back to article Just a little heads up: Google is still trying to convince everyone that web apps don't suck

If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, Google's Chrome team might be a candidate for involuntary commitment. The ad biz's browser boffins are presiding over yet another Chrome Dev Summit in the hope of putting web applications on equal footing with native applications. "We …

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    1. JohnFen

      Re: I tried Squoosh

      "Then, to see if there was any phoning home during the process"

      Looking into this a bit more, there is phoning home involved in the process -- the application uses Google Analytics.

    2. nematoad

      Re: I tried Squoosh

      " ...but it does not seem to do anything network-wise once it's launched."

      Then you need wireshark.

  1. DropBear

    "If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"

    It's not and it never was. Getting the same results only means that the unavoidable uncertainty in the chaotic part of whatever it is you're doing over and over again wasn't large enough to affect the specific aspect of "the results" you were looking for - and quite often takes considerable effort to achieve on purpose. That said, I would have no objection to web apps failing to gain traction yet again.

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Yes. It'd be nice if house styles everywhere were updated to ban this idiotic cliché. It's as tiresome as snowclones or citing the dictionary.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But surely anything better than an "app" for everything ?

    If you're not willing or amenable to running an app in a browser, you end up with everyone + dog having to push their own - usually pisspoor, ill thought out and containing goodness-knows-what-mularkey "app" onto your device. Which is surely worse ? I mean I live in Birmingham, and every single Taxi outfit has now got their own "app". That's before you get to Uber. Surely it's better to have 5 web sites bookmarked, than install 5 apps ?

    I think physically, keyboards, mice, and decent size screen are going to be with us for a while. But ultimately, in the workplace and before that in the home, the concept of "the desktop" as a dedicated PC capable of doing the heavy lifting is fading away.

    Currently, the proliferation of "apps" is more akin to having to have a TV for every channel you want to watch, rather than simply retuning your existing TV to a new channel.

    1. vtcodger Silver badge

      Re: But surely anything better than an "app" for everything ?

      I think physically, keyboards, mice, and decent size screen are going to be with us for a while. But ultimately, in the workplace and before that in the home, the concept of "the desktop" as a dedicated PC capable of doing the heavy lifting is fading away.

      Maybe .... sort of ... Little personal computing boxes get more capable every year. And that'll presumably continue. The problem is the User Interface. What good would it be to have "desktop" or mainframe or supercomputer computing capacity in a unit the size of a pea, if I don't have a decent way to communicate with it? And it with me?

    2. David Nash Silver badge

      Re: But surely anything better than an "app" for everything ?

      I agree -- for things that are web-based services, stop trying to push apps on me all the time. I'm thinking of LinkedIn but many others also apply. Why do they all want me to have their app when they've already done a pretty good job of making the mobile web version very usable?

      For apps that work offline (surely that's unthinkable to the likes of Google?) maybe an app is better. I've not used one of these so-called progressive things.

    3. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: But surely anything better than an "app" for everything ?

      They don't need their own apps, and that is quite disorganized. However, would I rather that they have multiple apps or multiple web apps pushed onto my device? I'll choose real apps in this situation. The reason for this is that these apps probably all provide GPS location capabilities to find a car for me, and push notifications to alert me when that car has arrived. A standard app can also offer other features that a web app cannot. So my options are having apps for this additional functionality or changing what a web app can do so it can have the functionality we already have.

      Another issue that makes me choose native apps in this situation is accounts and privacy. If I'm doing this all with websites, I probably have to log in very often or let cookies and other data stay there forever. Apps don't need that, because they can store account details locally. Effectively, that's a cookie, but they are restricted to their own data so can't read other cookies that other apps have stored. I can also kill their app without affecting other things on the system in a way that is not as easy to do to a website.

      I prefer web to apps in many scenarios. Whenever the system typically involves sending data to a remote location so they can do something with it, that's a case for web. An app is rarely needed for this. But when the app needs to interact a lot with me, both sending me information and conveying my responses to a remote system, I go for the stable and somewhat trustworthy native code rather than the everything-in-javascript dream of the portable web app.

    4. JohnFen

      Re: But surely anything better than an "app" for everything ?

      "If you're not willing or amenable to running an app in a browser, you end up with everyone + dog having to push their own - usually pisspoor, ill thought out and containing goodness-knows-what-mularkey "app" onto your device. Which is surely worse ?"

      I don't think that's worse at all, personally. If a company can't produce a good native app, they certainly can't produce a good web app, since making a good web app is a much more difficult task.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A web guy called “le page”

  4. TheGreatCabbage

    Anything would be better than the depressing number of slow WebView-wrapper "apps", which even large companies like BT develop.

    My university has one and it's so bad that I ended up writing my own for displaying your timetable, which is literally 5 seconds faster to launch and has a load of extra features to boot.

  5. WibbleMe

    As a tool its a good thing.

