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For decade, it is the dream of Google and co to have "webapp desktop app" and so the browser could become a kind of app store. But I think that most users don'

For decade, it is the dream of Google and co to have "webapp desktop app" and so the browser could become a kind of app store. But I think that most users don't care and don't want to "install" webapp in their desktops.

blowski 4y ago
I've noticed a lot of IT departments want to have an internal appstore from which users can install webapps. So it's not necessarily for the end users but the device managers, where those are different entities.
- jabroni_salad 4y ago
  Business users will replicate any product in excel and use an email attachment from 3 years ago in the deleted items folder as the point of reference if we don't make it super easy to find them.
  - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
    "The deleted items folder doesn't count towards user quota"
rektide 4y ago
I'd love to install we apps & make navigating there much faster. Giving them more permissions make sense. But I absolutely positively do not want an "app" like experience. I want it to open in the browser chromez where I have tabs, where I have forward & back, where I have an address bar. Native apps are awfulz, useless limited half-shells, and I want everything to be web. The fucked up conflict is that PWAs attempt to appeal to native app enthusiasts, give developers power to make it looks like a native app, but God damn native apps are shit & the web is 300x more reasonable fair & useful. I'd love to install some up jumped bookmarks. But wow native apps are just so limited, such a worse model to emulate, with so much less power. PWAs need a realignment where they can respect the web more. As is, they're more like retrogressive quasi-native apps. Yulou have a strictly downgraded experience for clicking the install, loose tons of thr basic web capabilities. Native sucks.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  I'm almost the exact opposite opinion. One of my biggest gripes with web apps, especially on compact laptops and other mobile devices, is the constant presence of screen-space-hungry browser chrome. On Macs this is sometimes compounded by the addition of a redundant, in-app menubar since web apps in browsers (and for now, even PWAs) can't use the macOS global menubar. Back/forward/history can be nice in some circumstances, but to me if I find them needed to make a web app usable, it's an indictment of terrible navigation UI/UX design on the part of the app. It's not that difficult to design an app to not need to lean on browser controls, but it does require a bit of a more holistic approach to UI/UX design than is commonly found in web apps (where instead, everything tends to be diced up into heavily silo'd screens). The other gripe is that these apps are making my tab clutter problems worse than they need to be. With a PWA I can make use of OS window/app management functions to help keep things sorted a bit better and make my tabs almost entirely transient rather than constant presences, easing tab management.
- xoac 4y ago
  Decided to close HN after this post, thanks!
  - flangola7 4y ago
    Ok?
- knallfrosch 4y ago
  PWAs combine the awfulness of native apps with the slow performance of the web. Tabbing, history, bookmarking, seamless syncing across devices.. the web is great, but scrolling shows how slow it can be.
  - rektide 4y ago
    I personally am pretty happy with the speed sites can have. Whether or not folks apply good practices is very much up in the air, & honestly, we have a lot to learn & relearn. Eventually I think we'll see more integrative front-end & end-to-end architectures that steer better towards success, that bake in more smart choices. Ideally atop more sensible & aware data-store systems/caches. Somewhat different outlook on the web myself, but in general we're still speaking the same language here & I appreciate & support this post.
jeroenhd 4y ago
I think it depends, looking at how many people are willing to go through the effort to run AltStore on their iPhones I'm sure there's a market for this stuff. It's impossible to find the button to do this, though. Last time I tried to install a self hosted web app as a desktop app, I spent at least a minute searching through the menu options to find the right install button, and I knew it was there. If Chrome wants this feature to succeed, they need to make the UI much more accessible. I'd say the same for Firefox but Firefox dropped installing PWAs on desktop all together. The mobile version still works (though you have no idea if you're creating a shortcut it installing a PWA until you open the link afterwards) but it's clear Mozilla isn't putting much effort towards web applications. I'm running Chromium on my devices specifically because of the PWA issue on desktop, which really sucks. I wish I didn't have to but I guess I'm not Mozilla's target audience.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  I think that there's JavaScript API for that. So for Chrome you'll just draw "Install me" button yourself and after user clicks on it, you call the API and Chrome will ask for confirmation.
- moussasissoko 4y ago
  I am not trying to be snide, but AltStore has 300,000 monthly active users, among a total iPhone userbase of 1.36 billion meaning 0.02% of iPhone users have AltStore.

