4 ms·

Those type of people live and work in the browser. Everything's a PWA. Little to no native app use. Like to manage apps (windows) by browser tab management inst

Those type of people live and work in the browser. Everything's a PWA. Little to no native app use. Like to manage apps (windows) by browser tab management instead of OS management. At least it's consistent across devices!

TeMPOraL 2y ago
I'd consider doing that if I could rely on the browser not losing state after OS restart, browser restart, unexpected forced browser restart because of some autoupdate bullshit, accidental refresh, automatic unloading of tabs, badly thought-out shortcut for closing the browser window, unexpected update of the web page/PWA into which I typed something, accidental cookie wipe, certificate expiry, lack of reliable form of local storage[0], and a bunch of other things that make me consider everything in the browser ephemeral unless stored on a server. (I'm not a browser fan, but even in my weaker moments, this one thing is what stops me from fully embracing living in browser.) -- [0] - AFAIK there's still nothing in the browser one could reliably use to get the equivalent of persisting data to a hard drive. There's like 5 different mechanisms that could allow it, if you could rely on any of them, and of course none of them are user-inspectable except through dev tools.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  But literally everything you describe is worse outside of the browser. My browser does a better job of retaining state than most of my apps. My desktop apps have clunkier auto-update than my browser. My browser apps auto-save to the cloud, my desktop ones often don't auto-save at all.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    I'm talking strictly client side. I literally said "unless stored on a server", and let me remind everyone that "cloud" just means other people's computers. (Also that "serverless" really means "there actually is a server, but you don't get to manage it".) Desktop apps can save files and read files. That alone puts them miles ahead of any purely client-side app. As for convenience, most apps today auto-save stuff when you're not looking, but lack of that feature isn't a big deal for me - I started using computers some 25 years ago, so I habitually press "CTRL+S" every couple seconds without even realizing it.

TeMPOraL 2y ago

I'd consider doing that if I could rely on the browser not losing state after OS restart, browser restart, unexpected forced browser restart because of some autoupdate bullshit, accidental refresh, automatic unloading of tabs, badly thought-out shortcut for closing the browser window, unexpected update of the web page/PWA into which I typed something, accidental cookie wipe, certificate expiry, lack of reliable form of local storage[0], and a bunch of other things that make me consider everything in the browser ephemeral unless stored on a server. (I'm not a browser fan, but even in my weaker moments, this one thing is what stops me from fully embracing living in browser.) -- [0] - AFAIK there's still nothing in the browser one could reliably use to get the equivalent of persisting data to a hard drive. There's like 5 different mechanisms that could allow it, if you could rely on any of them, and of course none of them are user-inspectable except through dev tools.

crazygringo 2y ago
But literally everything you describe is worse outside of the browser. My browser does a better job of retaining state than most of my apps. My desktop apps have clunkier auto-update than my browser. My browser apps auto-save to the cloud, my desktop ones often don't auto-save at all.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  I'm talking strictly client side. I literally said "unless stored on a server", and let me remind everyone that "cloud" just means other people's computers. (Also that "serverless" really means "there actually is a server, but you don't get to manage it".) Desktop apps can save files and read files. That alone puts them miles ahead of any purely client-side app. As for convenience, most apps today auto-save stuff when you're not looking, but lack of that feature isn't a big deal for me - I started using computers some 25 years ago, so I habitually press "CTRL+S" every couple seconds without even realizing it.