[HN Gopher] Push Notifications, WebXR, and better PWA support co...
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Push Notifications, WebXR, and better PWA support coming to iOS
Author : carlycue
Score : 228 points
Date : 2022-02-01 10:18 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (firt.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (firt.dev)
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| I was going to write 10 years too late, but I decided to look it
| up.
|
| I'm proud to announce i was wrong. It's actually 15 years too
| late, since it was promised in 2007.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_application
|
| I suppose increased regularisation worldwide has something to do
| with it to announce it again.
|
| I'm curious which features they will lag now...
| rabuse wrote:
| I've waited years for push notifications to come to iOS Safari.
| This is wonderful news.
| kecupochren wrote:
| Same. I'm beyond excited. I thought we would never get them
| since Apple wants their App Store cut. Today is a good day
| maga wrote:
| Sounds almost too good to be true, but here is hoping for the
| best.
|
| > Opus audio decoder (enabled)
|
| Considering the track record of codec support, I bet it only
| works when packaged as CAF, singed by QuickTime, and played
| during the daytime to a limited audience... I joke, but the
| amount of gotchas I encounter while working with WebAudio API is
| mindboggling and reminiscent of good ol' days of IE6. Would you
| guess that despite all three browsers declaring support for audio
| recording (MediaSource API) and all three supporting opus on
| paper, there is no way to produce the same opus file in all
| three? Safari only supports playing opus in <audio> tag, no
| recording; Chrome doesn't support ogg, and while both Chrome and
| FF allow you to record opus in webm container, the resulting file
| is not seekable... There are of course third-party solutions, but
| it's just sad to watch in the century of the fruitbat.
| jtbayly wrote:
| > in the century of the fruitbat
|
| Off topic, I know, but what in the world does this mean? I did
| a quick search and couldn't figure it out.
| maga wrote:
| A common reference to the modern (ergo enlightened) age in
| Terry Pratchett's Discworld series:
| https://wiki.lspace.org/Century_of_the_Fruitbat
|
| Sorry for the confusion, I'm high on caffeine.
| dagw wrote:
| It's a Terry Pratchett/Discworld reference.
| istjohn wrote:
| I just spent the weekend banging my head against the wall
| trying to record and upload audio in Safari. Chrome and FF were
| relatively easy. Know of any good open source examples or
| documentation on how to do this?
|
| It really is sad that something so simple is so hard. I refuse
| to pay 10 cents a minute to a third party.
| maga wrote:
| In the end, I went with this library for now:
| https://github.com/chris-rudmin/opus-recorder
|
| There are issues reported with the latest iOS, though.
| moron4hire wrote:
| I really hope the WebXR API stuff will come with support for VR
| headsets in Safari on desktop, and that whatever Apple's rumored
| VR headset end up being will also support it.
|
| WebXR has been great for my app at work, but we're basically
| locked into the Quest 2 right now because Mozilla dropped the
| ball on WebXR support. Oculus is the only one doing significant
| VR work with WebXR in their Oculus Browser, which is a Chromium
| build that they keep proprietary.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| There is also no mention yet on Apple support for glTF file
| types which is important to keeping an open web based XR
| ecosystem.
| ngokevin wrote:
| glTF can be rendered by the libraries, I think native glTF
| support only matters if you want to display it isolated and
| natively in the browser with nothing else, like an image.
| Which is not really a use case for VR.
| moron4hire wrote:
| There's really no need for that. WebGL and WebGPU have no
| concept of file types. Whether it's Wavefront OBJ or COLLADA
| or glTF or some jankasaurus of JSON loaded out of a database,
| WebGL isn't going to and shouldn't have to understand it
| natively. It's on the app developer to translate that to
| vertices, texture maps, etc. And that's going to change a lot
| depending on what sort of abstraction layer you're using on
| top of WebGL, e.g. Three.js or Babylon.js or whatever. If
| anything, having native support for specific 3D interchange
| formats would constrict and over complicate the available
| options to app and 3D framework developers.
| gfodor wrote:
| Agree - WebXR is mostly off peoples' radars, but if at least
| two vendors end up adopting it well, it will have _massive_
| long term consequences (good ones) for the democratization of
| VR and AR.
