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 …

  1. Shadow Systems

    Web app? No thanks.

    You assume we have a network connection. Never assume: it makes an ass out of you. Some tasks can be presumed to have a connection, email & web surfing primarily, but others like a spreadsheet, document editing, calculator, solitare, or just looking at family vacation pics are not among them. Sure we MIGHT do those things through a web interface, but what's the point?

    I've got work to do, I need it to work just as fast as the desktop running the program, not to have to wait for a site to load, refresh between each action, & eventually cough up the results. If I'm editing video & have to wait for a web based interface to react to the task at hand, it's going to take FAR too long to be of any real benefit to the user. If I'm dealing with a locally stored, locally generated, & locally maintained database file, relying on a web interface to interact with it seems rather counterproductive.

    A SmartPhone may need a web based application in order to Get Shit Done, but then I can't imagine writing a PhD dissertation on your SmartPhone...

    1. A.P. Veening Silver badge

      Re: Web app? No thanks.

      I can see one valid possibility for an app when using a PC: cryptocurrency mining. That is resource and energy intensive and I wouldn't mind offloading that to Google's servers while harvesting.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Web app? No thanks.

      I think there is some misunderstanding of what PWAs are capable of now. Offline capability exists and in many cases would run just as fast as a traditional app.

      As for video editing, this is not really the core focus of PWAs. Horses for courses.

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: Web app? No thanks.

        PWAs are a mess, as is anything Electron-based or similar (Skype 8, Teams).

        The only thing they bring to the desktop are terrible web-like user interfaces and terrible web-like development processes (Agile).

        1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

          Re: Web app? No thanks.

          PWAs are a mess

          You seem to be conflating two things: PWAs and Electron/Node.Js based desktop apps.

          PWAs are great additions to websites and easy to implement for mobile devices. Electron isn't required as they just need a browser runtime. Lots of apps can be implemented as PWAs and distributed without having to use an app store.

          Bridging the gap from mobile to desktop is part of the ChromeOS everywhere strategy which is less interesting and more of a challenge. Some desktop/mobile apps work well – Telegram seems well done to me – others less so.

          1. Dan 55 Silver badge

            Re: Web app? No thanks.

            I'm not confusing it, JavaScript just does not do convincing desktop apps no matter how the app got there. This is what AC wrote:

            Offline capability exists and in many cases would run just as fast as a traditional app.

            This is just not true. If you think it is, lay off the kool aid.

            1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

              Re: Web app? No thanks.

              Offline capability exists and in many cases would run just as fast as a traditional app.

              Given that a lot of apps are just a webview that talks REST to an http server I think it is a reasonable claim. But, again, they currently make most sense on mobile devices.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Web app? No thanks.

                "Given that a lot of apps are just a webview that talks REST to an http server I think it is a reasonable claim."

                No it's not. REST has nothing to do with rendering, ps scheduling or even simple things like FS access or user perms. REST is a glorified, text based transmission for web APIs that are _NOT_ built on web apps. As the article describes, the new ones will still C/C++ and in Chrome only, as most other browsers reject most of Chrome's new API "standards".

                All that said, yes you can put apps on the web, but once you cross the boundaries of application from a simple calendar to a spreadsheet editor, you notice the creep (good luck with WebGL, it just isn't happening). The only exception would be serving static frames in a web app for something like video chat, just don't make that chat interactive like a game.

                1. nematoad
                  FAIL

                  Re: Web app? No thanks.

                  "..."make the web a first class platform "

                  The question is: first class for whom?

                  Google and their data grabbing pals?

                  People with FTTP or those living in areas where the ISP and telecoms companies have decided that it is profitable to deliver gigabit connections?

                  If you are not in one of these groups, and I am not, then I reckon that you will be out of luck.

                  And anyway, who wants to put their critical applications and data onto the internet? As far as I can see that's just asking for trouble.

                2. Charlie Clark Silver badge
                  Facepalm

                  Re: Web app? No thanks.

                  No it's not. REST has nothing to do with rendering, ps scheduling or even simple things like FS access or user perms

                  I never suggested it was I specifically referred to the huge number of apps that do depend on REST. Of course, it doesn't work for everything but for all those travel & search apps, it's great idea.

