How to Design for the Web in 2019
I&#x27;ve decided to renounce the web after more than 7 years as a professional web developer. My current plan is to see if I can transition to making Swift apps for Apple devices instead.<p>This was partly triggered by the recent news that Google is taking aim at ad-blockers in Chrome. I doubt I would have ever wanted to go into web development if I knew what the web of 2019 would look like without ad-blockers.<p>A couple things drew me to the web.<p>1. You could write a site once, and it would work (pretty much) in any browser.<p>2. The dev experience of being able to instantly see changes was great.<p>3. It was easier than app development.<p>After dipping into some recent WWDC videos, I was impressed to see how far app development had come.<p>1. With SwiftUI, you can learn once, and build apps for pretty much any Apple device.<p>2. The dev experience is great with instant live previews (in the beta version of Mac OS Catalina).<p>3. SwiftUI is very easy to reason about, particularly when coming from a component-based architecture framework such as React or Angular.<p>At this point, waiting for an &quot;app-like&quot; experience for web apps feels a bit like waiting for the year of the linux desktop.<p>Progressive Web Apps have come far, but they still have a long way to go, particularly in &quot;feeling&quot; like a native app experience. When interruptible animations are introduced, I&#x27;ll give them another look.<p>For a long time, the web had the perception of a free and open democratiser, but it&#x27;s become completely commercialised. It&#x27;s a petri dish for privacy violations. Why has my ad-blocker stopped 18,000 trackers in the two months since I&#x27;ve had it running?<p>I want to make tools, not marketing funnels. Apps that follow Apple&#x27;s suit will encrypt user data so that not even the app maker can view user data. When was the last time you saw that on the web?