| veesahni wrote:
| TLDR: there's broken/non-functioning push notification support in
| iOS 15 beta... and its disabled by default.
|
| Nothing to be excited about yet.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Yes, but it is a _major_ change of direction or a _major_
| accident for them to even put this in a beta build if they
| still have no intention of adding it.
| mwexler wrote:
| Funny enough, apps were supposed to be just for Apple. The
| original conception is that 3rd party tools, games, etc. for the
| iPhone would just be webapps.
| (https://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-for-the-...,
| etc.)
|
| A few adjustments to the model and here we are with lots of
| native code and big money... but still, folks requesting updates
| to the the browser to support more app-ish functionality. I'm
| glad; the browser can do a lot and we kind of miss that in many
| mobile contexts.
|
| I also think the elusive "run almost anywhere" is viable in many
| cases when the browser gets powerful enough. (Of course, I said
| that about the JVM years ago, so what do I know?)
| dbbk wrote:
| It was also kinda weird because when they announced "the
| solution is web apps!" they made a big deal that developers
| could make their web apps just look exactly like native apps.
| But they never actually released any SDK, stylesheets, or
| anything to achieve that. In reality everyone had to mimic the
| look through CSS on their own, and even write absurdly
| complicated JavaScript libraries to emulate the scrolling.
| tehbeard wrote:
| I guess the main difference is JVM didn't have a workable UI vs
| the web?
| brimble wrote:
| You had to install the JVM. It often broke or bugged you to
| update. UI usually felt off or janky, and unresponsive. At
| the time, Java applets were _huge_ compared to typical web
| pages, and had crap performance. By the time hardware and
| connections improved enough to make the last two things less
| of a problem, JavaScript could do most of the useful things
| the JVM could with fewer security risks (and hardware was
| fast enough that that wasn 't _also_ so slow that no-one
| would tolerate it, as it would have been earlier).
|
| [EDIT] Oh, and it had to compete with Flash and Shockwave,
| which had (barely) fewer issues with plugin breakage, _very_
| nice authoring tools (still unmatched, AFAIK?), and, despite
| having crap performance, still performed better than Java
| applets. Plus a whole lot more fun things used them so normal
| people had a motivation to install them.
| simion314 wrote:
| You could do a working GUI with the JVM. But most people
| demanded Windows desktop apps, and for Windows only you could
| use .Net and C# for a better experience. Linux community was
| in big part against Java or Mono because of license and FUD
| so Python was the winner for the higher level language there.
| riskable wrote:
| Firstly let me state that yes, you could make a GUI with
| Java but it would suck because the GUI toolkits available
| at the time were just downright _awful_ (and they still
| are!). Want an app that 's super bloated _and_ looks awful
| (no native controls)? Use Java!
|
| Also, the Linux community wasn't against Java per se (not
| until Oracle bought Sun anyway) it's just that writing Java
| was a huge/complicated undertaking compared to say, Python
| and managing JREs was a huge pain in the ass. The old joke
| was, "By the time you have Eclipse open I will have
| completed the program in Python."
|
| Lastly, mono was _enormous_ (and still is)! Talk about
| bloated! When mono was being most actively pushed on the
| Linux community back in the day there was just no benefit:
| For smaller things you had shell scripts and Python. For
| larger programs you had C /C++, Java, and... Python :D. Why
| would you go through the hassle (and it was a huge hassle)
| of using mono when those other languages provided better
| performance with much lower friction/barrier to entry? It
| didn't have much of a "selling point" as it were.
| olliej wrote:
| why would the JVM be involved?
|
| Literally the expectation was you'd be a web app - html + js.
|
| Everyone said that wasn't acceptable so they added native
| apps, and now everyone says native apps are terrible and
| everything should be web apps. It seems like apple can't win.
| feupan wrote:
| Given how quickly the App Store was introduced (just one year
| later) I'm betting that they never had the intention to go web-
| app only. They probably only needed extra time to figure out
| the experience for both developers and users (from native APIs
| to permission model to monetization)
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Actually, incorrect. According to court documents released
| from lawsuits, Apple in fact _did not_ plan for the App Store
| initially, just like Steve Jobs said on stage. It was not
| until a few months after the iPhone was released that some
| internal employees convinced Steve to let it go ahead and
| release an SDK. I can 't find the tweet containing a copy of
| it, but the actual email where Steve gave the SDK a go is on
| the public record.
