Listening to legend cashu developer calle 👁️⚡👁️ (nprofile…xnfk) on Citadel Dispatch with ODELL (nprofile…fslc), talking about cashu.me and PWAs and this triggered some thoughts.
Needless to say PWAs are an effective way of distributing applications permissionlessly, especially on iOS, but there's a few drawbacks I wanted to mention.
- Hard to install: the fact that you have multiple steps that need explanation (go to the hamburger menu, tap on install, but on iOS use Share...). As insignificant as this sounds, it's a major UX hurdle for users and why I think PWAs are not more widespread. Apple and Google know this very well.
- Harder to discover: though not needing an app store is an upside, it hurts discoverability, especially on app stores with a social layer like Zapstore (nprofile…tdq0)
- Reliance on domain names: Not a huge problem but definitely not as sovereign as private keys
- Hard to verify releases: since you pull data and UI from a website, it's unclear when you have upgraded, impractical to sign and next to impossible to audit a particular release. Websites typically perform lots of deployments every day
I have plans for Zapstore (nprofile…tdq0) itself to become a PWA to distribute PWAs, too, and looking forward to find out how to minimize these problems without losing the freedom the web provides.
franzap
npub1wf…3dgh9
2024-11-26 20:32:36
Author Public Key
npub1wf4pufsucer5va8g9p0rj5dnhvfeh6d8w0g6eayaep5dhps6rsgs43dgh9Published at
2024-11-26 20:32:36Event JSON
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"content": "Listening to legend cashu developer nostr:nprofile1qqs9pk20ctv9srrg9vr354p03v0rrgsqkpggh2u45va77zz4mu5p6ccpzemhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejz7qgkwaehxw309a5xjum59ehx7um5wghxcctwvshszrnhwden5te0dehhxtnvdakz7qrxnfk on Citadel Dispatch with nostr:nprofile1qqsqfjg4mth7uwp307nng3z2em3ep2pxnljczzezg8j7dhf58ha7ejgprdmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujucnfw33k76twwpshy6ewvdhk6qg4waehxw309amk7apwdehhxarj9ecxzun50yq3yamnwvaz7tmhda6zuat50phjummwv5qxfslc, talking about cashu.me and PWAs and this triggered some thoughts.\n\nNeedless to say PWAs are an effective way of distributing applications permissionlessly, especially on iOS, but there's a few drawbacks I wanted to mention.\n\n - Hard to install: the fact that you have multiple steps that need explanation (go to the hamburger menu, tap on install, but on iOS use Share...). As insignificant as this sounds, it's a major UX hurdle for users and why I think PWAs are not more widespread. Apple and Google know this very well.\n\n - Harder to discover: though not needing an app store is an upside, it hurts discoverability, especially on app stores with a social layer like nostr:nprofile1qqs83nn04fezvsu89p8xg7axjwye2u67errat3dx2um725fs7qnrqlgzqtdq0\n\n - Reliance on domain names: Not a huge problem but definitely not as sovereign as private keys\n\n - Hard to verify releases: since you pull data and UI from a website, it's unclear when you have upgraded, impractical to sign and next to impossible to audit a particular release. Websites typically perform lots of deployments every day\n\nI have plans for nostr:nprofile1qqs83nn04fezvsu89p8xg7axjwye2u67errat3dx2um725fs7qnrqlgzqtdq0 itself to become a PWA to distribute PWAs, too, and looking forward to find out how to minimize these problems without losing the freedom the web provides.",
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