211–220 of 275 posts
That's too bad. Chrome Apps allows TCP/UDP communication and it could create interesting apps.
+1 I'm still using JSTorrent ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jstorrent/anhdpjpo... ). It's impossible to implement the BitTorrent protocol using a webapp, which means that once Chrome Apps are gone I'll have to revert to using a native client, which I don't trust one bit.
First of all, this was announced more than 3 years ago, and it still won't happen for another 2.5 years. Second of all, this should be treated as good news for the HN crowd: Google is transitioning from a proprietary, Chrome-only app model to the open-standard, PWA model. Who doesn't support that? There are a bunch of "typical Google cancelling a product" comments here. But for real, I simply cannot imagine any Chrom…
I agree that this was a terrible idea from day one and am glad it has been killed and will soon be buried. But this: "typical Google cancelling a product" is still an important message. Google routinely floats out APIs, services, and platforms and encourages their use despite fatal flaws that mean they are doomed from day one. And some developers fall for it and later have to pay the price. Hopefully, the repeated wa…
For most use cases, there are better options now than Chrome apps. ServiceWorkers didn't exist when Chrome apps were introduced. Neither did wasm, and its precursors NaCl and PNaCl were scoped to just Chrome apps, not to the public web.
Chrome did a very good job at a) building a platform that developers could use right then and b) working with other browsers and standards committees to get enough features implemented to replace what they built. They said, no, we shouldn't have a proprietary thing called "Chrome apps," we should just build it into the web platform so that people who don't use Chrome can use them too.
And they set a very long (many years) timeframe for shutting down their initial version of the thing.
This is exactly what I want a platform provider to do. I don't want "Chrome apps" any more than I want Flash or ActiveX or "Best viewed in Internet Explorer." But also, I do want platform providers to build platforms - I don't want them to refuse to build platforms on the grounds that they don't know the right answer yet and they can't immediately standardize something right now. I'm glad Flash and ActiveX are dead, but I'm glad they existed because they proved that the platform is valuable, if only you could implement it in a reasonable way. I'm glad ActiveX's original version of XMLHttpRequest existed because it proved that there was demand to standardize the version we now have.
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I agree that this was a terrible idea from day one and am glad it has been killed and will soon be buried. But this: "typical Google cancelling a product" is still an important message. Google routinely floats out APIs, services, and platforms and encourages their use despite fatal flaws that mean they are doomed from day one. And some developers fall for it and later have to pay the price. Hopefully, the repeated wa…
> But this: "typical Google cancelling a product" is still an important message. But it's one that appears with such regularity in HN comments that it drowns out all other discussion. I've frequently seen otherwise interesting posts related to Google derailed into yet another pile on - or even worse full of people that think they are being witty by posting "how soon before it's cancelled?"
I legitimately don't think most people are trying to be funny when they say things like this. I think they feel (as I feel) that it's not worthing becoming reliant on Google's new fancy products, because there is a high likelihood they stop working in a few short years.
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You’re interpereting it as someone being witty, but consider that people have legitimate concerns and are supplying mountains of concrete evidence for their position.
I wasn't disputing the validity of their complaint. That's orthogonal to being unfunny through repetition.
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I agree that this was a terrible idea from day one and am glad it has been killed and will soon be buried. But this: "typical Google cancelling a product" is still an important message. Google routinely floats out APIs, services, and platforms and encourages their use despite fatal flaws that mean they are doomed from day one. And some developers fall for it and later have to pay the price. Hopefully, the repeated wa…
This is probably going to happen and soon... And then next they'll kill off extensions, and then Chrome will become the next "Internet Explorer"... One of the things that people will take for granted is the effectiveness of extensions that work as Ad blockers which brought online tracking to a grinding halt. Google because of their advertising services has always wanted to suppress the ability of people in blocking a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that this was a terrible idea from day one and am glad it has been killed and will soon be buried. But this: "typical Google cancelling a product" is still an important message. Google routinely floats out APIs, services, and platforms and encourages their use despite fatal flaws that mean they are doomed from day one. And some developers fall for it and later have to pay the price. Hopefully, the repeated wa…
> Google routinely floats out APIs, services, and platforms and encourages their use despite fatal flaws that mean they are doomed from day one. For most use cases, there are better options now than Chrome apps. ServiceWorkers didn't exist when Chrome apps were introduced. Neither did wasm, and its precursors NaCl and PNaCl were scoped to just Chrome apps, not to the public web. Chrome did a very good job at a) build…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are some chrome apps that you can't do as a PWA or Chrome extension. For example, there's a local webserver that serves up a folder over http. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-server-for-chr...
A local web server is something that can easily be setup on desktop and mobile outside of Chrome.
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+1 I'm still using JSTorrent ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jstorrent/anhdpjpo... ). It's impossible to implement the BitTorrent protocol using a webapp, which means that once Chrome Apps are gone I'll have to revert to using a native client, which I don't trust one bit.
Why do you think it is impossible. There are plenty of JS BitTorrent implementations.
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> Google routinely floats out APIs, services, and platforms and encourages their use despite fatal flaws that mean they are doomed from day one. For most use cases, there are better options now than Chrome apps. ServiceWorkers didn't exist when Chrome apps were introduced. Neither did wasm, and its precursors NaCl and PNaCl were scoped to just Chrome apps, not to the public web. Chrome did a very good job at a) build…
Is there any way to bypass CORS in a PWA? Because Chrome Apps were a really handy way of writing GUI utilities without having to go full Electron.
(I don't totally understand the difference between a Chrome app and an extension that turns itself into a PWA, both are browser-specific and both are distributed through the Chrome web store, right?)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that this was a terrible idea from day one and am glad it has been killed and will soon be buried. But this: "typical Google cancelling a product" is still an important message. Google routinely floats out APIs, services, and platforms and encourages their use despite fatal flaws that mean they are doomed from day one. And some developers fall for it and later have to pay the price. Hopefully, the repeated wa…
> But this: "typical Google cancelling a product" is still an important message. But it's one that appears with such regularity in HN comments that it drowns out all other discussion. I've frequently seen otherwise interesting posts related to Google derailed into yet another pile on - or even worse full of people that think they are being witty by posting "how soon before it's cancelled?"
See, for example, the second ranked subthread in this very story, from a user who apparently thinks this change is going to brick all Chromebooks; and the flood of responses talking about things like refund policy drowning out the tiny handful of comments pointing out that this the premise was a complete misunderstanding of what is happening.
HN can't rationally talk about Google any more. It's kind of depressing.