DEV Community

Please don't make a mobile app (unless if you have to)

Lucis on February 02, 2020

Last december I've started my first "real job" and, apart from the great onboarding experience, I've been having a bit of trouble setting up my ben...
Collapse
 
lucis profile image
Lucis • Edited

Disclaimer: I know all about browsers lack of support and, most importantly, old phones performing really bad on webpages, but I wouldn't want to discuss every liability of web technologies. These are edge cases, IMO.

I think this post's should be summed up as: if it's not a cool game or something to tweak the phone's system, please don't ship a mobile app nowadays.

Collapse
 
mauro_codes profile image
Mauro Garcia

Are you talking about enterprise apps or in general?

Collapse
 
lucis profile image
Lucis

About what part?

I think I talk about apps in general in this disclaimer. Like one comment below, it wouldn't be a practical solution to ship WhatsApp solely as a web app, since important features would be missing in old phones.

Collapse
 
mariocalin profile image
Mario

I totally agree with you. In fact, on friday I was doing a little talk in an online marketing course telling the enormous benefits of developing one web application and using current technologies to create PWA or even hybrid apps (ionic, react, vaadin or electron) from that web application.

As a piece of information, I will leave you this link to a web that gathers PWA experiences from the development point of view and its impact in the economical aspects of the application development.

pwastats.com

Greetings,
Mario

Collapse
 
lucis profile image
Lucis

Thank you very much, Mario!

I will save it for checking it ;)

Collapse
 
adnanhz profile image
Adnan

One clumsy part with PWAs is telling people to install it.

With a native app on the app store: "Go to Google Play and search app name and download it"

With a PWA: "go to appname.com and then look for the add to home screen button hidden somewhere in your browser"

Collapse
 
itsjzt profile image
Saurabh Sharma

You don't have to install the app to homescreen for PWA benefits

Service worker, notification, responsive design all works without add to homescreen.

Collapse
 
craigcampbell profile image
craigcampbell

Your pre-conceived notion is that people know how to navigate websites etc. I agree with every point you made but I've been in this field now for over 15 years. The main issue is users in the 36-60+ demographic simply don't like going to websites. It's like pulling teeth telling someone to type something in a URL bar I guess.

Collapse
 
diek profile image
diek

I use dev.to installed too, awesome work :)

Collapse
 
duc profile image
Aryan Godde

Ok, how about teaching us how to make a PWA WhatsApp clone xd.

Collapse
 
lucis profile image
Lucis

As a matter of fact, Whatsapp wouldn't be the hardest app to replicate if supporting low-level (and iPhones hihi) phones wasn't a goal.

I think the most advanced use cases for Whatsapp are notifications and registering itself as a share app, both supported by PWA tecnologies.

I get your point, but my title and the comment disclaimer both make it clear that web apps aren't a silver bullet now. I hope it becomes one someday, but it might not, and there's no problem with that.

Collapse
 
duc profile image
Aryan Godde

No i asked you to do it because i want to make such an app :p this has dms right? Can we have a talk :0

Collapse
 
itsjzt profile image
Saurabh Sharma

WhatsApp is a native app because they don't want to store your data, they can't afford it.

But for a PWA people expect them to work all across their devices not like "No it's an Android app, you can't run it on your PC or IOS device"

Collapse
 
merk42 profile image
Merk42

Too bad Apple is intentionally dragging their feet on support lest your idea catch on and cut into their sweet sweet app store / apple developer revenue.

Collapse
 
navdeepsingh profile image
Navdeep Singh

Truly agree with you Lucis. Companies are just following the pattern to make native web apps (although needed or not) PWA technology is meant for mobile users.