I only ever used one-the SSH client. It was far nicer than PUTTY for those occasions where I needed to SSH from windows. Maybe I'll just do it from Termux on my phone from now on.
Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section
61–70 of 144 posts
Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is actually "negative" support in iOS. You can add a website to your homescreen in safari, but when you do it uses a different rendering engine, with different levels of support. Take WebRTC which was recently (partially) added to iOS. It will work great in safari, but if you add the site to your homescreen, it is no longer supported. The job of telling users to remove homescreen shortcuts to use a new feature…
Can’t you automatically detect this problem and tell the users when they try to do this?
Yes, but people become untrustworthy very quickly.
It doesn't make any sense to them, so they distrust it. Especially because we had been encouraging the act of bookmarking our web app on the homescreen for years (since it works great for our use case! Offline access is possible, loads quickly, no worries of apple shutting us down, and it's as cross platform as it gets). Also the wording is difficult. Telling users to open this same page, but in safari is confusing, and they need to login again, and navigate to that page again.
Imagine if a website told you that if you had previously "bookmarked" their page in your desktop browser, that you had to remove the bookmark to use a feature. You'd be skeptical at the very least right? It's a strange request...
Not to mention that even detecting it is kind of broken. The feature looks like it's available (opposed to pre ios 11 where the functions didn't exist), but when you go to use them they throw a generic exception (which can mean anything from they are in the "added to homescreen" browser on ios, the camera randomly crashed on android, another app is currently using the camera, or it just didn't work for some unknown reason).
So we have to check for the nonstandard `navigator.standalone` property, then just assume it won't work for the user. If iOS 12 adds support for this, we will need to update our app again and remove this block, but only if they are on iOS 12...
It's just a giant fucking mess.
Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is virtually no iOS support though. Even though service worker and app manifest are being worked on at the moment in Webkit I think it'll be a while before we see safari/mobile safari updated. I completely agree PWAs are the way forward though.
That's Apple's problem though and they've been lagging behind for quite some time. On Android it's possible for example to run Facebook as a web app, because Chrome on Android can deliver notifications, keeping that connection persistent, so even after the page has been closed. And this is pretty cool because the browser is a much better sandbox than the OS. Now I use an iPhone and I'm very uncomfortable giving acces…
They are not lagging, they are obstructing. Google wants to push users to the web because they control search. Apple wants to push people to their proprietary app store. They have consistently obstructed anything that brings native app features to the browser.
Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section
#64Honestly, I'm all in for PWAs in favour of Chrome Apps. To the final user, a PWA will work the same: an icon and a chrome-less window. However, they are built on top of open standards, so any browser can support PWAs and provide the same experience to their users, unlike Chrome apps, which only were supposed to work in Chrome. I hope that in the transition, we see more and more progressive web applications. PWAs have…
Do you know whether PWAs can access the local file system (which is a basic requirement for a particular Chrome app I use heavily)?
Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many companies outside IT see software development as a cost center, ideally outsourced somewhere, not as something where UI/UX matters.
> Many companies outside IT see software development as a cost center, ideally outsourced somewhere, not as something where UI/UX matters. I work in IT and I see it as a small increase in UX for an order of magnitude increase in cost. I don't see how e.g. making Spotify or Slack into native apps would dramatically improve their UX. In contrast, I think many coders are overly sensitive to CPU and memory usage to such…
When Slack on iOS hangs when I am trying to switch channels — or I get irregularly delayed notifications.. or glitching when trying to copy paste.
Slack for iOS is pretty terrible in terms of stability and quality.
Writing an actual native app in Swift isn’t that hard and they’re Slack — one would think they could afford to hire the proper developers.
It’s hoghly irritating when I’m a paying customer of a fairly big tech company and they think saving money on pseudo-native for iOS is ok. They think it’s ok to provide a shitty “near native” experience in the name of crosss platform. iOS and Android are different systems. They have different devices; it’s ridiculous to ship the same app.
Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section
#66I only ever used one-the SSH client. It was far nicer than PUTTY for those occasions where I needed to SSH from windows. Maybe I'll just do it from Termux on my phone from now on.
You could also install the WSL and a nice terminal emulator of your choice. Though if you need to SSH from a Windows box only on rare occasions, the phone might be enough.
Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section
#67[deleted]
Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section
#68Honestly, I'm all in for PWAs in favour of Chrome Apps. To the final user, a PWA will work the same: an icon and a chrome-less window. However, they are built on top of open standards, so any browser can support PWAs and provide the same experience to their users, unlike Chrome apps, which only were supposed to work in Chrome. I hope that in the transition, we see more and more progressive web applications. PWAs have…
Do you know whether PWAs can access the local file system (which is a basic requirement for a particular Chrome app I use heavily)?
Yes. In chrome only:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_and_Di...
It gives JavaScript access to its very own, empty, sand-boxed VFS. However, you can give the page access to directories manually with drag-n-drop or a directory selecting input tag. So if the app needs access to just one parent directory then you're good to go. If you need the app to have indiscriminate access to the entire filesystem then you might be able to give it C:/ (or whatever other root dir) but I have never actually tried it.
Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section
#69Hopefully this convinced the last person still gullible enough to believe on Google's interest to maintain long term (let's say, more than a decade) any service that's not Search, Ads, YouTube, Gmail or Android. I wouldn't build much on GAE either...
More evidence that Google is hurting financially.
Thus far, Google's major platforms have had roughly the same longevity as a typical series C startup. I will keep this in mind the next time Google announces a promising platform technology.
Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section
#70Honestly, I'm all in for PWAs in favour of Chrome Apps. To the final user, a PWA will work the same: an icon and a chrome-less window. However, they are built on top of open standards, so any browser can support PWAs and provide the same experience to their users, unlike Chrome apps, which only were supposed to work in Chrome. I hope that in the transition, we see more and more progressive web applications. PWAs have…
The problem with PWAs is they do not provide the same access as a Chrome App (file system, sockets...) so it is not a replacement for those Apps using that functionality.
Just another case of Chrome running in like a bull and doing one thing then breaking it later. :(
Anyone who needs the low level functionality will end up with a native app that use native messaging to talk to Chrome. Or just stands alone.