I created pwa.support as a way to both examine any website to see if it can be isntalled as a progressive web app, but also to capture in some detail the depressing state of support for this concept across major browsers and operating systems.

I’ve been revisiting desktop Linux since my last attempt, and it involved setting up a lot of websites as Progressive Web Apps. The state of platform and browser support for the “sweet solution” is extremely mediocre. There’s pretty much no combination of operating system and browser that provides a truly app-like experience (except may Chromebooks).

I’ve captured it all on pwa.support. The content there is 100% written by me, after trying out various PWAs across Linux, macOS, Windows, and iOS (please get in touch if you can check this stuff on Android). The site’s code, however, was “vibe coded”¹. I did this to try to understand how AI code generation tools work (see my post, “The Death of a Software Craftsman” for a breakdown of where I see things). I’m not “all-in” (per my post) on these tools, but felt it was important to understand how they work on something real.

I find “golly gee whiz guys, Claude Code did a thingy” posts extremely tedious. I will not bore you with my specific thoughts and feelings. They are captured on pwa.support if you want to read them, but I’m not linking nor promoting it. I’m really tired of reading posts about how “amazing” these tools are. I’m no longer amazed and so should you.

I do want to re-iterate, the content and opinions on pwa.support are 100% from me, based on me opening up websites on a bunch of laptops. Believe me, if I could never touch a Windows laptop again, I would. But I had to see what the experience was like directly. Sweet solution, it was not.