Apple backs off killing web apps, but the fight continues - Open Web Advocacy
Hallelujah! Apple have backed down on their petulant plan to sabatoge homescreen apps.
I’m very grateful to the Open Web Advocacy group for standing up to this bullying.
Andrew picks out his favourite bits from this year’s Google I/O, covering web payments, CSS containment, and—of course—Service Workers and progressive web apps, although he does note (and I concur):
I wish Google would focus as much attention on ‘normal’ sites that perform navigations as they do on so called ‘app-shell’ (which is just a new name for single-page apps, as far as I can tell), but then many people will be building SPAs and these recipes will make those apps fly. In news publishing we seem to flip flop between traditional page navigations and SPAs, but I’ve never found a SPA news site (or a native app) that I really like more than a normal website. Maybe a really good progressive web app will change that. But I’m not convinced.
Still, as he says:
All this really just underscores how flexible ServiceWorker is and that with it we can disagree on what the right solution is, but we can all get what we want anyway.
Hallelujah! Apple have backed down on their petulant plan to sabatoge homescreen apps.
I’m very grateful to the Open Web Advocacy group for standing up to this bullying.
This is exactly what it looks like: a single-fingered salute to the web and web developers.
Read Alex’s thorough explanation of the current situation and then sign this open letter.
Cupertino’s not just trying to vandalise PWAs and critical re-engagement features for Safari; it’s working to prevent any browser from ever offering them on iOS. If Apple succeeds in the next two weeks, it will cement a future in which the mobile web will never be permitted to grow beyond marketing pages for native apps.
Also, remember this and don’t fall for it:
Apple apparently hopes it can convince users to blame regulators for its own choices.
When it benefits Apple, they take the DMA requirements much further than intended. When it doesn’t benefit them, they lean back on the “integrity” of iOS and barely comply at all.
I don’t like to assume the worst and assign vindictitive motives to people, but what Apple is doing here is hard to read as anything other than petulant and nasty …and really, really bad for users.
If you’ve ever made a progressive web app, please fill in this survey.
Oh no! My claim has been refuted by a rigourous scientific study of …checks notes… ten people.
Be right back: just need to chat with eleven people.
Apple are planning to kill mobile web apps. This is not an exaggeration. We must stop them.
Mobile Safari finally ships the feature we’ve all been waiting for …but hardly anyone is going to get to use it.
Between the physical and the digital. Between native apps and the World Wide Web.
Opening an external link in a web view appears to trigger a reload of the parent page without credentials.
What’s coming in the next version of Safari …and what isn’t.