    As a general website a PWA such a blog is a no but as a tool such as the ability to complete a form/document offline, add photos etc is very useful so for say medical or insurance purposes a like (i make PWA's and Hybid Apps for the App stores) these can be essential, but for getting the latest news basically its just a fancy bookmarker.

    The main reason PWA are being pushed Google (and Apple in some respect) are pushing these is that they don't have to go through an App store for the user to install them so there is less work for Google Play to interns of management and platform support, essentially they can spend less.

    If anyone want to try and make a PWA its rather easy then you just need basic javascript skills and a little HTMl knowlage. Install node.js and then Angular/CLI and a quick visit to youtube for a 5 min tutorial. Deploying your all you can use something like Google Firebase project as a server, no messing around.

    1. JohnFen

      Re: As a tool its a good thing.

      "The main reason PWA are being pushed Google (and Apple in some respect) are pushing these is that they don't have to go through an App store for the user to install them"

      You don't have to go through an app store to download and install applications on Android anyway, though.

  6. Rich 2 Silver badge
    Big Brother

    "We want to close the capability gap between the web and native and make it easy for developers to build great experiences on the open web,"

    I have to ask myself WHY? And the only reason I can come up with is because it's much easier for Google to spy on you if you're using one of its web applications than if you're not. They're not pushing this to give you and me the punter any benefit. They are doing it to make money.

    As for "Google refers to this expansion set of browser capabilities using the name of a toxic blowfish"

    ...sounds like an ideal name for anything Google has anything to do with

    1. vtcodger Silver badge

      I have to ask myself WHY? And the only reason I can come up with is because it's much easier for Google to spy on you if you're using one of its web applications than if you're not.

      Web applications are legitimately useful for collaboration. But that's not a very large market. There may be some other reasonable usages, but nothing comes immediately to mind.

  7. andy 103
    Boffin

    The browser is the limitation

    The thing is, back when I first was learning about web development (nearly 20 years ago), the web and browsers were considered "stateless". Browsers had no/limited access to a users file system because their primary purpose was to present content stored on a server, i.e. nothing to do with your local machine. The data transfer was effectively one way (web page --> browser).

    Nowadays there are ways to maintain state and ways to access a local filesystem. But the bottom line is that you're still running the application *in a browser*. Natively coded applications don't have to work around the constraints of a browser.

    You then have the issue of the large number of different browsers, with different capabilities. Just because Google want to develop these API's doesn't mean everyone can suddenly start using them. In fact it's sometimes less obvious that a web app won't function properly because you're using a particular browser than with a native application that you can't even install under the "wrong" architecture.

    It's an admirable effort from Google but they need to take a step back and think - a web app is running in a browser - and that will always limit it to some degree. Just because it runs fine in Chrome 500 doesn't mean everyone else has that version, or even knows about that. That's going to be a seriously limiting factor; not whether someone can code the relevant API's to get these things to theoretically work.

    1. David Nash Silver badge

      Re: The browser is the limitation

      And what's more, presumably that browser will have to have the superset of permissions needed by all the apps that run within it.

      What could possibly go wrong?

    2. vtcodger Silver badge

      Re: The browser is the limitation

      Just because Google want to develop these API's doesn't mean everyone can suddenly start using them.

      Good point. And it's worse than that. Inevitably, every browser will implement the APIs differently when they do implement them. Great. More buggy web sites. Exactly what an internet that barely works on good days doesn't need.

    3. AndrueC Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: The browser is the limitation

      Web apps will always be second class citizens because of their dependence on a browser. That doesn't mean that a web app can't look and feel almost as good as a native app but at the end of the day the cart cannot push the horse. Native applications can exist without web apps. Web apps cannot exist without native apps.

      1. JohnFen

        Re: The browser is the limitation

        "That doesn't mean that a web app can't look and feel almost as good as a native app"

        I think it does mean that. At least, I have yet to see anyone write a web-based application that is anywhere near as good as a native one. If it's possible (which I doubt), then it appears to be so difficult that nobody has managed to pull it off yet.

  8. Bryan Hall

    There is a place for both web apps and native apps.

    Not everything can be a web app - and not everything should be a native app.

    Choose wisely and use what makes sense instead of trying to make the square peg fit the triangle hole.

    1. JohnFen

      What is the place for web apps?

  9. sinsi

    What could possibly go wrong?

    prevent phones from locking the screen while a browser-based app is active

    It is usually more polite to ask.

    provide web apps with greater access to the native file system

    No. Fucking. Way.

    detect when users are away from their keyboard or the screen is locked

    And what, annoy them until they notice you?

    perform an arbitrary task at some point in the future

    So specific...

  10. BGatez

    web apps- nope

    What could go wrong with putting all your data on the net? Most suitable when going panrless in town square.

  11. JohnFen

    Hard no

    I simply won't use web apps, as I can't figure out how to adequately secure them.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To Google: Web apps suck

    I used to have a copy of sketchup.... something simple to design a new room or a teardrop trailer. I have several designs in the old sketchup. THEN they make a webapp, THEN they put a timelimit on it and start charging $$$ for something I barely use ..... no more webapp for me.

    google webapps are nothing more than a path to a subscription.

