Twitter Brings its PWA to Windows 10 and the Microsoft Store
- Paul Thurrott
- Mar 24, 2018
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67
While Windows 10 version 1803 will bring many nice changes, support for PWAs—Progressive Web Apps—is one of the most eagerly-anticipated. The issue, so far, is that we’ve not seen any PWAs to speak of in the Microsoft Store.
But that’s changing. Concurrent with yesterday’s release of a near-final build of this next version of Windows, we finally have a great high-quality PWA in the Store.
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I am referring, of course, to Twitter.
The social network previously foisted a poorly-written app on Windows 10 users, and it was never kept up-to-date with new features. But with the move to PWAs in Windows 10, Twitter users will finally be able to see the full Twitter experience and do so using the web app I’ve been using (via Chrome) since last year.
The PWA version of Twitter is excellent, and it’s updated regularly. And once you’re using Windows 10 version 1803, this will be the Twitter app you get from the Store. (Users of previous Windows 10 versions are stuck with the old version.)
There’s even version for ARM—which makes sense, since it relies on Microsoft Edge—so it won’t require emulation to run on Windows 10 on ARM.
You can download Twitter for Windows 10 from the Microsoft Store for free. If you use Twitter, I recommend it highly.
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Conversation 67 comments
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#256082"><em>In reply to Jeremy_Petzold:</em></a></blockquote><p>I don't see how PWAs are going to offer corporations using AD anything they don't already have. </p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#256275"><em>In reply to nerocui:</em></a></blockquote><p>I can't tell if you're serious or not. Even if the extremely unlikely scenario you describes were to come to pass you wouldn't need PWAs to make it happen, just the browser.</p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#256827"><em>In reply to curtisspendlove:</em></a></blockquote><p>I prefer native apps as well since they can take advantage of everything a platform can offer.</p><p><br></p><p>All attempts at a "platform to rule them all" fall short and they always will. </p><p><br></p><p>IMO the real value of Java at the time it was introduced was that it allowed one to compile a non-GUI program once and have it run on all the different Unix versions with their different processor architectures (as long as the Java virtual machine was installed).</p><p><br></p><p>The problems started when trying to add GUIs to the mix. There were two fundamental problems:</p><p><br></p><p> 1) How do we really want it to work – exactly the same on all systems, or follow the conventions of the system it's running on?</p><p><br></p><p>2) How to write programs for a diverse set of platforms without limiting functionality to what the weakest platform can support.</p><p><br></p><p>These problems aren't limited to Java, they're fundamental.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>
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skane2600
<p>I don't see why this is any better than just accessing twitter through the browser except for the tiny percentage of people who want to access twitter through their Windows 10 Phone (assuming it's even supported). PWAs may or may not replace native apps on Android or iPhones for internet connected functionality, but they're superfluous in any environment where such native apps are superfluous such as Windows.</p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#256369"><em>In reply to warren:</em></a></blockquote><p>1) Or you can simply put the link to twitter at the top of Chrome. How many users actually know about Win+1 or deliberately arrange the order of programs in the taskbar?</p><p><br></p><p>2) Are you claiming that when you browse to twitter.com, twitter has free access to your filesystem? </p><p><br></p><p>3) You can silence individual tabs in Chrome. As Windows programs, aren't Chrome and Firefox subject to Quiet Mode and Presentation Mode? </p><p><br></p><p>4) I don't understand what you're talking about. When I visit twitter.com nothing is installed on my system so there's nothing to uninstall.</p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#256704"><em>In reply to NazmusLabs:</em></a></blockquote><p>Clearing the cache isn't "uninstalling". Besides unless you are posting under two identities perhaps it's best if you don't try to explain what other people meant to say.</p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#256467"><em>In reply to mackrevinack:</em></a></blockquote><p>I guess what you mean is that you had a bunch of tabs open the last time you ran your browser and you've configured your browser to re-open them automatically when you launch it again. Sounds like a self-inflicted "problem". </p><p><br></p><p>So I guess the general solution would be to replace those "tons of tabs" with "tons" of PWA apps.</p>
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dontbe evil
<blockquote><a href="#256394"><em>In reply to NT6.1:</em></a></blockquote><p>you can say the same with a smartphone and with a tablet</p>
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dontbe evil
<p>good start to bring "full" and missing apps to the store… but in future I hope they'll move away from pwa/js craps to native, fast and light UWP</p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#256700"><em>In reply to NazmusLabs:</em></a></blockquote><p>Wake us when the real Visual Studio is written in JS.</p>
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dontbe evil
<blockquote><a href="#256732"><em>In reply to skane2600:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>totally agree, few cross platform things can be written in js/electron/chromium (but still is a waste of performance, resources, ram and native API) … but other serious stuff you really can't</p>