I designed and built my PWA. You just have to define a manifest and set an empty service worker. Boom now your mobile responsive app is a PWA. PWA can look exactly like native app if you are careful with the design. There are navigation patterns that users expect. Make sure to dial in the information hierarchy and design modals correctly. Use familiar iconography and use type that works at small point sizes. This is basic mobile design regardless of platform.
Firefox hooks into the Android type display settings. I would like to see chrome support this. It really adds to the app feel.
When you make a PWA you have to remake native components. Material Design 3 Web Components is not done yet. Apple has nothing for you so just set your border radius to 17px or whatever they use. Backdrop filter blurs.
You don't get the advertising from the app and play store. You don't get discoverability. However, discoverability is a marketing function. If your acquisition costs are under 30% of your product fees then there is no reason why you can't drive users to your mobile optimized website.
In a B2B setting, this whole class of issues can be resolved with basic endpoint management. For some of our customers, we use InTune to push our PWAs as homescreen icons to enrolled iOS devices. Other customers dont even care about the icon being done automagically. Their users will either open safari directly (gasp) or will setup the icon however they prefer.
Nextjs and native browser components that I style in ways that are familiar to mobile app users. So like ,<input> and you use CSS to give it 8px border radius and 48px height. Since I'm going for a material style with an iOS feel I mix the forms. Another example is I use a hamburger menu but I use sf symbols light "icon" as an SVG.
My PWA is used on Apple products and I developed it with the intent of being used on Apple Products. I cannot control if a user uses a non Apple product. I cannot be expected to restrict what products my users use to access my product.
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I will also add that the icons I'm using are very basic. Found in many ui kits. The minus symbol, arrows, trash can. The only one that is recognizable to the trained eye is that I'm use the copy symbol (two pages). So if it's going to be an issue for that one I would be fine to use something from Google. I just want Apple to know that I'm on team Apple. I want people to use Apple products. When they come out with SwiftUI Kit for web, I will be the first user. For a product like mine, most users are iphone users.
Firefox hooks into the Android type display settings. I would like to see chrome support this. It really adds to the app feel.
When you make a PWA you have to remake native components. Material Design 3 Web Components is not done yet. Apple has nothing for you so just set your border radius to 17px or whatever they use. Backdrop filter blurs.
You don't get the advertising from the app and play store. You don't get discoverability. However, discoverability is a marketing function. If your acquisition costs are under 30% of your product fees then there is no reason why you can't drive users to your mobile optimized website.