| mlajtos wrote:
| https://www.macstories.net/linked/apple-captured-in-a-
| single...
| hestefisk wrote:
| I really can't see many use cases for web notifications apart
| from annoying sites trying to bug me. So I'm happy Apple haven't
| supported it.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Do you have notifications turned off in every native app you
| also use? The reason scummy linkspam websites are the "only"
| ones using web notifications these days is specifically
| _because_ it 's not a reliably useful feature. App developers
| who want to make a good user experience around notifications
| are instead pushed to making native apps instead.
|
| Personally, I don't use the native Twitter app anymore. I use
| the web version of Twitter, installed as an app, complete with
| shortcuts in my launchers. I have web notifications turned on
| and the experience is nearly identical to the native app. But
| there are little details that I think make it a better
| experience, like haptic feedback on mobile when clicking the
| Like button, or being able to select subsections of text on the
| screen. I have this on my Android phone, my Linux laptop, my
| Windows desktop, and my Mac Mini. It's exactly the same
| interface, everywhere, whereas the native app is ever so
| slightly different from the web app.
|
| I have a lot of sites that I've installed as apps on my
| computers and it's great: SoundCloud, LiChess, HBO Max,
| NetFlix, Azure Portal, TeamWork, a couple of different WebGL
| games, my own management interface for my app at work. It's all
| basically just a shortcut to the site, without the URL bar
| chrome. I like it a lot more than using tabs.
| kecupochren wrote:
| It makes [0]PWAs much more viable. Not having push
| notifications was a major blocker to make "almost native" PWAs.
| I'm excited
|
| [0] https://web.dev/what-are-pwas/
| brimble wrote:
| 100% of "use" of it I've seen on the desktop has been spammy
| sites no sane person would ever want to receive notifications
| from bugging me to enable them because I made the mistake of
| clicking them in search results, and my wife accidentally
| enabling notifications from random sites, getting spammed, and
| having _no idea_ how they 've managed to do that or how to
| disable it. That's why I've hoped Apple'd _never_ support them
| on iOS, and wished they 'd never supported it on desktop.
|
| As someone posted elsewhere in the thread, I hope Apple
| restricts requests to sites you've added as an "app" already.
| And I hope they find a way to keep sites from being able to
| tell you've "installed" them, so actually-useful sites or ones
| that I have _no choice_ but to use (work, kids ' school stuff)
| can't refuse to operate until I do that (I dunno, maybe they
| already do, I never "install" sites)
| jtbayly wrote:
| I really want it supported, but I would _also_ use it on most
| sites just like the pop-overs, cookie permission prompts, auto-
| play (and hover) videos, and paywalls--ie, to determine that I
| really don 't care to use that site.
| rabuse wrote:
| My users would like to be informed when they receive
| messages/notifications from my platform's PWA, so there's that.
| asadlionpk wrote:
| As a user, I hope Apple doesn't just enable notifications as it
| is. I tried Android recently for 6 months and permission popups
| on each site were really annoying!
| judge2020 wrote:
| Given Apple, it'll probably be limited to PWAs on the home
| screen, aka. only if the user goes to the share sheet and hits
| "add to home screen", where then it'll pop up the permission
| for sending notifications.
| asadlionpk wrote:
| That would be awesome! But given Apple, they wouldn't want
| people to circumvent their App Store. Push is probably the
| biggest reason people still make apps.
| olliej wrote:
| which actually makes sense, as there is a fundamental
| difference between "installed as an app" vs some random
| website spamming users.
| samwillis wrote:
| It's lovely to see Safari on iOS getting some attention, but I
| would love it if they fixed some of the long standing bugs such
| as the incredibly annoying text selection / caret issues with
| scrolling.
|
| If you have a textarea or input inside a `overflow:scroll` and
| scroll it out of view or have a `position:fixed` element over it,
| the text caret or text selection hi-light remains visible
| outside/above other elements. It's incredibly frustrating for
| developers of PWA and apps built will frameworks touch as Ionic -
| it result in text carets and selections being rendered over the
| top of toolbars and menus.
