Listening to legend cashu developer nostr:nprofile1qqs9pk20ctv9srrg9vr354p03v0rrgsqkpggh2u45va77zz4mu5p6ccpzemhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejz7qgkwaehxw309a5xjum59ehx7um5wghxcctwvshszrnhwden5te0dehhxtnvdakz7qrxnfk on Citadel Dispatch with nostr:nprofile1qqsqfjg4mth7uwp307nng3z2em3ep2pxnljczzezg8j7dhf58ha7ejgprdmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujucnfw33k76twwpshy6ewvdhk6qg4waehxw309amk7apwdehhxarj9ecxzun50yq3yamnwvaz7tmhda6zuat50phjummwv5qxfslc, 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 nostr:nprofile1qqs83nn04fezvsu89p8xg7axjwye2u67errat3dx2um725fs7qnrqlgzqtdq0
- 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 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.
