6 ms·

Couldn't agree more. It honestly still seems nuts to me that the browser hasn't taken over the whole OS experience. It's clear that locally installed software i

Couldn't agree more. It honestly still seems nuts to me that the browser hasn't taken over the whole OS experience. It's clear that locally installed software is going away. But it's happening on a system that was designed decades ago to request a single markup document, and return it in a single response. Obviously, the browser has matured. JavaScript has matured. We now have more protocols to work with than just HTTP (SDP for which WebRTC, perfect example. WebSockets). But in my mind the Chromebook is the first step in what is going to become all of personal computing.

irascible 10y ago
Damn its refreshing to hear this.
themartorana 10y ago
Locally installed software is, if anything, more prevalent than ever before. Let's put aside mobile for a minute that so changed the landscape towards locally installed that it put Google's revenue model on its heels. You see WhatsApp, Slack, etc., releasing Electron apps just to try to appear locally installable. If there wasn't such a high demand for it, and people weren't clamoring for a stand-alone app instead of a browser tab, companies would never invest the time and money.
- rtpg 10y ago
  Right, but it could be a browser feature right? The main issue (for example in OS X) is that everything gets subsumed by the browser process so things like Command+Tab don't work as well. There are, of course, also OS integration issues, but over time I think we'll get pretty far along on that front.
- greggman 10y ago
  Who's clamoring for apps? AFAICT that's only the companies that want the apps because it lets them spy on their customers in more ways.
  - toss1941 10y ago
    Any disk IO intensive application is going to run and/or scale very poorly as a webapp.
    - jsolson 10y ago
      What client workload is actually disk intensive by nature?
ekianjo 10y ago
> It's clear that locally installed software is going away Where performance matters, locally installed software is NOT going away anytime soon. Oh, just take gaming, for example. Good luck making AAA games run in your browser.
- HappyTypist 10y ago
  https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/03/12/mozilla-and-epic-preview-unreal-engine-4-running-in-firefox/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/03/12/mozilla-and-epic-pr...
  - comex 10y ago
    > In less than 12 months, optimizations have increased the performance of Web applications using asm.js from 40% to within 67% of native, which is still about the current figure, per arewefastyet: http://arewefastyet.com/#machine=29&view=breakdown&suite=asmjs-apps http://arewefastyet.com/#machine=29&view=breakdown&suite=asm... Not going to cut it for AAA games. Most likely it can be improved significantly with enough work, especially with WebAssembly, but I'll wait until I see it.
    - millstone 10y ago
      Anyways, what does the end game look like here? Only very small games can be downloaded every time you want to play. Most games have large resources that will need to be cached. But the cache will be large enough that you'll want to surface it to the user, and let them decide what to uninstall, especially on Chromebooks with their puny storage. Plus games are something you want to be able to play offline. So we just wind up with Steam, right?
      - bobajeff 10y ago
        >Plus games are something you want to be able to play offline Offline webapps is a thing now. With things like Service Workers hopefully we'll see it more frequently.
    - 10y ago
inDigiNeous 10y ago
Good luck writing anything that requires all the performance you can get, inside a browser.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

irascible 10y ago

Damn its refreshing to hear this.

themartorana 10y ago

Locally installed software is, if anything, more prevalent than ever before. Let's put aside mobile for a minute that so changed the landscape towards locally installed that it put Google's revenue model on its heels. You see WhatsApp, Slack, etc., releasing Electron apps just to try to appear locally installable. If there wasn't such a high demand for it, and people weren't clamoring for a stand-alone app instead of a browser tab, companies would never invest the time and money.

rtpg 10y ago
Right, but it could be a browser feature right? The main issue (for example in OS X) is that everything gets subsumed by the browser process so things like Command+Tab don't work as well. There are, of course, also OS integration issues, but over time I think we'll get pretty far along on that front.
greggman 10y ago
Who's clamoring for apps? AFAICT that's only the companies that want the apps because it lets them spy on their customers in more ways.
- toss1941 10y ago
  Any disk IO intensive application is going to run and/or scale very poorly as a webapp.
  - jsolson 10y ago
    What client workload is actually disk intensive by nature?

ekianjo 10y ago

> It's clear that locally installed software is going away Where performance matters, locally installed software is NOT going away anytime soon. Oh, just take gaming, for example. Good luck making AAA games run in your browser.

HappyTypist 10y ago
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/03/12/mozilla-and-epic-preview-unreal-engine-4-running-in-firefox/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/03/12/mozilla-and-epic-pr...
- comex 10y ago
  > In less than 12 months, optimizations have increased the performance of Web applications using asm.js from 40% to within 67% of native, which is still about the current figure, per arewefastyet: http://arewefastyet.com/#machine=29&view=breakdown&suite=asmjs-apps http://arewefastyet.com/#machine=29&view=breakdown&suite=asm... Not going to cut it for AAA games. Most likely it can be improved significantly with enough work, especially with WebAssembly, but I'll wait until I see it.
  - millstone 10y ago
    Anyways, what does the end game look like here? Only very small games can be downloaded every time you want to play. Most games have large resources that will need to be cached. But the cache will be large enough that you'll want to surface it to the user, and let them decide what to uninstall, especially on Chromebooks with their puny storage. Plus games are something you want to be able to play offline. So we just wind up with Steam, right?
    - bobajeff 10y ago
      >Plus games are something you want to be able to play offline Offline webapps is a thing now. With things like Service Workers hopefully we'll see it more frequently.
  - 10y ago

inDigiNeous 10y ago

Good luck writing anything that requires all the performance you can get, inside a browser.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]