|
| Effectively the text caret and selection hi-light are drawn above
| _all_ elements on the page with no detection as to if they should
| be hidden behind an element or are outside a visible scroll area.
|
| https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=138201
|
| http://openradar.appspot.com/18819624
| tehbeard wrote:
| On the one hand, web push is a welcome sight and I really hope
| they gate it a little (only allowing if you installed the pwa,
| explicit permission et ) and had some solid spam reporting for
| end users tied to apple dev. credentials to keep it a pleasant ux
| for customers and not a spam channel.
|
| On the other hand, not jazzed to have debug what they managed to
| break in indexedDB this time round...
| wdb wrote:
| Yet to use/enable web notifications on iPhone. It's not something
| I have been missing. Probably we will see the dreaded web
| notifications popups even on iOS
| lolive wrote:
| So we can hack AR in JS, in the browser, with a reasonable
| support in both Android and iOS ecosystems?
| mlajtos wrote:
| yup, https://github.com/pmndrs/react-xr
| rgovostes wrote:
| paulgb wrote:
| I'm excited to see support for Web Push. I realize that most
| people associate it with spammy sites asking for permission to
| send you notifications you don't want, but I think it hasn't
| really been given a chance because it lacks iOS support.
|
| Some things that it enables:
|
| - Low-friction asynchronous turn-based games (think "Words with
| Friends" but you don't have to install an app)
|
| - Single-purpose alerts (like CamelCamelCamel) or stock alerts
| without cluttering your email inbox
|
| - Easily scriptable notifications from your own code (I run
| notify.run which provides an HTTPS-to-WebPush bridge so you can
| send yourself a push notification from curl)
| dbbk wrote:
| If Apple do do this, which I'm not certain they will, I imagine
| they'll be very restrictive on the permissions. Can only prompt
| to be enabled from a direct user action (eg a button click),
| and the latest iOS notifications prompt quite often if you want
| to keep them or stop them.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Just to add:
|
| - Getting notifications from websites I _want_ notifications
| from
|
| This should not be impossible just because there are 5 trillion
| websites I _don 't_ want notifications from.
| egeozcan wrote:
| Exactly, why can't there be presets to set the trust level on
| websites?
|
| - Hey, it seems like you want to use our notification
| feature, and we are delighted. For us to be able to push you
| messages, you need to set out trust level to "App", to do
| this...
|
| I mean, nobody will open a menu and click on 3 things for a
| spammy website, but many people will do it for their favorite
| 3 sites.
|
| - Clicking on this button will trust this website (example
| com) as an [App] and give it the ability to store information
| on your device, and send you notifications. Please don't do
| this for the sites you don't trust. [Cancel] [I trust this
| website]
|
| Our grandparents can run random executable from the internet
| and with some common-sense training and scary popups from
| anti-virus and UAC, it is still risky but tolerable. This is
| way more secure and easier, why cant this work?
|
| - You already trust this app (example com) and it can already
| store information on your device and send you notifications.
| Clicking on this button will add it to your trusted apps and
| allow it to ask for files stored on your device by other
| apps, and also allow it to ask to access your contacts. These
| permissions will be only available when you are actively
| using the app. [Cancel] [Add example com to trusted apps]
|
| Please some browser implement this.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| Edge exactly did that.
|
| It collects feedback from users. If a site got rejected by
| literally every user. It will be put into the `don't even
| bother prompt the users` list.
|
| And start from this point.
|
| No edge user will be prompt actively by that site (There
| will still be a icon on the url bar. If the user really
| really want to enable it, he can click it himself).
| sefrost wrote:
| Do we know which sites are in that "no prompt" list?
| miohtama wrote:
| Sounds like a ripe for abuse on a competitor's site. How
| does Edge identity the reporting users?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Except make it wayyyy more fine grained so I can give the
| app permission to store files but not send notifications or
| to access the files of one other app but not another.
| Something like Apple's fine-grained photos permissions
| would be good.
