Apple backs off killing web apps, but the fight continues - Open Web Advocacy
Hallelujah! Apple have backed down on their petulant plan to sabatoge homescreen apps.
I’m very grateful to the Open Web Advocacy group for standing up to this bullying.
Hallelujah! Apple have backed down on their petulant plan to sabatoge homescreen apps.
I’m very grateful to the Open Web Advocacy group for standing up to this bullying.
This is exactly what it looks like: a single-fingered salute to the web and web developers.
Read Alex’s thorough explanation of the current situation and then sign this open letter.
Cupertino’s not just trying to vandalise PWAs and critical re-engagement features for Safari; it’s working to prevent any browser from ever offering them on iOS. If Apple succeeds in the next two weeks, it will cement a future in which the mobile web will never be permitted to grow beyond marketing pages for native apps.
Also, remember this and don’t fall for it:
Apple apparently hopes it can convince users to blame regulators for its own choices.
When it benefits Apple, they take the DMA requirements much further than intended. When it doesn’t benefit them, they lean back on the “integrity” of iOS and barely comply at all.
I don’t like to assume the worst and assign vindictitive motives to people, but what Apple is doing here is hard to read as anything other than petulant and nasty …and really, really bad for users.
If you’ve ever made a progressive web app, please fill in this survey.
It’s a dream team of former Clearlefties: Harry and Cennydd joined forces to investigate and write an in-depth report looking into deceptive design practices used by Microsoft to stop people changing their default browser from Edge. They don’t pull their punches:
We judge that Microsoft cannot justify the use of these techniques, and should stop using them immediately. If they do not, we would welcome – where the law provides for it – regulatory intervention to protect against these harms.
This is so cool—Ariel was on BBC World TV News live during the Artemis launch!
Good news and bad news…
The good news is that web notifications are coming to iOS—my number one wish!
The bad news is that it won’t happen until next year sometime.
On the surface this is about the pros and cons of minting a new HTML search
element to replace div role="search"
but there’s a deeper point which is that, while ARIA exists to the plug the gaps in HTML, the long-term goal is to have no gaps.
ARIA is not meant to replace HTML. If anything, the need to use ARIA as ‘polyfill’ for HTML semantics could be considered as a sign and a constant reminder of the fact that HTML falls short on some semantics that benefit users of assistive technologies.
This is a great short introduction to using VoiceOver with Safari by the one and only Ethan Marcotte.
I’m finding this tool to be very useful for the kind of chaotic mind-mapping I do when I’m preparing a conference talk.
Chris Ferdinandi is a machine!
A vanilla JS roadmap, along with learning resources and project ideas to help you get started.
I know that Jeffrey and I sound like old men yelling at kids to get off the lawn when we bemoan the fetishisation of complex tools and build processes, but Jeffrey gets to the heart of it here: it’s about appropriateness.
As a designer who used to love creating web experiences in code, I am baffled and numbed by the growing preference for complexity over simplicity. Complexity is good for convincing people they could not possibly do your job. Simplicity is good for everything else.
And not to sound like a broken record, but once again I’m reminded of the rule of least power.
Some lovely branding work for the UK Parliament, presented very nicely.
Jason lists the stages of gradually turning the Cloud Four site into a progressive web app:
- Jul 13: Our redesign launches
- Oct 3: Service worker added
- Oct 18: More offline functionality and faster performance
- Nov 22: Web notifications
- Dec 7: Small tweaks and “launch”
And you can just keep incrementally adding and tweaking:
You don’t have to wait to bundle up a binary, submit it to an app store, and wait for approval before your customers benefit.
Danielle and Mark have been working flat out on Fractal. Here’s the roadmap they’re working to.
Jeffrey likes the new talk I debuted at An Event San Francisco. That’s nice!
Summarizing it here is like trying to describe the birth of your child in five words or less. Fortunately, you can see Jeremy give this presentation for yourself at several upcoming An Event Apart conference shows in 2017.
I’ve always loved Jeffrey’s writing.
Jeffrey has started up a studio and launched its lovely one-page website. You can read more about it on his site. Lovely!
Jeffrey weighs on the post I wrote about The Verge. I still feel like there’s a false dichotomy being presented here though: either performance or advertising. But advertising can be performant too. There’s a competitive advantage to be had there.
Oh, what a spray! What a lovely spray!