blowski 4y ago

I've noticed a lot of IT departments want to have an internal appstore from which users can install webapps. So it's not necessarily for the end users but the device managers, where those are different entities.

jabroni_salad 4y ago
Business users will replicate any product in excel and use an email attachment from 3 years ago in the deleted items folder as the point of reference if we don't make it super easy to find them.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  "The deleted items folder doesn't count towards user quota"

rektide 4y ago

I'd love to install we apps & make navigating there much faster. Giving them more permissions make sense. But I absolutely positively do not want an "app" like experience. I want it to open in the browser chromez where I have tabs, where I have forward & back, where I have an address bar. Native apps are awfulz, useless limited half-shells, and I want everything to be web. The fucked up conflict is that PWAs attempt to appeal to native app enthusiasts, give developers power to make it looks like a native app, but God damn native apps are shit & the web is 300x more reasonable fair & useful. I'd love to install some up jumped bookmarks. But wow native apps are just so limited, such a worse model to emulate, with so much less power. PWAs need a realignment where they can respect the web more. As is, they're more like retrogressive quasi-native apps. Yulou have a strictly downgraded experience for clicking the install, loose tons of thr basic web capabilities. Native sucks.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
I'm almost the exact opposite opinion. One of my biggest gripes with web apps, especially on compact laptops and other mobile devices, is the constant presence of screen-space-hungry browser chrome. On Macs this is sometimes compounded by the addition of a redundant, in-app menubar since web apps in browsers (and for now, even PWAs) can't use the macOS global menubar. Back/forward/history can be nice in some circumstances, but to me if I find them needed to make a web app usable, it's an indictment of terrible navigation UI/UX design on the part of the app. It's not that difficult to design an app to not need to lean on browser controls, but it does require a bit of a more holistic approach to UI/UX design than is commonly found in web apps (where instead, everything tends to be diced up into heavily silo'd screens). The other gripe is that these apps are making my tab clutter problems worse than they need to be. With a PWA I can make use of OS window/app management functions to help keep things sorted a bit better and make my tabs almost entirely transient rather than constant presences, easing tab management.
xoac 4y ago
Decided to close HN after this post, thanks!
- flangola7 4y ago
  Ok?
knallfrosch 4y ago
PWAs combine the awfulness of native apps with the slow performance of the web. Tabbing, history, bookmarking, seamless syncing across devices.. the web is great, but scrolling shows how slow it can be.
- rektide 4y ago
  I personally am pretty happy with the speed sites can have. Whether or not folks apply good practices is very much up in the air, & honestly, we have a lot to learn & relearn. Eventually I think we'll see more integrative front-end & end-to-end architectures that steer better towards success, that bake in more smart choices. Ideally atop more sensible & aware data-store systems/caches. Somewhat different outlook on the web myself, but in general we're still speaking the same language here & I appreciate & support this post.

jeroenhd 4y ago

I think it depends, looking at how many people are willing to go through the effort to run AltStore on their iPhones I'm sure there's a market for this stuff. It's impossible to find the button to do this, though. Last time I tried to install a self hosted web app as a desktop app, I spent at least a minute searching through the menu options to find the right install button, and I knew it was there. If Chrome wants this feature to succeed, they need to make the UI much more accessible. I'd say the same for Firefox but Firefox dropped installing PWAs on desktop all together. The mobile version still works (though you have no idea if you're creating a shortcut it installing a PWA until you open the link afterwards) but it's clear Mozilla isn't putting much effort towards web applications. I'm running Chromium on my devices specifically because of the PWA issue on desktop, which really sucks. I wish I didn't have to but I guess I'm not Mozilla's target audience.

vbezhenar 4y ago
I think that there's JavaScript API for that. So for Chrome you'll just draw "Install me" button yourself and after user clicks on it, you call the API and Chrome will ask for confirmation.
moussasissoko 4y ago
I am not trying to be snide, but AltStore has 300,000 monthly active users, among a total iPhone userbase of 1.36 billion meaning 0.02% of iPhone users have AltStore.