  13. Maty
    Headmaster

    insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

    This quote is very annoying for two reasons. Firstly because unless all the other variables in your environment are static you WILL get different results. Try throwing dice for a basic example.

    Secondly Einstein was not dumb enough to say that, and he didn't. As far as anyone knows the first use of the quote was by an obscure novelist called Rita Brown in 1983, by which time Einstein wasn't saying anything on account of being long dead,

    1. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

      Agreed on the misattribution point. I would much prefer it if this didn't happen.

      For most things, there is enough stability that doing them multiple times results in similar effects. With a broad definition of the action and the result, they do the same thing. See rolling a die (expect a number 1-6 or the die rolling away and under some piece of furniture) or slamming your hand in a door (expect pain and possible bleeding) for examples. I therefore find the definition useful for use with those people (E.G. my parents) who have, and most likely will again, sat in front of an interface, not knowing what to click to get their desired result, and will click the same button that definitely did not do it last time, expecting that it will work this time.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

        I therefore find the definition useful ...

        I suppose for people who fail to understand psychology - the psychology of random reinforcement, for example - a wildly incorrect definition of "insanity" would indeed seem "useful".

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

      an obscure novelist called Rita Brown

      Rita Mae Brown may well have coined the "doing the same thing" cliché (and it is indeed a marvelously annoying one), but she is by no measure "obscure". Anyone with even a passing familiarity with twentieth-century US literature should at least recognize her name.

  14. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

    Missed a web app feature

    That would be Chrome's built-in system of watching your every move and reporting it to Google. For the purpose of analyzing Chrome usage and syncing browser history, ha ha, of course. Nothing creepy. Nope. BTW, here are some adverts that are extremely personalized to you.

  15. a_yank_lurker

    Yawn

    I am not impressed with web apps overall. For some situations they are fine but for most a locally installed binary is correct solution. A local binary allows the user to work on files without needing an always on connection; a secure one is not always available. Also a binary is more efficient as it is at worst running directly on the interpreter or virtual machine not inside a browser and then an interpreter.

    Adding to the problems JackassScript is not a well designed language which makes complex software more difficult to write. There are many other languages available that are much better designed and are much better suited to writing complex software.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Web apps? Bah, humbug!

    I am, these days, a user, pure and simple. I haven't a clue about the technologies involved in the creation of phone apps or web apps, and I've extremely little experience of using phone apps, (just two that came, unasked for, on my phone; a map app and a weather app).

    At college I have to use Google classroom, which is, frankly, dreadful. The email side is apalling, and the classroom stuff appears to have been put together by people who don't actually care about students getting stuff done, nor any regard for folk who find the glare of all that white background painful.(before anyone suggests anything, I need lower contrast, light green backgrounds work well for me, not white on black screens) Having for many years had experience of the fun in getting documents created in Word/Open Office to be represented and printed correctly by t'other, Imagine my delight on finding that a document created in Libre Office at home doesn't fare any better when opened with Googles web-based monstrosity than when opened with Word - this despite Googles office software being based on the same fundamental code as Libre Office, I believe?

    Add to that, the college I go to is out in the sticks, and unless youv'e got a landline (or a wifi connection to a landline), you can forget about using web-based anything, 90% of the time. Or phonecalls, for that matter.

    Further, I'm still not convinced that there are enough programmers who understand how to make good usable GUIs never mind whether the application is native, web based or otherwise, and touchscreen stuff is just horrible if Android is anything to go by. IMNSHO of course.

    Leaving the best for last - if I have a WP or spreadsheet thats capable of doing the necessary on my PC or laptop (I wish I had one of those!) then why, by all that's holy, do I need it to be able to do the same things via the web as well? What advantage is there to me? I can see potential disadvantages - like inability to get my work and my data when there's no connection, or if Googles servers have an outage, but durned if I can see a single positive of using web-based office applications. Its just adding another potential point of failure in the process of getting work done.

    And that's quite aside from my loathing Google as a company. I will say that Google Scholar is quite useful though.

  17. The Central Scrutinizer

    I'll just keep running my *free software on my free OS thank you very much. I want my apps and my data on my machine, not on someone else's in "the cloud". The Internet connection here occasionally slows to pre dial up speeds... what fun that would be trying to compile C++ code,or even edit a photo shot in raw mode.

    Plus I just don't trust anyone to securely hold my data.

    *free as in you're in control of it, not someone else

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And

    Just a little heads up: Google is still trying to convince everyone that web apps don't suck

    And they'll respect you in the morning too...

  19. russsh

    Bridging the gap

    At the same time, Microsoft is bridging from the other side by making Office so network-heavy that using it (365 at least) is just as painful on a slow connection. Integration to OneDrive is particularly painful.

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