoft license (that was around 800$ back then for me not adjusted for inflation) I am afraid the same will happen with Chrome once it gets enough ground.

“Hey, sorry but we can’t sell you toothbrush because you’re using Safari/Firefox/Vivaldi/whatever. Please switch to Chrome and continue with your tracked and dissected purchase route.”

Is there any other anti-Chrome bastion than iOS’ Safari?

Old E2E runner installed Google Chrome on my machine (didn’t even ask but that’s user space on dev machine so whatever) which grew into my MacOS machine. It cannot run in background but there is another daemon that constantly updates it. Multiple times a day I get notification that new service has been installed to run in background.

I’m not sure if that’s something I want to fight for.

>>xlii+5h
If Apple was forced to compete on iOS for the dominant position that Safari holds, it would receive greater investment, add support for vital missing PWA features and potentially as a result grow its desktop market. I believe competition in the long run would break Blinks dominant position, and be better for both consumers and developers.

>>samwil+ei
Here's what Safari users don't get. Can you be precise about which ones are vital?

1. Install prompt (the user has to start with the "Add to Home Screen" command)

2. Link interception (i.e. browsing in the normal browser switching to the PWA rather than continuing normally)

3. Shared storage between the normal browser and the PWA

4. Ability to start fullscreen

5. SVG icons

6. Background sync

7. Push notifications

The rest of that is largely a list of things like "Web Bluetooth" which are non-standard Chrome features which Firefox also doesn't implement and often have significant privacy or security concerns.

>>acdha+B31
Push notifications alone are enough to force most apps to be native. But a lot of the other stuff missing is what keeps the experience from being quite as polished as a native app.

>>bouche+Qa1
> the other stuff missing is what keeps the experience from being quite as polished as a native app.

Features HN developers think are missing from the web to deliver an experience "as polished as a native app": notifications, prompt banners, link interception, Chrome-only non-standards like bluetooth etc.

Features actual users think are missing from the web to deliver an experience "as polished as a native app": actual native-like experience: responsiveness, smooth animations, polished usable and accesible controls, maintaining scroll position and location in the app, fast scrolling through large lists, no loading states for the simplest actions...

I mean, people people keep bringing up Twitter's objectively bad web app as an example of one of the best PWA apps... Have these people never seen an actual native app?