So Jerboa broke on my phone just now and I didn’t want to stop browsing Lemmy. Unfortunately no suitable alternative was found so I just decided to check if I could open it in my browser and install it.
To my surprise, it worked. And it works really well quite frankly. Sure, the UI is different, but I’m not at all missing any features.
Did any of you guys try it as well? What’s your opinion?
If not, did you even know that was a possibility? It quite frankly never crossed my mind, because Reddit and other platforms always force you to use an app when you open them in a browser.
PWA = progressive web app = a webpage-based app, as opposed to a native app for whatever OS you’re using.
for those like me who didn’t know what it meant
Thank you!!
You’re a hero
Also with Firefox on Android you can add it to your homescreen and it operates as if it were an app on your phone.
Short and sweet, thanks for explaining.
I felt like it was too late for me to ask, absolute legend!
Thank you… i was stumped
whats the actual difference, does it improve the performance/caching/first-time loading speed?
It just looks like an actual app and not like a tab in your browser(no adress bar for example), plus you can access it quickly that way without having to navigate your browser tabs
no address bar is a deal breaker to me. Its more flexible with the browser framework.
Ive been exclusively browsing on mobile web, same as I did reddit. This layout is much more user friendly forsure.
The benefit of not having half the screen devoted to trying to get you to download the app is a huge bonus.
This Apollo-like webapp is new too, and I like it quite a bit: https://wefwef.app
Holy shit that’s sleek. Gonna give that a go for a while.
That’s super cool! Too bad back in android doesn’t work when it’s a pwa, but it works as expected on a browser and it’s very fluid!
What doesn’t work? I was just using it on Android as a PWA without problems. Only issue I could see is the top nav bar (where the notifications show) is gray vs black, which could be an easy fix. On Firefox if that makes a difference.
Woah. This is a game changer. Thank you!
Same. Been using the mobile browser since day one and it has everything the desktop version has just in different spots. I don’t see the need for a dedicated app tbh, unless they muck up the mobile version which I don’t see happening… hopefully.
I’m also finding it really effective. I only hate that backing out from a post is a crapshoot on whether it preserves my scroll position, resets to the top, or reloads the entire feed.
The Web app is really good! The only issue I have with it since it got updated to 0.18 is that when you click a post link and press back to go to your community, it reloads the entire community and takes your scroll position all the way to the top. It’s really killed the experience on mobile for me and it didn’t do that prior to 0.18 I found.
Anyone else having the same issue?
Installing it as a PWA on my iPhone causes the history buttons to disappear (since they’re part of the browser). This means that if I open a comments page, I can’t get back to the post list again. I can tap on the logo to get to the main page, but my scrolling position is lost, so I’d have to scroll down to find where I stopped scrolling last time.
Yeah no, still have to use an app.
I don’t have it installed right now but I’m pretty sure the system-wide back-swipe gesture still work here, doesn’t it?
Yes, works well, no issue.
Yeah, I discovered that after posting that comment. I never use those gestures, so I forgot to try that.
How do you go back in an app? Do you always tap the button at the top? For me that’s super impractical and I even got a small iPhone.
I can’t reach the left side of the screen with one hand anyways, so both ways are similarly uncomfortable.
Oof, same on Android. That’s a complete deal breaker for using the PWA.
Why dont you use the back button on Android?
Well, for starters there is no back button in the PWA on Android. Swiping from the right to go back completely refreshes the feed.
the back button works fine when I use Firefox and install a PWA with it.
You can see it happening here https://streamable.com/6alycz
like I’ve said, it works fine for me: https://streamable.com/fb300o
Looks like 0.18.0 update broke it. 0.17.4 was good.
Yea I can hold down on the button and get the normal history menu from Firefox. They may be using gesture navigation tho and idk how that is affected.
I use gesture navigation and the back button works without reloading.
I think android has both gestures with a back button and without (using a gesture for back) which I think is giving people issues, tho I’ve never used it myself bc I cannot stand it, IMO it’s change for the sake of change.
Strange that’s happening for you. It’s definitely not an all android thing. Must be something about your specific model or your settings. The only time my button bar disappears is with games and even then it’s still accessible by swiping up from the bottom.
