I want PWAs to succeed, because I would love to publish close-to-native apps without an app store. I think PWAs are a great thing for the open web. However, hyping PWAs with unrealistic expectations doesn't do any good. The Ionic team talks in the same vein. I like Ionic, I don't like hype. Here are a few reasons why PWAs aren't there yet and probably won't replace most apps in the near future:
- No native APIs. Yeah sure, you can order a coffee at Starbucks, but the underyling hardware isn't exposed to JS. You won't be able to make a camera app with PWAs.
- Input controls suck. Same as with every mobile browser and every Cordova-based app: You cannot control how the keyboard behaves and I suspect that it's not even in Apple's interest to make Mobile Safari super-great. Sure, they're working on PWAs, but that doesn't mean anything. Just see how bad Mobile Safari's <select> looks like. Or bugs in multi-selects that have been there forever.
- They still run in a browser. It shows an address bar and whatever else your browser is always showing. Try Twitter's PWA right now: https://lite.twitter.com It's way too easy to accidentally swipe back. And then, Twitter being a shitty Single-Page-App, the browser loses its scroll position.
- PWAs suffer from the same problems like all SPAs [1]
And finally:
- A PWA is just a proxy to download and cache responses from a server. It enables offline support (kinda) for single-page apps. It's not a magical something. The problem is that most users go to the App or Play Store first (like djrogers pointed out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15219682). They COULD be using PWAs – or at least good mobile webistes – right now, but they aren't.
I think PWAs will find their places and I'm betting on them, too, to a certain extend. But over-hyping PWAs without addressing these issues is just naive.
[1]: Great read on this topic: https://adamsilver.io/articles/the-disadvantages-of-single-p...
- No native APIs. Yeah sure, you can order a coffee at Starbucks, but the underyling hardware isn't exposed to JS. You won't be able to make a camera app with PWAs.
- Input controls suck. Same as with every mobile browser and every Cordova-based app: You cannot control how the keyboard behaves and I suspect that it's not even in Apple's interest to make Mobile Safari super-great. Sure, they're working on PWAs, but that doesn't mean anything. Just see how bad Mobile Safari's <select> looks like. Or bugs in multi-selects that have been there forever.
- They still run in a browser. It shows an address bar and whatever else your browser is always showing. Try Twitter's PWA right now: https://lite.twitter.com It's way too easy to accidentally swipe back. And then, Twitter being a shitty Single-Page-App, the browser loses its scroll position.
- PWAs suffer from the same problems like all SPAs [1]
And finally:
- A PWA is just a proxy to download and cache responses from a server. It enables offline support (kinda) for single-page apps. It's not a magical something. The problem is that most users go to the App or Play Store first (like djrogers pointed out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15219682). They COULD be using PWAs – or at least good mobile webistes – right now, but they aren't.
I think PWAs will find their places and I'm betting on them, too, to a certain extend. But over-hyping PWAs without addressing these issues is just naive.
[1]: Great read on this topic: https://adamsilver.io/articles/the-disadvantages-of-single-p...