[JoshTriplett]

We have. They run on the web, in tabs. Or, with PWAs, they look a lot more like native applications, and still run in a safe sandbox. (There are also Android and iOS apps, which are less ideal and less portable.) Why reinvent it in a less portable, less sandboxed, historically insecure manner? People have tried, and the result never ends up as useful, functional, or secure as the existing web sandbox.

When I browse the web, I know the browser puts me in control, and keeps applications contained. The only kind of app that I know will have comparable sandboxing is a PWA. Anything with a comparable amount of control will look like a web browser, and we already have the web.

If you want the world to change, you have to offer something better.

[emptyparadise]

There is great technology out there for app sandboxing. Recent Windows versions let you instantly spin up a virtual machine to run unknown apps in - I'd say that's safer than a browser and there is no reason why it can't be as convenient.

You speak of the web as an app platform - I'm not opposed to some platform like that existing (and they do exist, just look at your OS), I just think that we made a mistake when we turned the browser into one. Now we mix together hypertext and code and have so much weird legacy to maintain, not to mention the performance issues.

[simion314]

I think the point you are missing is that we should have 2 distinct things: applications and web pages. I should not have to run untrusted code to read a blog post, a news page or the latest PR release. I run with JS off by default and there are basic web pages that don't work with JS for example https://www.bbc.com/news not sure why without JS the layout gets messedup but the content loads.

Sure if you have a nice application that is interactive, fine use a PWA, Electron or whatever you want but for showing plain text and iamges a subset of html and css is enough