                  1. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: Web app? No thanks.

                    "I never suggested it was I specifically referred to the huge number of apps that do depend on REST. Of course, it doesn't work for everything but for all those travel & search apps, it's great idea."

                    So, calendars? The "apps" you're talking about are probably already webapps run in a sandbox. What Google is talking about here, is to pull you aboard their "Chrome as your desktop" strategy so they can get you off of KDE, Gnome, etc... and possibly off your OS onto ChromeOS. This is a lock in play, but I don't think that even Google thinks they can fool you (it's probably just a few dudes that just can't give up hope on Google dictatorship).

              2. JohnFen

                Re: Web app? No thanks.

                "Given that a lot of apps are just a webview that talks REST to an http server I think it is a reasonable claim."

                Those are not "traditional applications". They barely even qualify as "applications".

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Web app? No thanks.

              > JavaScript just does not do convincing desktop apps no matter how the app got there

              Not a fan of Qt5?

          2. JohnFen

            Re: Web app? No thanks.

            "PWAs are great additions to websites"

            I strongly disagree with this assertion. PWAs threaten to make the web an even more dangerous and hostile medium than it already is.

            1. Charlie Clark Silver badge
              Stop

              Re: Web app? No thanks.

              I strongly disagree with this assertion. PWAs threaten to make the web an even more dangerous and hostile medium than it already is.

              How exactly? Service workers have no access to the DOM and all code is tied to the origin. I'm no fan of Javascript everywhere, and particularly dislike SPAs ("Single Page Apps"), but baseless scaremongering helps no one.

              1. JohnFen

                Re: Web app? No thanks.

                How can I secure a WPA so that it cannot communicate over the internet? I haven't really figured that out, and unless I can do that, they are too risky to use.

                Any code that executes in your browser without you specifically asking it to is a security risk. Doubly so because it's inside the browser, where it effectively masquerades as your browser and therefore can dodge external security mechanisms. The more capabilities that are made available to that code, the more dangerous the situation becomes.

                What I see WPAs as doing is unnecessarily escalating the already furiously heated battle between attackers and defenders. That's really why I object to the notion. Why do we want to do this? In the end, it only makes the web less usable to the masses.

                If you want to make an application, make a real application. Don't tie it to web engines.

          3. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

            Re: Web app? No thanks.

            PWAs are great additions to websites

            Why? What's "great" about them?

      2. JohnFen

        Re: Web app? No thanks.

        "Offline capability exists and in many cases would run just as fast as a traditional app."

        Yes, and those cases are when you're comparing them to poorly written traditional apps. Regardless of that, the ability of PWAs to run offline is not a selling point for me. Just the opposite. I don't want the risk of mistaking a PWA for a real application.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Web app? No thanks.

      As has been commented, you wouldn't do high end video editing on a PWA, that's ridiculous and offline use is available and pretty seamless.

      Think of about 25 years ago when companies used to create PC applications to download to view their product catalogue or even early purchase of goods etc. You would never download an application from a company onto your PC nowadays - just to see marketing information or a function specific to that company. Even most general applications are now served over the web - for some of our users all the applications they use are web based.

      So imagine a situation for a company that has a good web presence, an ecommerce site, useful tools and functions a backend that has api links into third party products. Your marketing department now want 'an app'. Marketing: "we need an APP", You: "Why?", Marketing "Everyone has an app it's embarrising we don't have an app".

      You now have a choice, go to an agency to build an app in two different flavours that duplicates 80% of what your website does only you need to create separate version of it for each mobile platform and get it accepted by an app store and risk that any fees on it have to be paid to the respective app store owners. If ever your third party links get changed significantly you have to update all versions at the same time and disable all the old versions that people may have. All information and data needs to be update the same on every platform - web/apps. Your marketing department when they change web information using their CMS now need to add requests into the app agency to make changes as well and publish a new version.. etc...etc

      Or you can wrap the website in an app skin, or read in the CMS information from the database directly and remember to test all changes to the information on every platform...or...

