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Progressive Web Apps Moving Mainstream As Twitter Makes Its Mobile Site the Main (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Twitter is showing some users of its desktop website a new user interface that is designed to be faster and to feature support for the recently added bookmarks feature (supported in the iOS and Android clients but not, currently, the main website), a data-saver mode, and a night mode. These users have been selected at random and moved over to the new interface so they can test the interface and provide feedback. The new interface isn't all that different from the old one: it's organized a little differently, with a two-column layout instead of the three columns currently used, but overall it will feel familiar to anyone who has used the microblogging platform before. What makes this move interesting isn't the specifics of the interface itself, but the technology it's built on.
The new interface isn't actually new at all. It has been available for some time now as mobile.twitter.com, Twitter's mobile-friendly Web interface. In turn, that same Web interface is used to drive the Windows 10 app, the KaiOS platform for "smart feature phones," and the recently released Twitter Lite app for Android. This is why it has the data-saver mode; it has been designed with an eye on those users who suffer from poor or expensive bandwidth or have underpowered devices. This mobile site is perhaps one of the most prominent instances of what could be a new breed of Web application: the Progressive Web Application (PWA). PWAs are Web applications that build on certain modern browser features to provide an experience that is much more like that of a traditional application. For example, PWAs can support offline operation using service workers (a way of running JavaScript in the background that can respond to events and make network requests that degrade gracefully if the network is unavailable); they integrate with platform features such as notifications; they're also designed so that they could be pinned to app launchers and home screens and treated as if they were "real" applications rather than merely webpages.
The new interface isn't actually new at all. It has been available for some time now as mobile.twitter.com, Twitter's mobile-friendly Web interface. In turn, that same Web interface is used to drive the Windows 10 app, the KaiOS platform for "smart feature phones," and the recently released Twitter Lite app for Android. This is why it has the data-saver mode; it has been designed with an eye on those users who suffer from poor or expensive bandwidth or have underpowered devices. This mobile site is perhaps one of the most prominent instances of what could be a new breed of Web application: the Progressive Web Application (PWA). PWAs are Web applications that build on certain modern browser features to provide an experience that is much more like that of a traditional application. For example, PWAs can support offline operation using service workers (a way of running JavaScript in the background that can respond to events and make network requests that degrade gracefully if the network is unavailable); they integrate with platform features such as notifications; they're also designed so that they could be pinned to app launchers and home screens and treated as if they were "real" applications rather than merely webpages.
Where the real work is done!
In your ass?
If I want an app, I can use an app. If I using a browser, itâ(TM)s because I want to see web pages.
Twitter always was one of the worst offenders in wasting data. Now they're noteworthy for ignoring the desktop entirely, shutting out the casual non-app-installed non-smartphone users. In other words, they're going more echo chamber. Well, good on them I suppose.
Does this mean the main Twitter site will always say that it's taking "too long to load"? The mobile site does this the first time you access it after some time period (6 hours?), regardless of actual network conditions.
Twatter is great, pissface
Trump doesn't need a mobile site to post his incoherent ramblings. The regular app is perfectly fine while sitting stationary on the shitter.
Tell that to the president
How long until site owners start howling about their ads not rendering before the content the user actually cares about?
Your bullshit isn't worth it. Go start your own service. Twatter.com might be available if some porn site hasn't snapped it up.
So, how much did Twitter pay in PR fees to get a nominally positive story out about them? Innovation at Twitter, film at 11. A modern web app, color me unimpressed.
"The Anti-Social Network," brought to you by one Hugh Jass..
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Progressive Web App, it's just like a regular native app, just crappier. Users won't experience native controls, it won't look like traditional apps, they won't be able to find it in the app store / play store... It has all of the disadvantages with not really any advantages other than "code once use many platforms with crappy styling".
They'd ban Trump in a second if they thought they could do it without destroying their entire brand. A company barely holding its head above water financially can't afford to piss off a massive chunk of their customers for the sake of virtue signalling (like, for example, Nike can).
Why so scared of different opinions, hmm?
LOL sorry what side does this make me on its all about as funny as i can get..far right - crazy , far left - crazy
just wondering where i fit now
twitter actually has some nice compiler guys and does some good work on web standards and things like PWA... they are let down by their networking team it seems...
here are some basic DNS failures at twitter :
No DNSSEC (allows nation states to spoof twitter on HTTPS connections )
Name Servers are on the Same Subnet
Serial numbers do not match across servers
SOA Serial Number Format is Invalid on some servers
outside provider (oracle) has failed many performance targets
regards
John Jones
This: "they're also designed so that they could be pinned to app launchers and home screens and treated as if they were "real" applications rather than merely webpages.
It is *far* *easier* to maintain a traditional app in this respect rather than do it via a PWA and some PITA broken javascript interface. This is just another example of javacscript being used for something it really should not be (and it's a shit language too, better use webassembly instead).
I look forwards to seeing the trainwreck that PWAs will be in the future vs traditional app design. I'm guessing there will be more of an internet of crap now given all the javascript wannabe coders now have some form of a mechanism to finally make apps. I'll get some popcorn! (dont even get me started on node.js lollage)
Just because Twitter did it, doesn't mean that it's going to mainstream yet. FB did the same a few years ago. But yeah its a departure from the 99.99% of companies.
