But why not Bluetooth or NFC? I can’t imagine any way those could be annoyances, or even why websites would want them outside of some extremely specialized applications.
I'm personally a WebUSB, WebBT etc hater but I totally get why PWA developers want those features. For example, let's say you're manufacturing some sort of USB device and you need a way to flash drivers. The idea of being able to just make a webpage that can update your drivers is so appealing compared to having to ship apps on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android.
Similarly, if my bank website could do NFC tap-to-pay securely, that would be pretty cool. I can imagine lots of interesting opt-in uses for NFC in a webapp.
Arguments that these features are held back by Apple specifically in order to keep apps on the app store where they can control things and take 30% at least hold water, I think, even if that reasoning doesn't apply to Mozilla rejecting features.
> The idea of being able to just make a webpage that can update your drivers is so appealing compared to having to ship apps on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android.
I suspect like many here, at $work we use a shit-ton of Flexoptix SFPs.
Flexoptix are not a $megacorp, they are a (very) small German company.
They manage to ship cross-platform apps to flash the SFPs. So its really not that difficult.
I would think a web app would be more of a pain the the butt to maintain because you have to deal with CSS reactive UI etc.
For little utility apps where you don’t care to deviate from UI default appearance and behavior (and, as a user, it’s much better if you don’t anyway, though it’s very trendy to make UX worse by customizing everything) iOS and Android both are dead simple, very easy to write and maintain a utility app for either of them.
An enormous amount of the cost of developing a lot of native apps is customizing the appearance and behavior, to match some slide deck mockup or to make it “on-brand” or whatever. It’s better for the user, and way cheaper, if you just… don’t do that. Hell a lot of common UI elements are easier in native than web if you just don’t try to customize them a ton (data-backed tables and list views and such are sooooo nice)
I like WebUSB in Chrome to update my Meshtastic radios. I also like that I have to go out of my way to launch Chrome for that, and other websites can’t request permission to access local hardware in my normal browser.
Nonsense. Firefox on Android (and I'm sure everywhere else) allows endless redirects without prompting me about the redirect, sending me to sites I never wanted to go to.
And even then, where does one draw the line on "privacy"? Especially given that every other app on the user's phone is granted every permission under the sun and feeding on as much data as possible.
The core of the problem isn't supporting web bluetooth etc or not...the core of the problem is that dumbass humans will go "yes use all the permissions" because their hands are already shaking from tiktok withdrawal.
But why not Bluetooth or NFC? I can’t imagine any way those could be annoyances, or even why websites would want them outside of some extremely specialized applications.