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This is trying to sell the concept of a chrome-less browser-window ("install as app"), a feature your browser already has.

411111111111111 6y ago
Do we need to link to that famous Dropbox comment again? Sometimes convenience can be enough.
- oscargrouch 6y ago
  I think one big problem with this approach is that if the people behind this find a niche good enough its very easy for browsers to just implement the new ideas and completely kill the competition giving everyone has a deployed browser already. Im doing something that is based on browsers for instance, but the end product diverge quite a bit from traditional browsers and if they try to play the catchup game, i have at least a 2-year window of opportunity. Remember PhantomJS? And Phantom was actually providing something browsers were not doing at the time. It has no real distinct features from what browsers already do right now, and whatever way they make it easy to use, if the product by some change get traction, it will be easy for them to just ship with that feature built it. It may provide some value on convenience, but its easily copiable by a competitor that is deployed everywhere, which is a big threat to their bussiness model.
- jjice 6y ago
  Unrelated to the parent comment, but what is this Dropbox comment?
  - davidbarker 6y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 is the comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16660140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16660140 is some discussion around it later.
- egfx 6y ago
  Kind of reminds me of a talk by the third YouTube founder on how the convenience of not having to download video from ftp was enough. Easy Accessibility is key. https://youtu.be/XAJEXUNmP5M https://youtu.be/XAJEXUNmP5M
- slightwinder 6y ago
  Dropbox offered far more than just convenience. And at least it was something new. This on the other side has very very slim novelity and convenience. And tools like this exists since at least a decade and never really took off. Maybe for a reason?
httpsterio 6y ago
> This is trying to sell the concept of a chrome-less browser-window ("install as app"), a feature your browser already has. As a dev, service workers are a PITA and getting them to work with with our products is a bit of a hit and miss. Installable / pinnable web apps are only available if the original web dev has made them available. Web catalog and electron wrappers are for people who want to wrap apps and sites that are not nor ally available.
- arghwhat 6y ago
  You do not need service workers to do what Web catalog/electron wrappers are doing: google-chrome --app=https://example.com https://example.com firefox --ssb https://example.com https://example.com (sadly requires enabling the ssb feature) Sure, you can have a tool to create "desktop shortcuts" for the casual user, but this is not worthy of a commercial product.

411111111111111 6y ago

Do we need to link to that famous Dropbox comment again? Sometimes convenience can be enough.

oscargrouch 6y ago
I think one big problem with this approach is that if the people behind this find a niche good enough its very easy for browsers to just implement the new ideas and completely kill the competition giving everyone has a deployed browser already. Im doing something that is based on browsers for instance, but the end product diverge quite a bit from traditional browsers and if they try to play the catchup game, i have at least a 2-year window of opportunity. Remember PhantomJS? And Phantom was actually providing something browsers were not doing at the time. It has no real distinct features from what browsers already do right now, and whatever way they make it easy to use, if the product by some change get traction, it will be easy for them to just ship with that feature built it. It may provide some value on convenience, but its easily copiable by a competitor that is deployed everywhere, which is a big threat to their bussiness model.
jjice 6y ago
Unrelated to the parent comment, but what is this Dropbox comment?
- davidbarker 6y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 is the comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16660140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16660140 is some discussion around it later.
egfx 6y ago
Kind of reminds me of a talk by the third YouTube founder on how the convenience of not having to download video from ftp was enough. Easy Accessibility is key. https://youtu.be/XAJEXUNmP5M https://youtu.be/XAJEXUNmP5M
slightwinder 6y ago
Dropbox offered far more than just convenience. And at least it was something new. This on the other side has very very slim novelity and convenience. And tools like this exists since at least a decade and never really took off. Maybe for a reason?

httpsterio 6y ago

> This is trying to sell the concept of a chrome-less browser-window ("install as app"), a feature your browser already has. As a dev, service workers are a PITA and getting them to work with with our products is a bit of a hit and miss. Installable / pinnable web apps are only available if the original web dev has made them available. Web catalog and electron wrappers are for people who want to wrap apps and sites that are not nor ally available.

arghwhat 6y ago
You do not need service workers to do what Web catalog/electron wrappers are doing: google-chrome --app=https://example.com https://example.com firefox --ssb https://example.com https://example.com (sadly requires enabling the ssb feature) Sure, you can have a tool to create "desktop shortcuts" for the casual user, but this is not worthy of a commercial product.