PWAs are actually kind of user hostile. They only benefit developers who don’t want to implement an extra app in a native/App Store language/env.
In theory they could be great but apple/google make too much money off app stores.
In theory they could be great but apple/google make too much money off app stores.
Also – on desktop many apps are Electron apps today, which is a user hostile workaround for lack of installable PWA:s.
Basically: It’s a way to verify that an app represents your site and then that app can open up the PWA inside it (a bit tricky to explain, but it’s great if one wants to be in the store and/or have an existing non-PWA app that one wants to upgrade to a PWA)
More info: https://firt.dev/pwa-playstore
Using a PWA for any of those (provided it gets rid of their terrible app banners) solves that problem for me as a user. I don't want to try and guess which app has broken their copy/paste or back button and have 20 different slightly broken UI's and experiences.
The advantage of the web is a consistent U.I. interface, with all the basics working (copy/paste, back button). This means there's a much higher chance of those working for the user, I don't see how you can say that's bad.
Even ignoring that, which do you think would be better, a platform that they put 3* the amount of time into or 3 separate platforms (if the devs are forced to build the same thing 3 times)?
There are many user benefits.
PWAs don’t solve those problems for marketeers either. They just annoy end users by making them do some funny dance to get the app on their home page, which then barely works and doesn’t support all the features a native app can handle anyway.
So you end up in a world where developers say “we have a mobile app, it’s a PWA, just install that” and then no one installs it because they don’t know how, and the marketeers get frustrated that the current web app isn’t sticky enough on mobile and so they add banners in to make people download the “real” app and you’re back to square one.
The only real solution is cross platform development toolchains (like electron) as they reduce the development overhead but allow for native apps.
Telling your customers to install a pwa is a terrible user experience and borderline rude
My company’s payroll admin system uses a PWA as a mobile interface. I don’t need slick ui there, I need to view my payslips (click a link to open a pdf) and request time off (fill in a 4-field form). It’s perfectly fine for this usecase and there is no conceivable business value in pouring more resources into it.
News flash: a majority of applications is simple CRUD like this. They don’t need a native UI or performance. They just need an icon on your homescreen.
But they are telling users to install apps. Sites that depend on advertising want to force the app down your throat to eliminate ad blockers and to better track you.
PWAs have always seemed like one of those beautifully idealistic yet totally doomed to fail ideas (at least for several years relative to native-based-approaches). Don't get me wrong, I think the web will ultimately evolve into the new JVM (read: via WASM), and the beatific promise that was foretold by PWA will finally reach the masses.
Reality Check: We're not quite there yet. Firefox deleting a legacy, buggy, and dev-time-sink attempt at this, makes total sense to me so they can focus on the other awesome stuff they're doing that actually creates real value for the masses today.
To be fair - perhaps they could've handled the ticket on this a bit more gracefully...? But then again - they know their stuff, so I don't blame them entirely :)
That thing is 100% native code, don't act like web apps are the only thing to do this. You can be a bad actor regardless of the tech stack.
But try to use them, and you get dumbed-down ‘mobile sites’ with massive ‘use the app instead!’ nags. The web on a mobile device is an unnecessarily lousy experience.
Web apps are all about freedom. They're free for the developer to distribute, they allow the user freedom to run on any device they own and they also allow the user some freedom to alter the app via extensions/ad blocking/etc.