      Yo ucreate a responsive website for your web that works perfectly on all platforms and utilise PWA on the mobile side to add app like functionality such as an app button, offline use, GPS, notifications etc with one code base to maintain, one web development team, one CMS, write once run anywhere etc etc.

      The PWA part just means you don't have to go native for when the marketing department says "But we have to have an app as we want to use xyz functionality of the phone".

      1. Teiwaz

        Re: Web app? No thanks.

        You would never download an application from a company onto your PC nowadays

        I agree, a native application for things like ordering products is just a duplication of effort if you have a web based version, but aside from the 'have to have an app' internal pushes you have users perfectly willing to install any and all sorts of rubbish on their phones..

        Native apps are fine for applications that need the efficiency and speed, but cause phone platform lock-in where user is locked out if their device can't run Android or IOS apps.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "You would never download an application from a company"

        Sky just switched to a player instead of delivering contents into a browser - from what I see till now, it works far better than the previous web incarnation.

      3. JohnFen

        Re: Web app? No thanks.

        "Think of about 25 years ago when companies used to create PC applications to download to view their product catalogue or even early purchase of goods etc. You would never download an application from a company onto your PC nowadays - just to see marketing information or a function specific to that company."

        True. I wasn't willing to do that 25 years ago, and I'm not willing to now. But I see no reason why PWAs would be needed to accomplish this. A normal web site does the job nicely.

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Web app? No thanks.

        Why has this guy been downvoted? He is explaining (with, I gather, the benefit of some experience-borne knowledge) the business driver behind why these technologies came to exist.

        You may not like marketing apps? Fine, but that's hardly that poster's fault.

    4. John Lilburne

      Re: Web app? No thanks.

      Leaving aside the issues of throughput, downtime etc. The main problem with web apps is that they tend to assume some form of cloud storage and push towards subscriptions. Surrendering your data to some organization that may or may not support your data/workflow in a few years time is suicidal.

      The web is ephemeral and so are its apps. How many web based systems have gone? How many change their fundamental agreement between the user and app? There is no guarantee that any web app will be there next week, or won't have changed such that it no longer supports your workflow

      You are far better long term relying on an app that you can download, that runs on your own hardware, and where you retain control of your data. Use the web for communication, and offsite storage.

      1. Shadow Systems

        Re: Web app? No thanks.

        At John Lilburne, re: the cloud.

        By all the Elder Gods & their noodly appendages, THANK YOU! Someone finally states the fekkin' bleedin' obvious. The moment you put your business eggs in someone elses basket you can kiss your business goodbye.

        "$X as a service" is a marketing euphamism for "we'll fuck you over when you cease being a cash cow." If they decide to change something that breaks a function you require, you have no fall back except to claw all your data back & try to start from scratch with someone elses product. If you download a program & an update breaks it, you can always uninstall the update, restore the function you need, & get back to work. Even if you have to completely uninstall, scrub the system of every last trace, & reinstall the program from the original download, you've still got the ability to go back to a point where you could Get Shit Done. You can't do that with a web app (unless you are the one writing it).

        MS has proven what a SNAFUBAR "software as a service" can be, just look at all the UI changes & subsystem breakages to start the migraine, and relying on such a basket is a quick way to lose all your eggs.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Web app? No thanks.

      > You assume we have a network connection.

      The whole web app thing is completely orthogonal to the presence or absence of network connectivity.

    6. shodanbo

      Re: Web app? No thanks.

      A web app is code (js/html/css) loaded from an internet endpoint.

      A native app is code loaded from disk.

      After that, both can make the same mistake and assume that a network is available when its not.

      The advantage to a native app is the app can load even without a network. A web app *could* load without a network if it had loaded at least once with a network, but that's really up to the browser and the developers of the code.

      1. Teiwaz

        Re: Web app? No thanks.

        The advantage to a native app is the app can load even without a network.

        If the native app is delivering internet content there's no advantage whatsoever.

        And as an awful lot of applications merely exist to harvest user data and stream it back to HQ there's little incentive to build something that does run sans network connection.

        The only reason native is usually chosen over webapp is market research tells them it'll be better recieved, and other positive metrics.

