Platforms Without PWA Support

[00:00:00]
>> Maximiliano Firtman: Not everything is good news. We still have some platforms and browsers where we don't have support for PWAs. Firefox on desktop, as we mentioned before, is not supporting PWAs. VisionOS as of today, so Vision Pro, you have Safari, but you can only install web apps from there.

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Android WebView, and also iOS WebView that actually is more important than we think. So when you are an Instagram or Tiktok, just to give you two examples, it can be also Facebook and others. What happens when you click on a link, if there is a link to the outside, where?

[00:00:36]
What happens when you click on a link? Does anyone know?
>> Student: Stay within the app.
>> Maximiliano Firtman: You stay within the app. They have something known as an in-app browser. They don't want you to get out of TikTok or Instagram. They want you to stay there. So they created an in-app browser.

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That in-app browser is using something known as a WebView. That WebView does not support PWA installation. So if your PWA, if your web app relies a lot on social networks and links on social networks, have in mind that from the links that you post on the ads that you put on social networks, the ads with links cannot trigger the native installation dialog.

[00:01:19]
Make sense? So that's something to know. WatchOS while there is a browser here and you can browse websites. Yeah, yeah. And I have a video running Prince of Persia here. Remember Prince of Persia? There is a JavaScript version Prince js.com if would have tried, and I have it on my watch, but you cannot install the app, okay?

[00:01:46]
The same happens on TVOS, Apple TV or Android TV. As of today, you cannot install PWAs. Anyway, there are some apps in the store that inside they are Web based, okay? Okay, any question on compatibility?
>> Student: Is there any way to circumvent the social media screens, so like actually have it open a URL in a browser?

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>> Maximiliano Firtman: Unfortunately, no, because they don't want users to get out of that, so that doesn't mean that your content will not work. So because, I mean, it's a web rendering engine, so the way to do that is sometimes given the user instructions like, go and open Safari. I've seen things like, for example, a button that says, install.

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You click on the button, and then a dialog appears. you take advantage of the user clicking the button to put the URL in the clipboard, just to do one one step so, and then you say, hey, you need to go to Safari now, paste in the URL, and then you start it from there.

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Because that's actually Google was against this against these companies doing this for the WebView. They started like a campaign, but yeah, actually business is greater than this. And of course, these companies don't want users to be that. By the way, this is happening to X as well. Twitter has an experiment that's of today X, most of your links will open in the browser.

[00:03:27]
But for me, I realized that it's happening to me one every 20 links that I click. One of every 20 links, I see an in-app browser. So Elon Musk also wants yourself not to get away from the super App, and when that happens, yeah, all the installation process with the operating system doesn't work.