- From: Julien Lanfrey via GitHub <sysbot+gh@w3.org>
- Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2024 13:35:43 +0000
- To: public-device-apis-log@w3.org
Hello. Very happy to see this topic! We have a French hiking website that offers route descriptions with an interactive map, GPS tracking, and geolocation. This site has been around since 2006. Two and a half years ago, we transformed it into a PWA, adding mobile-specific features such as downloading routes and maps for offline use, on-site consultation, and with geolocation functions, compass, altimeter. Why did we make it a PWA? Offering a native app would have required too much time (starting from scratch) and money (hiring developers), which we didn't have. It would also have been a waste of energy to redo and maintain something that already works everywhere, thanks to the capabilities of the web... When we chose the PWA, we were not aware of these "foreground", "background" aspects. But even in hindsight, the choice was good, because we are a very small company and it allowed us to progress a lot so far. We evolve a single codebase, continuously improving on all platforms! Many of our users ask us to be able to record their route while hiking, or to have statistics upon returning from the hike (number of kilometers traveled, positive elevation gain, average speed, etc.). Most of our competitors do this (AllTrails, Komoot, Openrunner, IgnRando, Strava, Adidas running, ...). The fact that geolocation does not work in the background prevents us from doing this. So we wait while developing other features, hoping that the web will have evolved by then, allowing us to truly compete with native apps in this area. Furthermore, GPS on mobile web is quite complicated for the general public. We have a lot of exchanges with our users and have been led to write a long article explaining how to activate GPS, unblock permissions, tips for GPS to be "accurate", on Android, on iPhone, on Chrome, Firefox, Safari... On competing native apps, we sometimes see an alert "_power-saving mode is activated and may affect your GPS and background operation, or accuracy_". On the web, it is impossible to detect this kind of thing. There are also differences in the implementation of the Geolocation API "watch" between Chrome and Firefox. In case of failure, Firefox tries again regularly and Chrome does not, which requires reloading the page. I hope the new specification will help limit implementation differences. Otherwise, it works great! and many of our users are very happy. But the competition is tough, and the lack of GPS function in the background is blocking the development of a whole range of features. -- GitHub Notification of comment by jlfy738 Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/geolocation-sensor/issues/22#issuecomment-2080676553 using your GitHub account -- Sent via github-notify-ml as configured in https://github.com/w3c/github-notify-ml-config
Received on Saturday, 27 April 2024 13:35:43 UTC