Apps are dying by Cameron Moll

Daring Fireball: One Bit of Anecdata That the Web Is Languishing Vis-à-Vis Native Mobile Apps

I have to agree with John here:

There’s absolutely no reason the mobile web experience shouldn’t be fast, reliable, well-designed, and keep you logged in. If one of the two should suck, it should be the app that sucks and the website that works well. You shouldn’t be expected to carry around a bundle of software from your utility company in your pocket. But it’s the other way around.

There’s absolutely no technical reason why it should be this way around. This is a cultural problem with “modern front-end web development”.

Spoiled by the Web - Cloud Four

The web is far from perfect, but I think we underrate how resilient it can be.

If you thought maintaining a web project was hard, just wait till you try keeping an app in the app store…

Just before the 2019 holidays, I received an email from Apple notifying me that the app “does not follow one or more of the App Store Review Guidelines.” I signed in to Apple’s Resource Center, where it elaborated that the app had gone too long without an update. There were no greater specifics, no broken rules or deprecated dependencies, they just wanted some sort of update to prove that it was still being maintained or they’d pull the app from the store in December.

Here’s what it took to keep that project up and running…

Move Fast & Don’t Break Things | Filament Group, Inc.

This is the transcript of a brilliant presentation by Scott—read the whole thing! It starts with a much-needed history lesson that gets to where we are now with the dismal state of performance on the web, and then gives a whole truckload of handy tips and tricks for improving performance when it comes to styles, scripts, images, fonts, and just about everything on the front end.

Essential!

Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android: What developers need to know - Microsoft Edge Dev Blog

This is such a strange announcement from Microsoft. It’s worded as though they chose to use the WebKit engine on iOS. But there is no choice: if you want to put a browser on iOS, you must use the WKWebView control. Apple won’t allow any other rendering engine (that’s why Chrome on iOS is basically a skin for Safari; same for Opera on iOS). It’s a disgraceful monopolistic policy on Apple’s part.

A word to the Microsoft marketing department: please don’t try to polish the turd in the shit sandwich you’ve been handed by Apple.

Working with mobile technology - Digital Service Manual - GOV.UK

Excellent guidelines from GDS on providing services that work well on mobile. The watchwords are:

• responsive design,
• progressive enhancement,
• open data, and
• emerging technology (service workers, notifications, etc.).

Native and hybrid apps are rarely justified.