zlacker

I use PWAs for my home websites (things like calendars and thermostat) running on tablets. They're a bit awkward, or I'm just ignorant of The Correct Way. I have to set metadata in a file for some reason I don't understand (most importantly, it must have a dedicated icon to display because ???). Then whenever tablet is restarted, I have to tap the website icon to launch it, then push up from bottom of screen to top and hold it up to bring up whatever Android calls the app manager, and then I tap and hold the window of my app and tap to pin it. -and if Android decides to reboot for whatever reason, I must do this again.

-But it's less pain than trying to turn a generic Android tablet into something more like a kiosk, best I can tell (there are third-party apps that do this, which survives reboots, I'm led to believe, but I'd rather not mess with third-party stuff). I previously made Android apps in Java for the tablets, and while I enjoyed the fragment system it uses, the permissions handling was always a nightmare whenever I wanted to do something neat or experimental -- TTS and mic listening in a PWA makes me much less frustrated than trying to do it via native app (which seems backwards to me), and I can still use the website on any non-Android device.