Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

I think the broader point being made here isn’t “React is bad” it’s how far we haven’t come in all this time. The user experience on the web is still sorely lacking.

To be sure some of it is a result of still missing browser primitives for e.g. performant scroll table views but there have been a lot of developments very few capitalise on.

For example: one of the big benefits of apps vs the web is that you download the whole app once (perhaps at home, over WiFi) and then when you’re out and about you’re only downloading the data you need to perform tasks. An API to achieve the same on the web, Service Workers, have been around for years. But they’re an afterthought in an industry that prioritises developer experience over user experience.

Where are the frameworks optimising smart caching with Service Workers, using local-first data in IndexedDB then syncing with the Background Sync API?

I build most of my personal websites with service workers. No need for the framework, I just build it for the specific use case I have at the moment.

Here's an offline-first soccer app: https://github.com/jon49/Soccer

And here's an MPA that caches the pages and save the updates for later when you are back online. So, you can navigate around and see the old data even if you are offline: https://github.com/jon49/cash

They exist and being developed but the use case is so small when their users have internet.

I don’t really understand the argument either: local-first and offline modes are non trivial to get right, it’s not automatic even with a framework.

Every product I’ve built is able to make a bunch of assumptions: client is working on behalf of a company, on their desktop computer, with good internet. It’s often even more heterogeneous than that: we can often assume MacBook and chrome.

This is the primary use case for massive react web apps: apps behind a login for b2b

Why would anyone care about offline first in that scenario?

> Every product I’ve built is able to make a bunch of assumptions: client is working on behalf of a company, on their desktop computer, with good internet.

That’s your experience, it is not mine. A great many people are making consumer facing web sites that experience majority mobile traffic. It’s not even rare!

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