This is interesting, I checked all the apps (that are running/enabled) on the two android devices in my household. Mine is set up with the traditional android UI triangle, circle, square, visible whereas my partner’s has the “slide up” feature enabled where the back, home, and “background” buttons need you to slide your finger up or they aren’t visible. Both seem to remain present and usable in apps, although the back button does cause “too much of a back avtion” in the third party camera app she uses, taking you home vs. back a step. These devices are both unlocked (but not rooted currently) devices activated on at&t firstnet. My coworker has a Verizon issued (came from the carrier) Samsung Galaxy and the triangle, circle, and square buttons are missing in a few apps, and totally inaccessible. I am not a fan of how much bloat cell carriers add to their android devices, so much so that I would say the coworker’s phone is running a “Verizon Samsung version” of Android. I did a quick search and didn’t find a full list anywhere of variations of Android by carrier or model phone, but I did find a number of users with similar observations about the extreme variation.
This is not an issue for me. I swipe back and it returns to where I left.
Count yourself lucky because as you might imagine the bug makes it unusable. It even happens on regular mobile browsing.
which app are you using? I can‘t seem to find any on my (Swiss) AppStore…
I have signed up for TestFlight beta testing for Mlem.
thanks, I tried that for a few days but turns out I can‘t live without a search function… trying wefwef now! so far pretty great
When you think about it it’s so weird that it feels like a novelty when a website works well as a website without needing dedicated software, but that’s enshittification for ya, has us so used to that artificial barrier that we accept it as normal when it isn’t
Did any of you guys try it as well? What’s your opinion?
In respect to Lemmy as a whole, I’m trying to exercise a lot patience.
One of the first things I did was install it as a PWA. It has a sleek UI, but some bugs makes it incredibly hard for me to use. One of the worst is an issue with several of the combo boxes which repeatedly flashing on use. I have to try hitting the appropriate selection multiple times in hopes of it eventually taking.
I use Jerboa most of the time inspite of the many bugs, but I usually end up having to open the PWA for missing functionality.
Like I said…
Lots… And lots…
And lots… of patience.
Why do people keep saying “install” it as a PWA. Doesn’t that mean going to the web page in a mobile browser?
A progressive web app (pwa) is installed as an app on your phone. Developers can publish these web application online without users requiring an app store. They run on multiple platforms and devices from a single codebase, giving a platform-specific like experience. They are very light weight and even offer offline capabilities.
It becomes a app on your phone based on the web page.
Whichever way you look at it, Lemmy is pretty great.
Oh yeah I tried it. And it even worked better than jerboa in some ways until jerboa had some updates. It still has some features that jerboa doesn’t have, like opening links to other instances within your own instance (that’s a huge problem right now for me). So yeah the webpage version is still competitive with this app but probably not for too long.
Agreed! Only deal breaker I can see for me is that using a PWA with Safari in iOS instead of Memmy means that when I open a link and go back it starts from the top again. Obviously doesn’t occur when I can open a new tab in the browser but still definitely annoying.
Agreed! This is annoying for me as well, but still I like it a lot. Better than Reddit, even.
Yes! At least on the browser I can just open in a new tab.
Yeah it’s quite unfortunate with iOS. I’m on android but afaik iOS just doesn’t support all the PWA features.
Which is super interesting in its own right, because when you look back at the first iPhone, Steve Jobs actually announced at first that it wouldn’t have a Software Development Kit for native apps and all applications will be web based. They obviously didn’t stay on that path, but I find it quite ironic.
On Android it starts from the top again for me, completely reloads it actually…
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I’m primarily using Mlem on iOS cause the PWA was always kinda janky for me
I started on PWA, got frustrated with it, moved to Mlem, got frustrated with it, moved to Memmy, and then found not all features were implemented yet — so checked out PWA again and found it had somehow massively improved since the last time I used it.
So now I use both PWA and Memmy, with Memmy getting more use every day (inbox support got added today).
This is my journey too
Yup. Memmy is improving quite rapidly though, so I’m sticking here for now.
Yup, and via hermit as well.
It has benefits over jerboa in that everything works right.
But jerboa is a better overall experience because of the way it uses the screen in a balanced way. Coming from reddit 3rd party apps, browsers and PWAs are so clunky. Even old reddit suffers from that, though. New reddit at least is visually closer to app layouts.
Which is tangential. But until jerboa catches up, it’s going to be glitchy, which is annoying in its own right, like some community links just crashing the app.
I started using Lemmy like that, without any apps. It’s fine, specially on desktop.
0.18 will also massively improve the user experience for y’all (whenever Beehaw updates). They ripped out the old websockets architecture, which eliminates all of the weird glitches like upvotes disappearing or random posts popping up in your feed.
I’m looking forward to this. There’s a related bug that drives me crazy when it repeatedly executes an uncommanded scroll-to-top-of-page that should get fixed with the websockets purge.
