Hey! This is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps. Now today, I want
to tell you what I think is the biggest problem with Progressive Web Apps.
Alright, so today, I want to talk once again about progressive web applications or
PWAs. As an app developer, it's something I'm obviously, you know,
very interested in and always keeping an eye on it. And I think it's a really cool
technology. I think one day, well one day, hopefully it'll take over. But it's
still one of these things I don't think is ready yet. I mean, there's a - there's so
many things that are huge advantages with a progressive web app and
there's huge about - there's disadvantages too. And I think
there's one - there's one thing that I think is really really wrong with it.
I think when it comes to advantages, I mean, you obviously got the
bit that you're free of the app store. You're free of giving Apple or
Google 30% of your purchases. You're free of all that kind of stuff. It's
more open, you don't go through review processes, you can release what you want,
all that kind of, you know, all that type of stuff. That's an advantage. Alright.
And I think, in the end, it's gonna be easier. I'm not talking about for games.
I mean, games are gonna be different. I think games, you know, apps should be the
realm of games in the future. But there's a few disadvantages of in-app
purchase or progressive web apps at the moment. One of the big one is in-app
purchases. Obviously, it's so much easier to make those impulse buys on an app
because people have already set up their Google Wallet account or their iTunes, they've
already associated their credit card with the iTunes account. There's
also the fact that they're the App Store. It's - we've been trained
to look for things in the App Store and there's something that progressive web
apps would make us go back and look at the web. However, the App Stores
gets so crowded now that might not be such an issue where, if we have to pay
for advertising anyway. Maybe we just pay for advertising progressive web apps.
But, you know, I know when I talk to clients and we talk to new clients,
they'll come and I'll say, "You know what,
this should be a website." And they go, "I really like it to be an app." Okay, fine.
And I'll say, "How about a progressive web app?" And then it's always
followed by, "What's that?" So, this is the - so this is the biggest problem I
think PWAs have. It's that we're calling them progressive web apps.
We're using the technical name for them and we should have a better name by now.
And you know, it should be something that just rolls off the tongue. It shouldn't
be something that every time I say the word progressive web app, I should have
to explain what I mean by that and how no, no, it's just as good, except it
doesn't work on Safari and that's another - that's another major
drawback. But I think that one will be overcome eventually. It reminds
me a lot of Silverlight. In the early days of Silverlight, then that it was called WPFE.
I don't know if those net developers out there might remember it.
So, when Windows presentation foundation came out WPF came out with
a bunch of other things like WCF, you know, communication foundation workflow
foundation. And there was a fourth one too. I think I can't remember it was,
but after - you know that introduced Zambl and a new way of doing
markup and stuff on desktop applications, which was really cool. I'm a big fan
of Silverlight. It's a shame it died. I really enjoyed working with it, but you
know, they came out with Silverlight was initially called WPFE. A Windows
Presentation Foundation Everywhere. I didn't- and I rememberI think it was
really cool. I remember, I think I didn't see why was it - it was
still in the beta stages. I hadn't really took it off. I remember, I think I wrote a
few blog post about it. I was really looking to it, thinking this would be so
cool. We could do this on the web, man. And then they came out with a
marketing name called Silverlight and I remember thinking that was a dumb name.
Like, you know, like I guess 15 year old would think
about it like as a name to it - as something to call his bike. I
call it, "Silverligh, baby." But, It kind of rolled off the tongue and
everybody was talking about it. I was working at organizations where
everyone's saying - everyone was learning what Silverlight was. They were learning
why they hadn't installed a plug-in. They knew it became - so they became
more mainstream because I had a better name. At least
that's my opinion. I think progressive web apps needs a name. I think we need
to stop calling it for what it is and I know the fact that it's so open and it
doesn't belong to anybody. Although I think Google's pretty much
taking the lead on it. Yeah, I don't think anybody's gonna take
it and start marketing it. But I think it's something that it really needs in
order to take off. I think, you know, when the average person with the layperson
knows what it is, then we'll really be able to start doing it. However, you know,
what do I know? I might be - I might miss the boat on this because I'm still
waiting and seeing, but I don't think progressive web apps are ready yet. I
think every progressive web app that I've seen has been a nice proof of
concept, even the production ones have been nice proof of concepts, and the only
reason I've used them is to see what a progressive web app could do. Anyway, let
me know what you, guys, think. Do you think progressive web apps need a new name? Do
you have any idea what that name should be? Because I can't think of one. Anyway,
that's it for today. I will talk to you, guys, tomorrow.