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.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
