[handity]

This is remarkably complete.

But it makes me question why "the browser" is apparently still the inevitable platform of the future.

In order for a PWA to be normal and usable, it must be available offline, open in a window without browser chrome, have similar performance to a native application, be launchable via a shortcut on the host OS, and respond to the mouse and keybaord shortcuts the way you'd expect. I think I've just described... an Electron app?

It's cool that this kind of thing can run in a web browser. With no install hurdle, it's much easier to convince people to try it out, and it's cross platform. Beyond that I can't really think of any advantages to having it run in the browser.

If what's lacking is an easy way to try software, I can't help but imagine lots of ways this could be addressed that would be much more pleasant to use than loading PWAs. Right now I can't seriously see myself enjoying using a PWA for work.

I say this having recently finished several large design projects in Figma, which is apparently a gold standard success story for browser based apps. Despite the years of development and herculean engineering efforts, I can still feel the browser jank. I begrudgingly open the thing in chrome, as it completely chokes in Firefox. It still chokes on moderately sized canvases, moving things is slow and laggy compared to native apps, keyboard shortcuts sometimes don't work or keys get stuck in a weird pressed or unpressed state, loading is slow, elements pop-in over tens of seconds.

I know I'm an old man yelling at clouds at this point, I'm just disappointed that we seem to be going backwards in performance and usability of software.

[jampekka]

> In order for a PWA to be normal and usable, it must be available offline, open in a window without browser chrome, have similar performance to a native application, be launchable via a shortcut on the host OS, and respond to the mouse and keybaord shortcuts the way you'd expect. I think I've just described... an Electron app?

You've just described a PWA. You can install them as a host OS shortcut, they run without browser chrome, should have performance equal to Electron.

Also if you really want extra bloat and faff, any PWA is trivial to turn into an Electron app.

Most of PWA criticism is based on misunderstanding PWA capabilities.

[handity]

I'm reassured that my comparison to Electron was not far off. My point was, if a PWA is usable when all the above is implemented, what you end up with is very similar to a self-updating Electron app, just one that may or may not rely much more heavily on the network at runtime and might work offline (or not).

I admit I didn't realize creating a shortcut to a PWA was already supported as it's not pushed very hard. In Chromium it's buried under dots, "Cast, Save and Share" (which is a bizarre mashup of disparate functions), and finally "Install page as app".

The window that loads still has browser chrome, in the form of a back, refresh, and three dots button. As soon as you navigate somewhere, even within the same app, the url bar appears again, but you can't edit it. It seems that to be able to always hide this bar, you'd need a way to differentiate between "internal" links that should navigate within the page, and external links that should open in a browser.

I tried turning off my internet, and neither figma nor openDAW showed anything more than a blank page, which confirms my feeling of uncertainty around PWAs, namely, how do you know what will actually work offline. It feels fragile, like if I reset my browser or my clear my cache, my installed applications will disappear. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the blurring of the lines between bookmarks and installed applications.

All this is of course addressable with a lot more infrastructure and work from browser and OS makers. To me it seems like a lot of development to end up with something that behaves a lot like Electron, with the added easteregg of being able to access applications in a browser, without intending that anybody actually do so.

[jampekka]

> just one that may or may not rely much more heavily on the network at runtime and might work offline (or not).

PWAs can run fully offline using service workers.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...

> In Chromium it's buried under dots, "Cast, Save and Share" (which is a bizarre mashup of disparate functions), and finally "Install page as app".

Chromium supports prompting the user to install the app. There's also an icon in the address bar if the page has an app manifest.

https://khmyznikov.com/pwa-install/

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...

> The window that loads still has browser chrome, in the form of a back, refresh, and three dots button.

The window appearance and behavior can be changed using the app manifest, although getting rid of the three dots may be impossible in some platforms.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...

> I tried turning off my internet, and neither figma nor openDAW showed anything more than a blank page, which confirms my feeling of uncertainty around PWAs, namely, how do you know what will actually work offline.

Figma nor OpenDAW don't seem to be configured as offline PWAs.

> All this is of course addressable with a lot more infrastructure and work from browser and OS makers.

The problems you encountered are mostly solved in PWA APIs already, at least for Chromium based browsers. There is some variation in some features between browsers and OSs (Safari and iOS are particularly bad).

> To me it seems like a lot of development to end up with something that behaves a lot like Electron, with the added easteregg of being able to access applications in a browser, without intending that anybody actually do so.

PWAs are e.g. easier to install, have smaller footprint, are more portable and are a lot more secure. Not sure what you mean by "accessing applications in a browser". PWAs can't access anything a normal website can't.

[zb3]

> why "the browser" is apparently still the inevitable platform of the future.

Because it doesn't require trust. The browser actually got the permission model (almost - but there are extensions) right. I can safely open this and not worry about security.