5 ms·

PWA Coming to Chrome for Desktop

15 points by twapi 9y ago

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
Where does the name "progressive" come from?
- MzHN 9y ago
  Supposedly the "progressive" in PWA means[1]: >Work for every user, regardless of browser choice because they’re built with progressive enhancement[2] as a core tenet. But from my experience I'd say they have little to do with actual progressive enhancement, i.e. content first development. One thing that certainly is progressive for PWAs is how deeply the user decides to integrate the web app into their browser/OS. You can choose to allow push notifications and "install" the PWA into your home screen for example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_app#Characteristics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_app#Characteri... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement
  - predakanga 9y ago
    The seeming incompatibility of PWAs with Progressive Enhancement is something that's been bugging me for a while now. As an earnest question, is Progressive Enhancement (i.e. graceful degradation, "unobtrusive javascript", etc) simply dead now? None of the frameworks out there seem to encourage it, I'm not sure if many even support those paradigms.
- muthdra 9y ago
  It's supposed to mean that the user accesses a simple website that can progressively augment it's capabilities by installing a cached version, native presentation.
xtf 9y ago
This is at least since the last 3 versions of chrome around. Firefox added it on android since v58, desktop pending.
Klathmon 9y ago
So one problem I recently found with PWAs that are a real issue, is that the user can't easily control the browser that is used for them on android. We had a PWA that was having some really strange issues recently, only to find that some users were on really old versions of what looked like chrome (like versions 49, 51 and 56 as of last week). We eventually found out that this was actually the "samsung browser" which is the default browser on many samsung phones, which is pinned to an older chromium version, and our PWA when installed was using that rendering engine, which was causing compatibility issues that the user has no ability to fix themselves. I love the web platform, but this is a big problem. We are going the "wrap our app in a compiled chromium browser" route now, as much as it pains me to do it, because there just isn't any other option here. Imagine if lenovo were to randomly decide that any software run on windows on their PCs will be run in a windows XP vm, and that there wasn't any easy way to change it... All because the company wants to add their branding and "optimize for their hardware"... Yes, we could try to support these older versions, but seeing as these phones will most likely never get updates from samsung again, it would just prevent us from using any new features or new performance increases until these users leave us. So our options are to wrap the app in a fat wrapper that allows us to continue writing the best app we can for the most number of people, or intentionally hamstring the app for everyone to support a minority of users that are using phones abandoned by their manufacturer. (FFS Samsung's latest release as of late october 2017 was 6 months out of date the day they released it!) Edit: Just saw another issue come through, user agent comes from a nvidia shield tablet, based on chrome 44, released 2015-07-21... That will never get another update. The oldest chrome version i've seen in our logs looks like 41 which was 2 weeks ago!
joemccall86 9y ago
While there may be some important technological differences here, from an end-user perspective they already achieved this 5 years ago (https://blog.chromium.org/2013/02/chrome-app-launcher-developer-preview.html https://blog.chromium.org/2013/02/chrome-app-launcher-develo...), removed it 3 years ago (https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.html https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.ht...), and now they're adding it back in. I like that we're moving forward, but on the desktop this just feels like, "Hey, look what you can do again!"
- oldcynic 9y ago
  I completely forget its name but wasn't there was a Mozilla project to do basically this a dozen or more years back? Obviously without the benefits of HTML 5 etc.
  - synotna 9y ago
    Prism/webxulrunner iirc
  - predakanga 9y ago
    Yep, Mozilla Prism - there have been plenty of similar efforts both first- and third-party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site-specific_browser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site-specific_browser They may even retain some use - on OS X, for example, you used to get issues with PWAs being considered part of the main browser process for cmd+tab and cmd+`. I've had to use SSBs to overcome this in the past.
butz 9y ago
Finally, HTML5 apps for desktop, running in separate window without any additional downloads. A win for developers - no more building installers for each OS, and a win for users - running web apps on latest (and presumably safest) version of internet browser.

