Journal tags: discovery

Back in June I documented a bug on macOS in how Spaces (or whatever they call they’re desktop management thingy now) works with websites added to the dock.

I’m happy to report that after upgrading to Sequoia, the latest version of macOS, the bug has been fixed! Excellent!

Not only that, but there’s another really great little improvement…

Let’s say you’ve installed a website like The Session by adding it to the dock. Now let’s say you get an email in Apple Mail that includes a link to something on The Session. It used to be that clicking on that link would open it in your default web browser. But now clicking on that link opens it in the installed web app!

It’s a lovely little enhancement that makes the installed website truly feel like a native app.

Websites in the dock also support the badging API, which is really nice!

Like I said at the time:

I wonder if there’s much point using wrappers like Electron any more? I feel like they were mostly aiming to get that parity with native apps in having a standalone application launched from the dock.

Now all you need is a website.

The biggest issue remains discovery. Unless you already know that it’s possible to add a website to the dock, you’re unlikely to find out about it. That’s why I’ve got a page with installation instructions on The Session.

Still, the discovery possibilities on Apples’s desktop devices are waaaaay better than on Apple’s mobile devices.

Apple are doing such great work on their desktop operating system to make websites first-class citizens. Meanwhile, they’re doing less than nothing on their mobile operating system. For a while there, they literally planned to break all websites added to the homescreen. Fortunately they were forced to back down.

But it’s still so sad to see how Apple are doing everything in their power to prevent people from finding out that you can add websites to your homescreen—despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that push notifications on iOS only work if the website has been added to the home screen!

So while I’m really happy to see the great work being done on installing websites for desktop computers, I’m remain disgusted by what’s happening on mobile:

At this point I’ve pretty much given up on Apple ever doing anything about this pathetic situation.

I’ve always been a space geek. Therefore, I’ve always wanted to go to the Kennedy Space Center. There’s a museum there and a bus tour you can go on. The tour stops five miles away from the launch area and while you can’t go into any buildings, the activities within are explained to you.

I fulfilled a fantasy this week. Not only did I go to Cape Canerval but I managed to get an “access all areas” look around the place.

It’s all thanks to an engineer called Benny who listens to Paul Boag’s podcast. In a startling revelation, it turns out that Paul’s listeners are in fact rocket scientists. The NASA “friends and family” day just happened to fall right at the end of Refresh Orlando. Benny invited Paul along. Andy and myself invited ourselves along.

As it turned out, there hadn’t been one of these open days since 2001. We were very, very fortunate and privileged to be allowed behind the scenes at NASA.

In contrast to the regular tour, we drove right up to the launch pads, including launch pad B, which had Discovery rolled out and ready for launch on December 7th. We also got to go inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, something that is normally not allowed. It’s incredibly huge. I mean this is seriously big. Imagine a really big building and then imagine it being bigger.

Best of all, we went inside the orbiter hanger. Endeavour was inside. A space shuttle… a freakin’ space shuttle! That was just so incredibly cool, I can’t even begin to describe it.

I hope I’m not coming across as gloating here: I really just want to share my excitement. It was quite an experience to get so close to the ultimate geek toys. The only way it could have been any better was if Jessica could have been there. Soulmate that she is, I think she might be an even bigger space geek than me.

Clearly, my descriptive powers aren’t up to the task of cataloguing the day’s sights, so I’ll just point you to this photoset on Flickr.

Thanks, Benny!