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It sure is. This is why Chrome apps and progressive web apps are great - they share the Chrome runtime and inherit its hardening, security properties and update
by lima 7y ago
It sure is. This is why Chrome apps and progressive web apps are great - they share the Chrome runtime and inherit its hardening, security properties and updates.
Many Electron apps should just be a PWA instead, and many actually are. Why would I want to install a desktop app for WhatsApp? It runs just fine in Chrome, and using More Tools -> Create shortcut..., you can even create a launcher entry that will launch the page in its own window.
- randall 7y agoThis needs to be distributable by the website... also with caching guarantees, desktop capture support (which I think is there now, but wasn't till just recently) etc.
- vbezhenar 7y agoHow do I build installer for Chrome PWA? Like if user does not have Chrome, it should install it. Also i don't want to bother user with that implicitly installed chrome, so it should not add shortcuts, etc and just live as an app launcher.
- shawnz 7y agoDon't bundle Chrome, just let the user use whatever browser they prefer. AFAIK Edge also supports PWAs, but not Firefox Desktop yet.
- onei 7y agoTurns out a PWA works in Firefox too [1] so I'm not sure it's entirely necessary to force a user to install a browser just for your app. Edge is/will be chromium, so I guess Safari is the only major browser to worry about? [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/progressive-web-apps-whats-big-deal/ https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/progressive-web-apps-whats-...
- m-p-3 7y agoIMO you shouldn't have to make an installer, it should be the browser's job to expose the feature and integrate itself to the OS as natively as possible.
- bitL 7y agoBecause of inability of PWA to write local files at desired locations (you can at best download a file), PWA's usefulness is limited as a desktop app replacement technology. The moment you allow rw local file access you are off to a security-fun-land.
- lima 7y agoRight, but this is a small minority of applications.
- tonyarkles 7y agoI strongly strongly disagree! The vast majority of the work I do can be done off-line with files stored on disk, minus stuff that obviously needs connectivity (e.g. Slack). Writing text, writing code, reading/editing documents and spreadsheets, doing CAD (mechanical and electronics), etc. During the week I live in the city, but on weekends and occasionally for longer stretches of time I like to head out to our rural house for peace and quiet (and focused work). Over time, the number of applications that ought to work off-line has been slowly shrinking, whether it's because they insist on using cloud storage instead of local storage, or licensing checks, or whatever. It's really really disappointing, and I would personally be delighted if I could get work done without an Internet connection.
- shawnz 7y agoYou can design a PWA that works offline with local files on disk already, by using the browser's file select dialogs. It's not necessary to give the app arbitrary access to the whole filesystem to get that functionality, which is what the parent is asking for.
- tonyarkles 7y agoI'm genuinely not all that familiar with what PWAs can and can't do... Would a, for example, Word-like PWA be able to both load and save files to disk?
- Mirioron 7y agoBecause my Chrome already takes 6GB of memory and thus needs to be restarted once in a while. If those forces me to close apps I want to continue using then that will annoy me.