I don’t mean to belittle the work done on the web version, but the overall experience will just never be on par with native apps. You can tell from the delays to the occasional hiccups. Are there any projects that aim to port WefWef to iOS? We can sideload it at least.
I disagree. I’ve tried Memmy but I’ve uninstalled it because it’s still too rough around the edges:
- Upvote/Downvote by swiping shows me the same orange color, unless I revert the finger position and then it seems to show the correct colors.
- Lack of customization (I don’t want buttons on the right side).
- Login asks me for the server, really? The dev couldn’t bother to offer an list and then you could use a custom one if necessary?
- Browsing comments seem to have the same limitations as wefwef: you don’t an arrow to jump from parent comment to parent comment…
For me, wefwef feels better. In fact, what we need is more devs creating webapps to force Apple step up their game.
It’s because of this that PWAs are so crippled on Apple devices (we had to wait until iOS 16.4 to have push notifications, where Android has it for ages), and this is intencional: if devs would prefer PWAs how would Apple charge their $100 (?) annual fee just by letting you use their store?
We need to start the change from somewhere, and maybe this could be the first one to help on this. But as someone who spent too much time on Apple subreddits, I don’t expect the common Apple user to think anything other then it’s self interest…
I completely agree, although not perfect, for me this app is the first time a PWA has felt close to a native app.
Like you say, without attention and development in this area, it will be ignored (or at least de-prioritised) and languish. If some of the rough edges can be smoothed by Apple, then an growing number of users and increased attention is more likely to influence them to prioritise improvements.
Apps like these are the best thing that could happen for the platform.
Optimistically, it could be a win-win: Apple are really against third-party app stores, so web apps have been their go-to example showing the “openness” of their platform. If we get a thriving web app ecosystem on iOS, then it should benefit both the users and Apple.
I tried it last night for a bit, and it feels like it’s hard to…I dunno…navigate around? I think I’ve used Apollo (and now wefwef) so long any different take on browsing around feels wrong.
I think this web app is doing a better job at the moment, so I’m going to stay here.
What’s on Memmy that’s missing on wefwef? I tried Memmy and it’s certainly quite slick but then i came back to wefwef cause I like the search function better. I don’t find wefwef lacking in features. I think it’s just as refined as Memmy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Funnily enough, search is one of the things I find wefwef is lacking. I just generally don’t care because I did all community searching on desktop.
I’m also in camp “let wefwef be wefwef”, but I think OP isn’t talking about features and more about some little hiccups and the general feeling of the navigation/interaction (wefwef is missing haptics, sometimes scrolling is stuck, interactions freeze for a second, …, little things like that)
I suppose with the app store you’d reach a wider audience. Would it impact the frequency of updates? Or the number of people who can contribute to updates?
Why can’t wefwef be wefwef?
lol
Native app would be nice.
I know what you mean, it certainly doesn’t feel as smooth as stock Android apps, but I still feel it is smooth enough as a PWA, I don’t know what exactly are the limitations on Android for this.
I’d brief my opinion to:
I’d take both options, PWA and standalone app for iOS and Android, this is a too great PWA to just let it die.
Even if an app was made, it’d just be a wrapper of the same web app. Dev has stated as much.
It’s just I’m messing around with Memmy and thinking to myself that WefWef NEEDS this. The Apollo UI was already ironed out, now it’s time to bring the native experience to the table as well.
I don’t disagree that a native app would be cool.
However it’s not likely to happen, app would have likely to be rebuilt from scratch, or just a wrapper around the web app like I mentioned before.
This is more work for the dev to maintain/release a native app for multiple platforms rather than work on one that works universally.
I also think wefwef works great as is. I think whatever issues there may be are likely to improve as the app gets more developed. It is only in Alpha status right now. Not even beta.
With that in mind it works perfectly.
The dev is super bullish on PWAs iirc, so this is unlikely to happen.
Just give it time, someone will make a native wefwef clone. It’s open source after all.
Hell, if there’s no native app in a year, I’ll contribute to making one happen.
I would like you to point out some example features that can’t be done on here though that exist in memmy? The hiccups on here are not due to it being a web app.
Tapping the status bar is a common design feature on iOS to scroll to top of the page. This is an example of something that isn’t available to a PWA.
I think that limitation could be worked around though by making the area just below the status bar perform the scrollToTop function.
Or long press on links to get the share sheet
You can tap the posts icon when you are scrolled down reading comments and it will take you to the top comment. Same thing with posts
This is true. It’s a bit less intuitive for me and I don’t remember to use it most of the time.
you can tell from the delays to the occasional hiccups
I fail to understand what this means
Try the app. Compare.
