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by toastal 1754 days ago
Personally, I wish PWAs were generally better supported so I could skip the Electron bit and could install the same app on my phone. Being a part of the main browser gives better resource handling, better sandboxing that Electron allows but I would prefer most apps didn't have, and access to the extensions I want. Too bad Firefox killed off SSB (site-specific browser) before it even launched.
2 comments
extraAccount 1754 days ago
PWA's only work when you are connected to the intenet for most of the time. Which is not guranteed on mobile. It is fine for some apps which need a connection to be usable like a messaging or a banking app. But others like productivity apps are useless. Sometimes the browser crashes on mobile as well.

At that point might as well make an app.

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toastal 1754 days ago
I'd say my non-browser apps crash more than the browser.

Offline is one of the biggest reasons to ship a full PWA. This is what service workers are for. The biggest reason to not ship a PWA is Apple barely supports them and you can't siphon as much user data if sandboxed in the browser.

I would LOVE if I could get a basic PWA from my bank that didn't have all of these permissions like trying to read if I'm rooted or not, location access, storage -- none of their business what I do with my device or where I am -- and I could still scan QR codes, check balance, do transfers.

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brundolf 1754 days ago
That would work for Slack and Spotify, but not for VSCode. PWAs can't get file system access as far as I know.
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toastal 1754 days ago
PWAs have limitations, yes. But you just mentioned how 2 of the biggest Electron users could not use Electron without sacrificing much if anything.

I think once you're in this other territory then you should consider full native instead of Electron. Why you choose to use an editor housed in a browser engine with tracking baked into the application is your decision. There are plenty of other native editors, both GUI and TUI, a user can choose.

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brundolf 1754 days ago
Nobody chooses VSCode specifically because it's in Electron, we choose it because it's a good editor.

Any app can send network requests, so any app can incorporate tracking. This has nothing to do with Electron either.

But to your original point: yes, the more Electron apps that are really just web apps and can be gotten as PWAs, the better.

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