The web is a pretty damn good distribution method for software. The user simply clicks a link and is provided with valuable features. No install process. No IT approval process. No thought at all, really, about how that code runs on their machine and does things that are valuable to them.
Frankly - We're still inching towards the browser being the OS. I don't want a clunky app that needs to be installed on all my devices, and which has a limited feature set compared to the web: I just want the website.
And for the vast majority of "productivity" tools - networking and sharing aren't backseat things, they're literally the most important part of the product (see Figma, for example)
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Long story short, you're saying this is a "problem to correct". I disagree - I think the problem these tools are correcting is that native distribution methods (up to and including the current mobile walled-garden app-store fuckery) simply suck. They suck SO much compared to simply opening a Url in a browser.
The web is a good distribution method. However, HTML/CSS was intended to display the equivalent of MS Word documents, and is completely unsuited for general purpose UI. In fact, we know how general purpose UI should look like, because all the non-browser UI toolkits look pretty similar. And it's nothing like HTML/CSS.
> The web is a pretty damn good distribution method for software.
... that can and does run inside a browser. There's a wide-world of software that doesn't run inside a browser right now, and some serious arguments about why it probably never should.
That's where the problem lies, not with yet another app/web-page that provides you with a view of some database columns and rows.
> The web is more fickle and opaque than the App Store.
You have some examples of what you mean by fickle? I'm not really sure I understand.
In basically every situation I can think of, the browser is less fickle, more consistent, and more backwards compatible than an app store.
The only benefit to using an app over a website is offline access - which is moot if you don't have the app installed already, since the app download will certainly be bigger than the page load, and it's also the problem electron nicely solves for those cases.
> In basically every situation I can think of, the browser is less fickle, more consistent, and more backwards compatible than an app store.
There is no guarantee of anything from any web app. Your data can be used for anything the provider likes. There are literally no guidelines.
> The only benefit to using an app over a website is offline access - which is moot if you don't have the app installed already
In almost every single use case you will have the app installed already.
Electron solves literally no problems with web apps. Electron apps are not web apps and do not run in the browser. Web apps do not use electron. The fact that some code may be portable between the two is irrelevant to the user.
You really think the browser sandbox limits what the website can do with the data on their servers?
> This makes me think you don't actually know what electron is.
Do you think electron is a web browser?
I think it’s a toolkit that let’s you use JavaScript, HTML and CSS to build a standalone app.
Web apps aren’t defined by the programming language they use. They are defined by the fact that they run on the web - I.e. in a browser talking to web servers.
I'm not saying the we is wrong, I just miss there being a diversity of methods for fun and experimentation.
A huge issue of free software under capitalism is it's really hard to sustain more than one way of doing things. And so we got monster metastasized too-big-to-fail Linux, Chromium, etc.
I believe the web is the future, and ChromeOS is a great example. Native apps are dying, and with good cause - it’s not worth having hundreds of developers split across multiple platforms.
The goal of any company is to provide a useful service/product, not necessarily a “native” app to satisfy HNers.
The web is a pretty damn good distribution method for software. The user simply clicks a link and is provided with valuable features. No install process. No IT approval process. No thought at all, really, about how that code runs on their machine and does things that are valuable to them.
Frankly - We're still inching towards the browser being the OS. I don't want a clunky app that needs to be installed on all my devices, and which has a limited feature set compared to the web: I just want the website.
And for the vast majority of "productivity" tools - networking and sharing aren't backseat things, they're literally the most important part of the product (see Figma, for example)
---
Long story short, you're saying this is a "problem to correct". I disagree - I think the problem these tools are correcting is that native distribution methods (up to and including the current mobile walled-garden app-store fuckery) simply suck. They suck SO much compared to simply opening a Url in a browser.