4 ms·

Pretty cool and interesting idea, and I guess the usability is banking the fact that Chrome is the most popular browser and probably installed on most user's co

by aylmao 8y ago

Pretty cool and interesting idea, and I guess the usability is banking the fact that Chrome is the most popular browser and probably installed on most user's computers. Idea for another project: a wrapper around the system's bulit-in web-view that automatically polyfills the different engines to somewhat the same capabilities.

dangoor 8y ago
There are a few wrappers around system web views in various languages (I've seen Python and Go, at least). The problem is Windows... Apparently only crufty old IE is available as a system default embeddable webview on Windows. Had it been a modern Edge, this would be a viable approach!
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  I wonder if Microsoft/Apple are missing an opportunity with this. There is clearly a demand to write apps with JS/HTML/CSS, at the moment they are leaving it to third parties to fill that hole.
  - SargeZT 8y ago
    Microsoft has UWP apps, which can indeed be written in JS/HTML/CSS.
    - WorldMaker 8y ago
      Also, Microsoft supports PWAs as native apps, supporting almost all the standards, giving them access to the full UWP host environment as a feature-detection-supported bonus, and even ingesting PWAs directly into the Microsoft Store when found by the Bing crawler.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  With XAML Islands, Edge can now be embedded in Win32 and WinForms/WPF apps. There's an official wrapper control for it that binds a mostly compatible API to the old IE control and you can almost just "drop in" replace any existing uses. Also, Windows has native HTML/JS application support as a part of the UWP platform, and among the best support for PWA applications on top of that. Apple has been the biggest holdup for PWA adoption.
  - dangoor 8y ago
    Oh, cool! If someone can get a scaffolding around the Edge embedding in one of those libraries for Go, etc., that would be a nice cross-platform solution for building HTML-based apps that are much slimmer than Electron ones.
mikewhy 8y ago
I've wanted this for some time. Combined with Go for the native layer so all that's distributed is a single binary and a webapp bundle.
WorldMaker 8y ago
> Idea for another project: a wrapper around the system's bulit-in web-view that automatically polyfills the different engines to somewhat the same capabilities. I feel like PWA standards are so close now. The web platform needs some version of a few Node libraries better standardized (file access, process management, are a couple to mind), and maybe some better cross-platform ideas for FFI/native code-interop/shell calls. Overall, though, PWA capability is ahead of what a lot of people expect. The biggest hurdle of course remains Apple's support for PWAs is quite lacking.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  PWA's idea is that you can check the runtime and given JavaScript dynamism make use of native platform APIs if available. Microsoft has moved their UWP Hosted Apps into the PWA model, so any signed PWA app can have full access to UWP APIs, with the same FFI capabilities that .NET and C++ enjoy on UWP. Google does a similar thing with ChromeOS and Android. To test on your device, https://whatwebcando.today/ https://whatwebcando.today/ EDIT: Just noticed later on that you are quite aware of PWAs on UWP, leaving the comment here though.
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    Yep, good points. Like I said, I think the issues are more to do with cross-platform compatibility (which admittedly can be done in some cases with wrapper libs that feature detect for the Windows and Android libraries), and arbitrary native libraries, especially ones from the Node ecosystem (which admittedly in some cases can be handled with Web Assembly at least).

by aylmao 8y ago

dangoor 8y ago

There are a few wrappers around system web views in various languages (I've seen Python and Go, at least). The problem is Windows... Apparently only crufty old IE is available as a system default embeddable webview on Windows. Had it been a modern Edge, this would be a viable approach!

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
I wonder if Microsoft/Apple are missing an opportunity with this. There is clearly a demand to write apps with JS/HTML/CSS, at the moment they are leaving it to third parties to fill that hole.
- SargeZT 8y ago
  Microsoft has UWP apps, which can indeed be written in JS/HTML/CSS.
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    Also, Microsoft supports PWAs as native apps, supporting almost all the standards, giving them access to the full UWP host environment as a feature-detection-supported bonus, and even ingesting PWAs directly into the Microsoft Store when found by the Bing crawler.
WorldMaker 8y ago
With XAML Islands, Edge can now be embedded in Win32 and WinForms/WPF apps. There's an official wrapper control for it that binds a mostly compatible API to the old IE control and you can almost just "drop in" replace any existing uses. Also, Windows has native HTML/JS application support as a part of the UWP platform, and among the best support for PWA applications on top of that. Apple has been the biggest holdup for PWA adoption.
- dangoor 8y ago
  Oh, cool! If someone can get a scaffolding around the Edge embedding in one of those libraries for Go, etc., that would be a nice cross-platform solution for building HTML-based apps that are much slimmer than Electron ones.

mikewhy 8y ago

I've wanted this for some time. Combined with Go for the native layer so all that's distributed is a single binary and a webapp bundle.

WorldMaker 8y ago

> Idea for another project: a wrapper around the system's bulit-in web-view that automatically polyfills the different engines to somewhat the same capabilities. I feel like PWA standards are so close now. The web platform needs some version of a few Node libraries better standardized (file access, process management, are a couple to mind), and maybe some better cross-platform ideas for FFI/native code-interop/shell calls. Overall, though, PWA capability is ahead of what a lot of people expect. The biggest hurdle of course remains Apple's support for PWAs is quite lacking.

pjmlp 8y ago
PWA's idea is that you can check the runtime and given JavaScript dynamism make use of native platform APIs if available. Microsoft has moved their UWP Hosted Apps into the PWA model, so any signed PWA app can have full access to UWP APIs, with the same FFI capabilities that .NET and C++ enjoy on UWP. Google does a similar thing with ChromeOS and Android. To test on your device, https://whatwebcando.today/ https://whatwebcando.today/ EDIT: Just noticed later on that you are quite aware of PWAs on UWP, leaving the comment here though.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  Yep, good points. Like I said, I think the issues are more to do with cross-platform compatibility (which admittedly can be done in some cases with wrapper libs that feature detect for the Windows and Android libraries), and arbitrary native libraries, especially ones from the Node ecosystem (which admittedly in some cases can be handled with Web Assembly at least).