People should stop praising "an actual app" as an advantage.
There is nothing in functionality that a good PWA can't do well for a Lemmy client. It's cross platform and can be used in the browser of your choice, without the lock-in to a single app store.
People are coming from a closed system like Reddit because Reddit abused it's power and now they're asking for apps in a store where another company might do the same. I don't get it.
You’re right — PWAs can be feature rich and versatile. I’m glad they exist.
However, as much as I like wefwef (especially coming from Apollo), I don’t like having the URL bar perpetually taking up real estate like it does on iOS. I’m also much less likely to trigger browser-specific functions if I’m using a dedicated app.
Assuming the Lemmy platform remains open, I don’t have any issue supporting a developer for making a great app for it.
The issue with Reddit is not that devs were making third-party apps for it… it’s with the people running the platform.
I think they may be referring to the bar at the top where the URL bar was. In my case at least, and maybe I did something wrong, but mine still has a blank bar where the URL bar was. I think they're referring to that "real estate."
I tested it on both Android and iOS and I still can’t see the URL bar. I even moved the URL bar on top in Safari (I prefer it on the bottom) and still can’t see it. I’m not sure why it’s happening on yours.
I'm using Firefox as my main browser. On Android. Not sure if that matters. In dark mode, it's a grey box. Pretty tiny so it doesn't really bother me. I'm just using wefwef for the time being, until Boost for Lemmy, or something like it, comes out (and is good).
I'd take a screenshot and post it but I'm not sure I really care that much lol.
I keep those apps installed to keep track of their advancement, because I usually prefer using native apps, but they are not ready yet and WefWef is just so great and works so well it’s hard to believe it’s a webapp
I have constantly praised how good PWAs are and get constant pushback because "web apps suck", when the reality is just that most web apps that people have used have sucked, but they don't inherently if they're well written.
PWAs are truly a beautiful app distribution model. They just use standard web browser APIs so they should work on every platform with a web browser, which means they also works with your favourite browser extensions, screen readers, and accessibility devices; they're securely sandboxed away from the OS through those APIs; they updates themselves seamlessly to the latest version with just a page refresh; and distribution literally just requires you to self host a web site for free on something like GitHub Pages, no app stores or signing certificates or anything.