| philistine wrote:
| Make it even simpler. If the website is installed as a Web
| App on your iPhone home screen (it has an icon), it can ask
| for and send notifications. It appears in your list of apps
| in notifications in Settings and can be fine-tuned that
| way.
|
| You remove it from your home screen and the notification
| permission disappears.
|
| The bugs related to notifications currently seen in the
| beta are due to this user interaction not yet being
| implemented I'd bet.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| The problem is, that you can always "force" the user to allow
| you notifications or cannot proceed. And $GREEDY_MEGACORP
| would abuse their power and send you a "verification code"
| through the push notification, else you cannot process the
| signup etc.
|
| The good thing about the Apple Appstore, that
| promotional/marketing push notifications are forbidden and
| will get your App banned from the Appstore. Just allowing
| generic WebPush on PWAs will result in companies requiring it
| with dark patterns, just to increase your "engagement" with
| their product (read: send you spam).
|
| I have mixed feelings about webpush, I myself as a developer
| want it for my users, but I see the history of the web and
| how everything nice got destroyed eventually by spam.
| rezonant wrote:
| As others point out, promotional pushes are allowed on iOS.
|
| A site can refuse to give you content if you don't allow
| push notifications but in practice that doesn't happen
| because the incentive of the site is to have more traffic.
| Android has had this capability for an eon and I have never
| experienced a site try to force you to accept push
| notifications.
|
| I have also never observed a site try to use push
| notifications as a "verification" method. Do you have an
| example of this in the wild?
|
| And you can always control your allowance of push
| notifications after the fact, either at the moment you
| receive the offending notification or from the site
| settings. Android specifically has a fantastic way to do
| this without even leaving your notification area. Not sure
| how Apple's system works in that regard.
| deergomoo wrote:
| > that promotional/marketing push notifications are
| forbidden
|
| Not anymore they're not. It wasn't enforced when it was on
| the books; last year the rule was removed. Even Apple
| advertise their own services via push now.
| gruez wrote:
| >- Easily scriptable notifications from your own code (I run
| notify.run which provides an HTTPS-to-WebPush bridge so you can
| send yourself a push notification from curl)
|
| The article speculates that it might not be freely available
| like push notifications are for firefox/chrome.
|
| >Maybe we have to register the origin with the Apple Developer
| Program, similar to the Safari Push Notification program for
| macOS. If this is the case, the developer will have to pay the
| annual Apple Developer Program fee to send push messages to
| their web users.
|
| In that case you're probably better off installing a
| notification app from the appstore to handle it, eg.
| pushover/pushbullet.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| It does not work right now and probably will require Apple
| whitelisting your website.
| olliej wrote:
| I'd love to have a chrome person comment on the actual stats of
| web push usage because no non-developer I've interacted with
| has ever intentionally accepted push spam.
|
| I think all developers think that their site is somehow unique
| in the value of their notifications, despite all evidence to
| the contrary.
| mrtksn wrote:
| So, once this is integrated clicking a link will have the
| following experience:
|
| 1) Tracking preferences overlay that will have a wall of text
| with "Accept all" and "Customise" buttons that would not be
| clickable the first few tries.
|
| 2) Then you will have a modal that asks for your e-mail address
| so you can receive the newsletters from the website that you
| are trying to understand what is this all about.
|
| 3) And now you will have a prompt that asks you if you like to
| receive notifications.
|
| 4) Once you are done with all this, half of the page will be
| covered with links and menus to the other parts of the website
| and when you scroll menus and overlays with call with action
| will appear and disappear
|
| 5) The rest of the website will be ads.
|
| 6) Hopefully somewhere there will be an image or paragraph, you
| will be able to find it if you still remember why you click on
| the link
|
| 7) if you scroll a bit too much the screen will be blacked out
| and a call for action(sign up for a newsletter, create account,
| download the app or buy something) will appear and will have
| hard to identify close button that won't be working the first
| few taps.
|
| My point is, the Web is not a garbage because Safari lacks
| notification or something like that and it is not salvageable
| without finding a new business model.
|
| Wouldn't be great to have a notification once the new Wordle of
| the day arrives? Sure. But the business model of it appears to
| be selling it to the people who love all the steps from 1 to 7
| listed above. I don't blame the creator of the game, it's just
| a testament of the state of the Web business.