      2. JohnFen

        Re: Web app? No thanks.

        "The advantage to a native app is the app can load even without a network."

        There are far more advantages than that. A native app is also faster and more efficient, can make use of special abilities of the platform it's built for, won't change unexpectedly because the developer decided to change something, can be more easily managed from a security point of view, and so forth.

      3. comradequinn

        Re: Web app? No thanks.

        Yeah and you need a network connection at least once to download the App too; unless it's a baked in one

  2. bombastic bob Silver badge
    Devil

    I messed with the 'web app' idea a bit...

    I actually had a use for this for a prototype eye exam device that never went past the clinical trial phase (unfortunately), but that's the world of new product development...

    In short, there was an android fondleslab that became a remote controlling device for the equipment, which also had some live video feed and charts and command buttons and whatnot. It was quite literally a web site on the LAN, but it looked like you were running "an app".

    The web server [written b me] was also a device control application, running as a daemon under Linux. The slab and the linux box were connected via a wifi access point. The serial output from the Linux box went to a microcontroller, which did things on the equipment, involving various blinky lights and stuff. The camera was a regular USB web cam, re-purposed to take continuous video of a patient's eyeball.

    To prevent the web page from having unnecessary "decorations" around it, I embedded it into a 5 line (or so) "web application" wrapper app thingy that basically invoked the web server on its hard coded IP address and let you navi-guess it via the slab, without any of those Chromium decorations etc..

    So I guess in a "light client heavy server" application like that, it made sense and free'd up some screen real estate.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I messed with the 'web app' idea a bit...

      Just a shout out to Bob for sharing his actual hands-on experience.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Terminator

    Give it up, Google

    We know it frustrates you when people run apps on iOS or applications on Windows, and you can't see what the users are doing like you can with Chrome for web activity and Android for Play Store apps. Sorry, you don't need to see what every computer user on the planet is doing all the time. No one wants that dystopian future, go away!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Give it up, Google

      PWAs are an open standard and are utilised by every major mobile browser to some degree - admittedly Safari is slow to the party but it is always generally a few years behind the curve on the latest standards.

      In reality it is far easier for Google to make money by having apps in the Play Store than it is using a PWA. In the Play Store they get a nice chunk of the initial sale and any ongoing in-app purchases, it is also far easier to incorporate Google's advertising system. On the web they get no money, can't dictate your browser and it is a lot easier to insert advertising engine of your choice.

  4. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Security...

    The File System API, also known as the Writable Files API, which provides web apps with greater access to the native file system.

    I can see no future security issues here with apps from a remote server accessing my local filesystem. Nope, none at all....

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Re: Security...

      We've been here before...

      IE6, here we go again!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Security...

      You will have to allow it, a random drive-by website can't access it and it is sandboxed as well.

      Compared to installing some 'shareware' on a PC it is like fort knox.

      1. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: Security...

        I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I'll grant that installing a binary that is untrusted is a security nightmare, because it has a great deal of access to the disk. The other side of that coin is that granting a web app access to the disk also lets them have similar levels of access. It may be sandboxed, but there are infinitely many security problems allowing things to exit their sandbox or run stuff inside their sandbox that affect things outside it, E.G. putting some malware in there and using the scheduler to run it. So don't allow anything untrustworthy to have access to your disk.

        On this front, binaries have an advantage in that they can quite easily be loaded into virtual machines, taken apart, run through malware scanners, blocked by security policies, run inside custom sandbox products, and the like. Most of these things can't be done easily or at all with a web app. You can run it in a VM, but the code still knows where you are because it can require a network connection to start. Most other things in the list are completely impossible. What's more, a binary doesn't change itself, or if it does, you can find out. A web app runs the latest code that was pushed to you. That new code could be an update from the authors, the result of someone getting into the server, a result of someone changing the source for a nodejs component, or someone deciding the application doesn't need to exist anymore. This leaves a large landscape for injection of malware, and I don't want it.