15 points by twapi 9y ago

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago

Where does the name "progressive" come from?

MzHN 9y ago
Supposedly the "progressive" in PWA means[1]: >Work for every user, regardless of browser choice because they’re built with progressive enhancement[2] as a core tenet. But from my experience I'd say they have little to do with actual progressive enhancement, i.e. content first development. One thing that certainly is progressive for PWAs is how deeply the user decides to integrate the web app into their browser/OS. You can choose to allow push notifications and "install" the PWA into your home screen for example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_app#Characteristics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_app#Characteri... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement
- predakanga 9y ago
  The seeming incompatibility of PWAs with Progressive Enhancement is something that's been bugging me for a while now. As an earnest question, is Progressive Enhancement (i.e. graceful degradation, "unobtrusive javascript", etc) simply dead now? None of the frameworks out there seem to encourage it, I'm not sure if many even support those paradigms.
muthdra 9y ago
It's supposed to mean that the user accesses a simple website that can progressively augment it's capabilities by installing a cached version, native presentation.

xtf 9y ago

This is at least since the last 3 versions of chrome around. Firefox added it on android since v58, desktop pending.

Klathmon 9y ago

So one problem I recently found with PWAs that are a real issue, is that the user can't easily control the browser that is used for them on android. We had a PWA that was having some really strange issues recently, only to find that some users were on really old versions of what looked like chrome (like versions 49, 51 and 56 as of last week). We eventually found out that this was actually the "samsung browser" which is the default browser on many samsung phones, which is pinned to an older chromium version, and our PWA when installed was using that rendering engine, which was causing compatibility issues that the user has no ability to fix themselves. I love the web platform, but this is a big problem. We are going the "wrap our app in a compiled chromium browser" route now, as much as it pains me to do it, because there just isn't any other option here. Imagine if lenovo were to randomly decide that any software run on windows on their PCs will be run in a windows XP vm, and that there wasn't any easy way to change it... All because the company wants to add their branding and "optimize for their hardware"... Yes, we could try to support these older versions, but seeing as these phones will most likely never get updates from samsung again, it would just prevent us from using any new features or new performance increases until these users leave us. So our options are to wrap the app in a fat wrapper that allows us to continue writing the best app we can for the most number of people, or intentionally hamstring the app for everyone to support a minority of users that are using phones abandoned by their manufacturer. (FFS Samsung's latest release as of late october 2017 was 6 months out of date the day they released it!) Edit: Just saw another issue come through, user agent comes from a nvidia shield tablet, based on chrome 44, released 2015-07-21... That will never get another update. The oldest chrome version i've seen in our logs looks like 41 which was 2 weeks ago!

joemccall86 9y ago

While there may be some important technological differences here, from an end-user perspective they already achieved this 5 years ago (https://blog.chromium.org/2013/02/chrome-app-launcher-developer-preview.html https://blog.chromium.org/2013/02/chrome-app-launcher-develo...), removed it 3 years ago (https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.html https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.ht...), and now they're adding it back in. I like that we're moving forward, but on the desktop this just feels like, "Hey, look what you can do again!"

oldcynic 9y ago
I completely forget its name but wasn't there was a Mozilla project to do basically this a dozen or more years back? Obviously without the benefits of HTML 5 etc.
- synotna 9y ago
  Prism/webxulrunner iirc
- predakanga 9y ago
  Yep, Mozilla Prism - there have been plenty of similar efforts both first- and third-party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site-specific_browser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site-specific_browser They may even retain some use - on OS X, for example, you used to get issues with PWAs being considered part of the main browser process for cmd+tab and cmd+`. I've had to use SSBs to overcome this in the past.

butz 9y ago

Finally, HTML5 apps for desktop, running in separate window without any additional downloads. A win for developers - no more building installers for each OS, and a win for users - running web apps on latest (and presumably safest) version of internet browser.