[troupo]

> The ETA app gives you fast feedback on whether or not photos that you need to provide are any good, handles state, retries, talks to the NFC in your passport, handles long running workflows and validation etc.

Apart from NFC all of that can be handled by a 1990s PHP application.

> The web is not a panacea but there is still the backup option which was clearly found.

Where by "clearly" you mean "multiple clicks to get there while being aggressively upselled the app like it was a commercial website".

[Phemist]

W3C are dragging their feet on WebNFC: https://github.com/w3c/web-nfc/issues/355, which prevents the talking "to the NFC in your passport" flow from being fully implementable in a website (hence requiring you to install an App). Not sure what the current state of this issue is, or if this github issue represents the latest developments in it, but AFAIK it is one of the MAJOR blockers for a fully web-based flow.

[troupo]

> W3C are dragging their feet on WebNFC

They are not "dragging their feet". Chrome implemented NFC, vomited out a semblance of a standard and said "there, it's standard now". Who cares about objections from other vendors.

[georgefrowny]

You'd think at some point a government would say "for fucks sake" and sling an FTE at that kind of thing for a year to get it done.

One guy shepherding an MR is cheaper than whatever contracted out app would cost, and you need the website anyway.

[dgxyz]

Not really. It doesn't just take a single photo of your face. It takes a scan of it i.e. multiple shots. That requires something a little more complicated than a PHP app from the 90s.

Yes it's aggressive but you'll have fewer problems on the app so why the hell wouldn't they push you through it?

[troupo]

> It doesn't just take a single photo of your face. It takes a scan of it i.e. multiple shots.

I never knew you can only upload one photo to a website ever. Or that you can only process one photo at a time on the server.

> Yes it's aggressive but you'll have fewer problems on the app so why the hell wouldn't they push you through it

Because gov.uk's own team has multiple talks and articles on how not everyone has access to latest and greatest tech, accesses government services through weird devices etc.

[jacquesm]

The better to make deepfakes of you when they inevitably get hacked. But hey, who could have seen that coming?