|
| I prefer apps for that reason. They also seem to be riddled
| with full screen ads(especially the casual games are horrible)
| that make your phone warm BUT you get yo see a high quality
| screen(App Store, Google Play etc.) where you can read reviews,
| description and see screenshots before committing into
| installing the app(Unlike the web apps where you first
| "install" the app and then you are on your own to figure out
| what is this all about).
|
| Besides the questionable practices of Apple/Google, there's
| barely any reason to have browsers with PWA capabilities. I
| would love it if the web browsers had JS off by default and
| load JS only when the user explicitly requests it.
|
| Most of the noise comes from Web technologists don't want to
| learn anything beyond JavaScript.
|
| I hope Apple doesn't cave and if they do, I hope they implement
| it in a way that improves the experience of the USER. If I
| wanted an Android experience, I would have used an Android
| phone, let's keep the iPhone experience like a iPhone
| experience.
| donmcronald wrote:
| I really want to see PWAs become a viable option for
| distribution, but you do have a point. I sometimes end up on
| websites using my iPad where I can't even read the content. I
| wonder why the company would publish a site so poor that it
| seems like they didn't even try it on an iPad and then I
| remember they've already gotten my ad impressions, so they've
| gotten everything they want and don't care if I get to read
| the content.
|
| I don't think those sites get penalized much either. I
| arrived via search or a link and they don't get demoted in
| search or have that link removed. I can't flag them as being
| a bad site or "take back" my view. I find it very
| frustrating.
| teucris wrote:
| > Most of the noise comes from Web technologists don't want
| to learn anything beyond JavaScript.
|
| I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but not this. PWAs are
| the only path for allowing open publishing of apps that is
| not gated by a large tech firm. While I completely understand
| the value proposition of app stores, there are tons of app
| scenarios held back by them. Two instances are small web[0]
| and situated software[1] as app stores keep people from
| publishing apps meant for small audiences by their very
| definition. Both of these fall under your desire to maximize
| the user experience.
|
| Furthermore, PWAs are the closest thing we have to a
| "universal" platform. Personally, if I could write an app
| that worked on all mobile devices and the web in COBOL, I'd
| be thrilled to write "PROCEDURE DIVISION" every day.
|
| The web is a mess because it is open. The web can be scammy
| because some people are scammy. Restricting PWAs doesn't
| mitigate scamminess - it just restricts openness.
|
| [0] https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/ [1]
| https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2004-03-30-shirky-
| situ...
| mrtksn wrote:
| I wouldn't call PWAs universal platform when they are very
| dependent on Google being nice with Chrome. Also, browsers
| already have integrated blocking mechanism that is supposed
| to block out phishing sites etc. but that's only the case
| because so far the browser infrastructure
| operators(Mozilla, Google, Apple) are acting nice. The Push
| notification infrastructure is also possible only because
| the browser infrastructure operators are being nice so far.
|
| At any point Google or other browser makers can choose not
| to be nice or can be compelled to follow regulatory orders.
|
| The only universal thing about PWAs is the availability of
| Google Chrome to all major platforms and that's up to the
| courtesy of Google. They may choose not to do it at any
| time, they may choose to discontinue their push
| notification backend just like that.
|
| Browsers are not standalone apps anymore, they are
| dependent on the backend services of the browser company.
| That's especially important when they need to run PWA.
| tl wrote:
| > very dependent on Google being nice with Chrome
|
| Replace Apple/Safari+Google/Chrome with
| Google/Gmail+Microsoft/Outlook and you currently describe
| e-mail. That situation is still preferable to the tons of
| messaging walled gardens. And the web is getting new
| feature albeit slowly and unevenly in a way that mail is
| not.
| brimble wrote:
| > Wouldn't be great to have a notification once the new
| Wordle of the day arrives?
|
| Nitpick, but for that specific example, not really, since
| it's always at local midnight according to your device's time
| setting (for certain values of "arrive", since all past and
| future wordles are always present in the page source).
|
| [EDIT] Oh and:
|
| > Besides the questionable practices of Apple/Google, there's
| barely any reason to have browsers with PWA capabilities. I
| would love it if the web browsers had JS off by default and
| load JS only when the user explicitly requests it.
