[janoc]

More like a kludgy workaround for having to go through the submission process of the app store walled gardens of phone vendors.

Nothing else.

It has certainly nothing to do with any "agile apps development" and there is little to no market for it outside of mobile (i.e. desktop).

[VoxPelli]

Installable PWA:s could in many cases replace Electron apps completely and would be superior as they would contain a much more up to date browser.

[janoc]

In other words - replace one horrible mess with another for what is ultimately only a web app.

Moreover, it is a complete red herring - there is not much advantage in a "much more up to date browser" in an app that will ever open/download a single page (so security or newer standard support is rarely a problem). Never mind that even the Electron apps can be (and are) updated frequently.

Also, PWAs are unable to do many things that Electron apps can as PWA is still ultimately in a browser sandbox whereas Electron runs a Node.js backend that can do pretty much anything a regular desktop app can (networking, access hardware, etc.).

That said, I am certainly not advocating Electron, it is a horrible kludge leading to poorly designed applications that break desktop usability conventions constantly, are enormous resource hogs and require weird workarounds for doing basic stuff only for the sake of being able to do user interface in HTML and javascript.

[ryukafalz]

>Also, PWAs are unable to do many things that Electron apps can as PWA is still ultimately in a browser sandbox whereas Electron runs a Node.js backend that can do pretty much anything a regular desktop app can (networking, access hardware, etc.).

This is precisely why I would prefer many of the Electron apps that I've used to be PWAs instead. For many apps I don't trust them with access to e.g. my entire filesystem; a PWA would get me the nice UI, notifications, etc of a native app while still keeping them in their sandbox.

[janoc]

The problem is that those apps are often Electron because they can't be done as a pure browser app. If the browser doesn't expose some system API then what do you want to do?

[dstick]

> Nothing else.

Is it? The prospect of a single standard is still pretty enticing to me. Granted, you have things like Cordova, Flutter etc that already solve the single codebase problem. But under the hood they all “convert” things to native XY and Z. Don’t you think that a single standard like PWA would be better for the industry in general?

It will kill a lot of monetization, which is probably why it failed to get much traction with Apple.

[whereistimbo]

Doesn't desktop user heavily consume web based apps? Think YouTube and Gmail.

Edit: grammar fix.

[janoc]

And you know someone who uses an app for those on desktop instead of a browser?

Especially a locked down one, full of unblockable ads? (cf Youtube app on mobile which is happy to insert 10 adds in a 10 minute video ...)

[sp332]

I do on my Chromebook, which indicates that I probably would on desktop if it were an option.