3 ms·

I think you missed a step: - click a URL to download an installer. - run the installer that has access to large portions of your system (or if it’s an older wi

I think you missed a step: - click a URL to download an installer. - run the installer that has access to large portions of your system (or if it’s an older windows program probably needs to be run as an administrator so it can add an auto updated or some nonsense like that). - run your program.

anderspitman 6y ago
That's unnecessary. I ship my apps as single-file executables that are ready to go. In the worst case you can use a directory like zoom does (on Linux at least) which contains all the libraries and dependencies you need.
- josephg 6y ago
  Thats still way more awkward than what the web provides. - I don't need to uninstall / delete a website when I'm done with it - I don't need to pick an executable format. (Portable or installed? windows mac or linux? dpkg or rpm? From the dev's website or through homebrew/apt? Is a portable executable even available for this application?) - I don't need to give the author of the webpage access to all my local files. Native programs are also often 10x+ as large as websites. (Eg the facebook iOS app is somehow 488mb) These problems are all solvable. Wasm alone will go a long way to solving the sandboxing and app format problems. But we still need to build the platform, whatever it is.
  - kaba0 6y ago
    The facebook website managed to eat 1GB of ram alone multiple times.
    - josephg 6y ago
      Right! And despite that, it loads in seconds. Traction would be very different if people had to install facebook on their computers to try it out! "Oh yeah its this cool social network.. just download - no, not the portable executable version... yeah, its 300 megs... Then you need to click it to install it"
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Seconds? It can be minutes depending on where one is located on the globe. Not everyone is luckily at home using broadband connections with flat rate.
        josephg 6y ago
        Sure; but people without a broadband connection will have even more trouble with an installed application. They're pretty consistently bigger.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Native applications can be distributed by other means, and keep being installed after the owning company is long gone.
KronisLV 6y ago
I think this is mostly a problem with how the modern operating systems work. Your point is still definitely valid for the real world consequences of this, but i think that theoretically things could be way more simpler. 1.) Click "download" to get a piece of software you need (a static executable) 2.) Put said piece of software in a folder called "/apps/$APP_NAME" 3.) Run said software and have it persist all of its data to "/apps/$APP_NAME/data" or some other convention like that. Perhaps that'd need to be enforced with sandboxing and limiting access to directories, which would then make sharing data across them more difficult, which would end up with something like "/data/$APP_NAME", which brings us back to the horror of Windows' "AppData" and "Documents" and "Program Data", or other folders like that, resulting in what can only be described as an Eldritch nightmare, in which you don't have any idea in which of the 20-30 different folders which particular stores its data... But theorethically things could be simpler, i've heard people mention how easy installing apps used to be on Apple devices back in the day. And recently, after running the Godot game engine ( https://godotengine.org/ https://godotengine.org/ ), which is literally a single executable, i'm inclined to agree somewhat.
- josephg 6y ago
  Yeah this is my point too! Modern operating systems are made out of code, and I know it sounds weird but we can change them! Ideally I'd like applications to work the same way websites do. I want to be able to open an application directly from its URL, and it should download and run a contained wasm pack file in a sandbox. The app should then be cached locally - maybe with some ability to pin it to my start menu (and pin the cache entry). The app should be given some access to a rendering context (with fonts, sound, etc) and some limited storage. And not much else by default - though the user should be able to bless the application to access other files on the filesystem. There's a huge laundry list of APIs the apps will need eventually - and thats going to be a lot of work and I have no idea who'd fund something like that. But it'd be fantastic if we could pull it off.

anderspitman 6y ago

That's unnecessary. I ship my apps as single-file executables that are ready to go. In the worst case you can use a directory like zoom does (on Linux at least) which contains all the libraries and dependencies you need.

josephg 6y ago
Thats still way more awkward than what the web provides. - I don't need to uninstall / delete a website when I'm done with it - I don't need to pick an executable format. (Portable or installed? windows mac or linux? dpkg or rpm? From the dev's website or through homebrew/apt? Is a portable executable even available for this application?) - I don't need to give the author of the webpage access to all my local files. Native programs are also often 10x+ as large as websites. (Eg the facebook iOS app is somehow 488mb) These problems are all solvable. Wasm alone will go a long way to solving the sandboxing and app format problems. But we still need to build the platform, whatever it is.
- kaba0 6y ago
  The facebook website managed to eat 1GB of ram alone multiple times.
  - josephg 6y ago
    Right! And despite that, it loads in seconds. Traction would be very different if people had to install facebook on their computers to try it out! "Oh yeah its this cool social network.. just download - no, not the portable executable version... yeah, its 300 megs... Then you need to click it to install it"
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Seconds? It can be minutes depending on where one is located on the globe. Not everyone is luckily at home using broadband connections with flat rate.
      - josephg 6y ago
        Sure; but people without a broadband connection will have even more trouble with an installed application. They're pretty consistently bigger.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Native applications can be distributed by other means, and keep being installed after the owning company is long gone.

KronisLV 6y ago

I think this is mostly a problem with how the modern operating systems work. Your point is still definitely valid for the real world consequences of this, but i think that theoretically things could be way more simpler. 1.) Click "download" to get a piece of software you need (a static executable) 2.) Put said piece of software in a folder called "/apps/$APP_NAME" 3.) Run said software and have it persist all of its data to "/apps/$APP_NAME/data" or some other convention like that. Perhaps that'd need to be enforced with sandboxing and limiting access to directories, which would then make sharing data across them more difficult, which would end up with something like "/data/$APP_NAME", which brings us back to the horror of Windows' "AppData" and "Documents" and "Program Data", or other folders like that, resulting in what can only be described as an Eldritch nightmare, in which you don't have any idea in which of the 20-30 different folders which particular stores its data... But theorethically things could be simpler, i've heard people mention how easy installing apps used to be on Apple devices back in the day. And recently, after running the Godot game engine ( https://godotengine.org/ https://godotengine.org/ ), which is literally a single executable, i'm inclined to agree somewhat.

josephg 6y ago
Yeah this is my point too! Modern operating systems are made out of code, and I know it sounds weird but we can change them! Ideally I'd like applications to work the same way websites do. I want to be able to open an application directly from its URL, and it should download and run a contained wasm pack file in a sandbox. The app should then be cached locally - maybe with some ability to pin it to my start menu (and pin the cache entry). The app should be given some access to a rendering context (with fonts, sound, etc) and some limited storage. And not much else by default - though the user should be able to bless the application to access other files on the filesystem. There's a huge laundry list of APIs the apps will need eventually - and thats going to be a lot of work and I have no idea who'd fund something like that. But it'd be fantastic if we could pull it off.