Who needs DNS when you can app apps ? Apps need no DNS, apps work just fine with host file. Cows need DNS.
>everyone I don't like is a nazi
If you stepped out of your echo chamber now and then you might understand why everyone laughs at you so much.
How is this not simply Twitter asserting a new initialism to avoid potential patents and licensure? And simultaneously seeking growth in less developed economies? Platforms based on social connectivity "harvest" data by XML that is useful to what enterprises? What agencies of security? Metadata, its frames and categories, is a developing comprehension and its assignments blur the lines between enterprise and politics.
A growing number of people advocate to step away from being the "product" of these enterprises-- so long as a western corporations seek growth in developing economies, how can the information they sell to business interests outside that developing economy not be seen as advantage seeking and extractive?
Would were! Should is! Could be! And live a hundred times three.
Why would i use Web Apps that will constantly call me racist?
Kill the Satanic monster now!
Why is InfoWars?
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Remember: you are a guest here. It is not censorship if you violate the rules and your post is deleted. All civilizations have rules and if you violate them you can expect to be ostracized from the tribe.
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Hypocrisy, thy name is Alex Jones.
So basically turning Windows into a much slower and hacked together version of ChromeOS?
Twitter worked fine for years, now all you see is a message saying javascript is required and offering to take you to a legacy version of the website which results in a forbidden status code. There's nothing Progressive about this, it's broken. It's even more useless than slashdot d2 discussions. Well done Twitter, you must be so proud of yourselves.
Ads are just an artifact of a system that is already rotten to the core.
Current "web browsers" are the epitome and prime example of the "inner-platform effect". A software design anti-pattern that is basically the application of the Xzibit meme to a platform. In this case, your operating system.
All I'm waiting for, is somebody implementing a good browser as a "Progessive Web App".
The fallacious reason they are doing it here, is that they confuse virtualization with a security solution. And that they honestly believe, that the web platform is somehow easier or better for developing applications in.
I've done both. I wrote my first web app in 1998. I used AJAX-like functionality, years before AJAX even existed. (E.g. via an <object> tag containing a form to submit data and return basically JSON with a callback.)
And no. Even today, it is far more convoluted, and not a bit easier. Especially nowadays, with its metric fuckton of APIs and "frameworks" (another software design anti-pattern, differentiating itself from a library by the lock-in and exclusivity).
They should just transform their "web platform" into a set of libraries, like e.g. KDE, but less frameworky. And have people implement applications normally. If they can handle not being treated specially and having to compete with much better designed libraries.
And the URL bar would be substituted for a package manager and an application launcher.
While the traditional browser, would merely become a hypertext document viewer (and viewer widget component).
And the URL mechanism should be part of the OS's file system system anyway.
Small tools that each do one thing and do it right, you know? Separation of logic, design, structure and content. Of view, model and controller too. Etc. ... Sanity.
AKA insecure programs executing on your computer. We seriously need to ditch this kind of shit.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
It is *far* *easier* to maintain a traditional app in this respect rather than do it via a PWA and some PITA broken javascript interface.
The problem is that maintaining one "traditional app" isn't enough. You must maintain five, one each for Windows, macOS, X11/Linux, iOS, and Android. Qt doesn't save you from having to buy code signing certificates (which are more expensive than TLS certificates) and build, test, and distribute for all five platforms.
They should just transform their "web platform" into a set of libraries, like e.g. KDE, but less frameworky.
In your vision, would end users compile an application from source code? Or would developers be responsible for shipping five different products, one built for Windows, the second for macOS, the third for X11/Linux, the fourth for iOS, and the fifth for Android? At least a program written in JavaScript or WebAssembly can be executed without modification on multiple platforms. "Inner-platform effect" on Wikipedia states that "portability and privilege separation reasons" are valid goals, and in some cases they may outweigh the drawbacks of an inner platform.
The difference is that Info Wars posts rules, then enforces them against offenders.
Twitter sometimes posts rules, which change day to day, and then arbitrarily bans people who didn't break any of them.
How is this different from thin clients?
Not necessarily the methods, but the overall goals (+ ads)
And yet it's still within their right to do so even when it's capricious and arbitrary despite all the snowflakes going apoplectic. Alex Jones and his band of snowflakes are not being censored and they are free to move to Gab where they'll fit right in.
I've been doing web development for nearly 20 years now and have finally decided to actually stay in the field despite the douchebag quota in the industry being through the effing roof. Stuff like PWAs and browser vendors finally getting their shit together and bring mostly standards compliant keep it interesting for me. Plus an abundance of new and neat technologies to keep things interesting. I'll just be looking for better teams in the future. You develop a thick skin and a acute sense of smell for shitty gigs and crappy web-shops.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
So basically "we don't like you so you're banned!!11!!!!1!twelve"
Yeah, Infowars maybe has tens of thousands of users, and Twitter has hundreds of millions. They're practically the same thing.
Because tech titans colluding to silence personas non grata as they will it is nothing to be concerned over. We promise you'll like it. It's for your own good.