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Any reason why there's not more support for the Progressive Web Apps standard on desktop browsers [1]? It seems to me that many Electron apps these days are su

Any reason why there's not more support for the Progressive Web Apps standard on desktop browsers [1]? It seems to me that many Electron apps these days are super-thin wrappers around a web app that don't actually need the full desktop access offered by Electron (things like local filesystem access, multi-process execution, multi-window management, arbitrary node APIs, etc). They just need a way for users to "install" the app so that it 1) has a separate shortcut and appears in a separate window from the browser, 2) can send notifications through the native notifications stack, and use a fallback on systems where one isn't available, 3) is available for use offline. The Progressive Web Apps spec has answers to all of these problems, and it would vastly improve the resource usage model compared to Electron because each PWA would share the same browser runtime as the user's browser of choice, which is more likely than not running 24/7 anyways. Security-minded apps like Signal might need more guarantees such as asset verification and version pinning on install, but surely those could be added to the spec, as they would be beneficial for other Progressive Web Apps as well. I know PWA was designed with mobile apps in mind originally, but it'd be a shame to limit it to that use case, as there is clearly a lot of demand for building desktop apps with web technologies, and PWA sounds like an excellent alternative to the current status quo that's dominated by Electron. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Progressive https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Progressive

captainmuon 9y ago
It's coming, at least for Edge on Windows. If you add appropriate meta tags, your app will even automatically appear in the windows store. The web platform is a really great example of backwards compatibility - it has to, because people wouldn't tolerate breaking changes to websites. Browsers (and Electron) have made a lot of progress in the last years, but now I think this platform is very capable and you can get a lot done without waiting for a new feature. This makes something like Electron a good candidate to ship with the OS. Remove the burden of updates from the individual vendors, and use a lot less disk space and memory because there is only one runtime. I don't see installable Electron any time soon, but interestingly Edge might fulfill that role on Windows (if it is compatible and PWAs are powerful enough to replace most electron apps).
- Vinnl 9y ago
  That's the main reason, I think: the PWA is getting there, but only just now. Discovery (mostly on mobile) and integration (on desktop) is still relatively lacking. Once those are fixed, I'm guessing it will slowly be getting more uptake.

captainmuon 9y ago

It's coming, at least for Edge on Windows. If you add appropriate meta tags, your app will even automatically appear in the windows store. The web platform is a really great example of backwards compatibility - it has to, because people wouldn't tolerate breaking changes to websites. Browsers (and Electron) have made a lot of progress in the last years, but now I think this platform is very capable and you can get a lot done without waiting for a new feature. This makes something like Electron a good candidate to ship with the OS. Remove the burden of updates from the individual vendors, and use a lot less disk space and memory because there is only one runtime. I don't see installable Electron any time soon, but interestingly Edge might fulfill that role on Windows (if it is compatible and PWAs are powerful enough to replace most electron apps).

Vinnl 9y ago
That's the main reason, I think: the PWA is getting there, but only just now. Discovery (mostly on mobile) and integration (on desktop) is still relatively lacking. Once those are fixed, I'm guessing it will slowly be getting more uptake.