You seem to be laser-focused on this one tiny part of PWAs. There's way more too it than that, like offline support, background sync, etc. Imagine if you could press a button on the page to save that article you're reading for later, and have it available offline next time you need it.
Or what if you could write a comment while offline, and have it be automatically posted next time you have a connection. (Or optionally, have a notification pop-up next time you're online asking if you still want to post it.)
PWAs are just flat out _better_ than existing web apps. It's remarkable to me that so many people seem to be against these incredibly useful features just because the app they're using is web-based rather than native.
Well it seems like either each and every website could build offline support and background sync into their site, or you could use a browser that does it for you.
In the former case, if you rely on sites integrating it, you could be frustrated when some sites do not implement background sync and offline support (or do it badly).
Having the browser do it seems simpler. Especially given the real world use cases for this feature.
(I'm not against having these technologies on the web. Just seems more sensible for a browser to do your reading list — just like it manages your tabs.)
Yeah, that sounds like a great feature. The thing is though, that feature isn't going to go away just because PWAs are a thing. The only difference with PWAs would be that sites would _also_ have the option of building offline support into the application itself rather than having to rely on one specific browser to handle that feature for them.
Not to mention PWAs would allow for more complex offline features Safari doesn't support, like syncing the front page of a news site and all associated articles, or automatically downloading new articles as soon as they're posted.
PWAs are just flat out _better_ than existing web apps. It's remarkable to me that so many people seem to be against these incredibly useful features just because the app they're using is web-based rather than native.
I think that's where we'll have to disagree in some sense.
Adding features to the web platform will of course mean that web applications have access to more features. Some of those are great – I'm really glad we have geolocation, for example.
The trade-off is that every feature added to the platform incurs cost and complexity. Trading these off is important; what is the point in web apps that do everything native apps do, but in a somewhat less good way?
There are obviously pros and cons here, and I'm not convinced that the use cases for more complexity are beneficial enough to justify it.
"You seem to be laser-focused on this one tiny part of PWAs."
We're laser focused on the annoying parts that we know will be abused to death.
"Imagine if you could press a button on the page to save that article you're reading for later, and have it available offline next time you need it."
Most browsers already do this.
"PWAs are just flat out _better_ than existing web apps. It's remarkable to me that so many people seem to be against these incredibly useful features just because the app they're using is web-based rather than native."
Because we already have native apps to do these things. I don't want websites to do these things. I want a website to be a website.
You seem to be laser-focused on this one tiny part of PWAs. There's way more too it than that, like offline support, background sync, etc. Imagine if you could press a button on the page to save that article you're reading for later, and have it available offline next time you need it.
Or what if you could write a comment while offline, and have it be automatically posted next time you have a connection. (Or optionally, have a notification pop-up next time you're online asking if you still want to post it.)
PWAs are just flat out _better_ than existing web apps. It's remarkable to me that so many people seem to be against these incredibly useful features just because the app they're using is web-based rather than native.