        In addition, there eventually comes a time where you need programs with disk access. When dealing with data, sometimes you want more than one program to be able to modify it. You use program 1 for some functionality, save the file, and use program 2 to do something different. Web apps are going to make that a disaster. For example, I give you the app mentioned in the article that compresses images. We already have a bunch of tools that compress images, and they can be quite fast. Does the web interface add anything to this process, even assuming it does the job as well as something using the GPU for the math? Somehow, I doubt it. A graphical program with access to the disk can make it really easy to do batch compressions. A command line program can allow scripting of the compression process. A web app can... it can compress images. What is the benefit?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Security...

          "I'm going to have to disagree with you there."

          TLDR, but you forgot to mention that if one website has access, then all their "partners" could too with 3rd party js scripts... that's a insanely large tree branch with an insane amount of attack points... crazy.

        2. Korev Silver badge
          Joke

          Re: Security...

          We already have a bunch of tools that compress images, and they can be quite fast. Does the web interface add anything to this process

          Yes, latency

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "installing a binary that is untrusted is a security nightmare"

          Mobile OSes shown you can sandbox native applications as well - it's not really that difficult, it's just what the OS APIs let them do. Java and .NET promised to sandbox applications as well, even if many ways to evade the sandbox were later discovered. WinRT and UWP applications are another example of native sandboxed applications.

          The problem of sandboxed applications is their little interoperability with other ones. If the applications are wholly self-contained, say a streaming player, or a game, that's not an issue. But for applications than need to interoperate with others - say an email client that needs to receive or pass data to other applications, or the OS itself (i.e. to attach a log file...), that becomes a far bigger issue.

          But you say "untrusted" - that's why digital signatures of executables are not a bad thing, of course if the trust chain is reliable.

          1. JohnFen

            Re: "installing a binary that is untrusted is a security nightmare"

            "Mobile OSes shown you can sandbox native applications as well"

            They have? I can only speak to Android, but I don't think that's been shown at all. While it is possible to distribute and run native apps on Android, there are very few in existence. Almost every Android app you've ever run has been implemented in Java or a Java derivative, and Java applications are not native applications -- they're running in a VM.

      2. Missing Semicolon Silver badge

        Re: Security...

        "you have to enable it" = "click here to see puppies!"

      3. JohnFen

        Re: Security...

        "a random drive-by website can't access it and it is sandboxed as well."

        Your faith in such measures is charming.

    3. bazza Silver badge

      Re: Security...

      I can see no future security issues here with apps from a remote server accessing my local filesystem. Nope, none at all....

      Hmmm, I sense sarcasm, touch of irony...

  5. RyokuMas
    Joke

    Too late, too late!

    "...that bridge the persistent gap between web and native apps"

    Microsoft already did that when they build data slurping into Windows 10.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Forced updates

    At least with a locally installed application I can decide not to install the latest and supposedly greatest version, in which functionality has been removed, broken or changed so it no longer works the way I want it to. With web apps the provider has free range to change whatever they want.

    However, that problem fades into insignificance compared to the lack of privacy with your data being examined on their server. No thanks, Google, not a chance.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Forced updates

      Or worse "forced uninstalls". I've only had it via Steam DLC/mods so far, but I shy away from it because "closing down/unsupported" mods/DLC get removed automatically. No thanks!

  7. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    I tried Squoosh

    Damn effective in reducing the file size of an image, I must admit.

    Then, to see if there was any phoning home during the process, I quit it, relaunched it, and cut my WiFi. It worked a charm. Of course, I still need the WiFi to call the page, but it does not seem to do anything network-wise once it's launched.

    1. JohnFen

      Re: I tried Squoosh

      "Then, to see if there was any phoning home during the process, I quit it, relaunched it, and cut my WiFi. It worked a charm"

      That is a wholly inadequate test to see if phoning home is happening. You need to sniff the traffic generated instead.

    2. 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.

    3. nematoad

      Re: I tried Squoosh

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

      Then you need wireshark.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A web guy called “le page”

  11. 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.

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

  14. 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.

  15. 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?

  16. 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...

  17. BGatez

    web apps- nope

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

  18. JohnFen

    Hard no

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

  19. 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.

  20. 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.

  21. 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.

  22. 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.

  23. 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.

  24. 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

  25. 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...

  26. 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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