|
| I think the biting of the apple, if you will, for the web,
| was allowing Javascript to _ever_ initiate requests on its
| own, or modify e.g. post request content or URLs pre-flight
| without user review and explicit OK. It 's fucking absurd
| that clicking a link to a site means it gets to track your
| mouse movements _and_ send them, live, to some server
| somewhere, and that disabling that means wrecking most of the
| web and making it a pain to use. No transmitting data without
| explicit user action and review, I say.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I don't get push notifications. If I don't have time to poll
| your service, I don't have time to respond to a notification.
| Besides, I'd rather not have my priorities determined for me.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| That really depends on the service. If it's a messaging app,
| then I'm not exactly going to poll a service until a new
| message arrives. Or any other type of app that I'm not
| checking if there's no updates.
| ninkendo wrote:
| I just wish that "web applications" were more clearly
| distinguished from regular web sites.
|
| I hate that a regular website I may tap on a search result
| would ever want to send me notifications. But, if a site that
| is clearly more of an "application" to me (like an online
| spreadsheet or chat app, etc) wants to send me notifications,
| that could be a useful feature.
|
| If there were a more clear delineation between the two, I could
| just avoid tapping anything that is labeled as an "app" in
| search results (or just ban them from my search engine), and
| restrict myself to "plain old webpages" only when searching.
| And "plain old webpages" would be even further restricted than
| they already are: No notifications prompts, no ability to see
| my accelerometer, no offline storage available, etc etc.
|
| It's nice that the web has turned into a viable app platform,
| but it doesn't mean I want every page I visit to be allowed to
| have "app-like" capabilities. In an ideal world 95% of the web
| would just be plain old documents accessed over HTTP(S) and the
| "apps" would be distinguishable as such.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I would find this type of differentiation useful as well.
| "Plain" sites are generally faster to skim through for what
| I'm looking for, (no gauntlet of spinning loading wheels and
| dialogs or JS gumming up functions like Find in Page) so it
| would be nice to be able to prioritize those in search
| results.
|
| One way to do this would be for the crawler to compare the
| content of JS-enabled and JS-disabled states and if they
| differ dramatically, the web destination gets tossed in the
| "web app" bucket.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Interesting idea, but it sort of falls down in my mind when I
| think about forums. I want notifications for some forums that
| I join. And I certainly don't want to remove forums from
| search results. They're the only place you can get decent
| product reviews right now.
| merrywhether wrote:
| A great heuristic would just be only granting notification
| prompt permission after you've installed the PWA to your Home
| Screen. That shows clear interest by the user in a longer-
| term relationship with the app, and they could grant other
| expanded prompt permissions based on that also.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| Most users never add a shortcut to the home screen and yet
| use plenty of web apps.
| coder543 wrote:
| Apple could certainly do more to help people understand
| that they can install web apps to their home screen.
| Right now, it is an option that few users are aware of,
| buried in the menus as it is, and even fewer think about
| it.
|
| When a related app is available in the App Store, Apple
| will show a big banner at the top of the web page
| encouraging you to install it... but they won't do
| anything for a PWA.
|
| I think requiring "installation" of a PWA is a great way
| to balance the concerns people have about getting spammed
| with requests to spam you with notifications you don't
| want... but I also wish Apple would support PWAs better
| in general, so I can see it both ways.
| rabuse wrote:
| This will probably be the way it's handled honestly. I
| think it's the best option.
| riskable wrote:
| Hate to break this to you but even a website that consists of
| nothing but HTML (no CSS/JS) is still an "app". It's still
| being executed in the runtime environment of your browser
| when you load it. Just because the website _chose_ to limit
| it 's use of the features to just one (HTML) doesn't mean
| it's not an app (when executed in a web browser).
|
| If you read that HTML in a text editor then yeah, that's not
| an app but if you're reading it in a web browser you're
| "running it".
| osrec wrote:
| Honestly, it's about time we got push notifications in Safari. It
| was a really annoying missing feature, and meant I had to pay
| Twilio to notify the iOS users of my web app. Hopefully that'll
| soon come to an end.
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