Nostr Web Client

The mobile market has a clear preference for apps over webapps.

I love webapps and they have a lot of positives but few devs stop and reflect on what the market is conveying.

I noted a few weeks ago:

PWAs are an effective way of distributing applications permissionlessly, especially on iOS, but there's a few drawbacks:

- 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

- 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

Ryu Santiago 1y ago 💬 2

In regards to discoverability, if you use PWA's (I can see the irony, lol) like Store this issue completely goes away.

Saw in another reply that you plan to add PWA support, so just take from their method and adapt as necessary.

https://store.app

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Discussion

Zapstore 1y ago

That's right.

They are still hard to install for the average user which is the major roadblock.

If only there was a "prompt install" JS API in the browser

Ryu Santiago 1y ago

I know for PWA's on Chromium-based browsers (at least on Android) you'll either get a bottom bar with an app store-like listing (most commonly seen on sites like Xitter) or a prompt right below the omnibox with an install prompt.

It's inconsistent though, since some sites and services with PWA support that don't have the manifest included somewhere in their code won't have either show up. And don't even get me started on iOS' "support" outside of the EU.