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The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

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Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#11

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

mohanmcgeek wrote: post #2

Electron apps are still desktop apps. The web however did eat the desktop: everything other the browser and the text editor is now a web app. I have literally 4 apps that I use on my machine: terminal and postman in addition to the above. I am wondering why mobile apps too haven't entirely been replaced by Web apps

>I am wondering why mobile apps too haven't entirely been replaced by Web apps

One reason is we don't have unlimited energy sources on mobile devices. I am yet to see a non-trivial "web app" that can run fast without drawing kilowatts from the outlet.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#12

Post by bsenftner »

Even for 2017, this is extremely late thinking. Back in '10 it was clear the consumer desktop was dying a rapid death. Now professional and business software are going the same way, and it is no wonder because nobody respects desktop development anymore. The advent of tools like Cosmopolatan libc are looking too late and too "hard" for new developers to catch on, so far...

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#13

Post by esalman »

mohanmcgeek wrote: post #2

Electron apps are still desktop apps. The web however did eat the desktop: everything other the browser and the text editor is now a web app. I have literally 4 apps that I use on my machine: terminal and postman in addition to the above. I am wondering why mobile apps too haven't entirely been replaced by Web apps

I use VScode for code and text editing (mostly Latex etc.) which is also Electron.

Also, I don't really use mobile apps for most social media which have working mobile web pages.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#14

Post by mastrsushi »

There’s nothing wrong with the industry wanting to switch to layout engines for desktop applications.

The problem is that this type of runtime environment is still fairly new. Desktop OS’s should have HTML/JS runtime built into the application layer, maybe even deeper. It’s such a dominant user functionality these days.

Instead we get a bunch of headless chrome instances. There needs to be an engine that maybe isn’t as performant as Electron, but is much smaller in memory and can handle these apps like Discord.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#16

Post by d3nj4l »

bsenftner wrote: post #12

Even for 2017, this is extremely late thinking. Back in '10 it was clear the consumer desktop was dying a rapid death. Now professional and business software are going the same way, and it is no wonder because nobody respects desktop development anymore. The advent of tools like Cosmopolatan libc are looking too late and too "hard" for new developers to catch on, so far...

Re: cosmopolitan libc: As cool as it is, I don't think the barrier to widespread adoption of C as a greenfield language for application development was ever that things didn't run cross-platform, it was, you know, the footguns and complexity of building anything significant in C.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#17

Post by Razengan »

irrational wrote: post #7
mohanmcgeek wrote: post #2

Electron apps are still desktop apps. The web however did eat the desktop: everything other the browser and the text editor is now a web app. I have literally 4 apps that I use on my machine: terminal and postman in addition to the above. I am wondering why mobile apps too haven't entirely been replaced by Web apps

>I am wondering why mobile apps too haven't entirely been replaced by Web apps Apple has made it so that every browser on their mobile devices is basically really Safari under the hood. And they have purposefully crippled Safari to push developers to the lucrative app store. Nothing is going to change until this changes, either through consumer behavior or through legislation.

Web apps purposefully cripple mobile performance, battery life and accessibility. Nothing is going to change until this changes.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#18

Post by Razengan »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #4
mohanmcgeek wrote: post #2

Electron apps are still desktop apps. The web however did eat the desktop: everything other the browser and the text editor is now a web app. I have literally 4 apps that I use on my machine: terminal and postman in addition to the above. I am wondering why mobile apps too haven't entirely been replaced by Web apps

>I am wondering why mobile apps too haven't entirely been replaced by Web apps Harder to track people and feed them ads.

> Harder to track people and feed them ads.

In native apps, you mean?

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#19

Post by speedgoose »

mohanmcgeek wrote: post #2

Electron apps are still desktop apps. The web however did eat the desktop: everything other the browser and the text editor is now a web app. I have literally 4 apps that I use on my machine: terminal and postman in addition to the above. I am wondering why mobile apps too haven't entirely been replaced by Web apps

You don't have a lot web apps on mobile because the mobile web browsers provide a worse experience compared to native applications, unlike Electron or Chrome on Desktop that provides a much better experience in general (unless you have a 10 years old hardware with very little ram or are into old school GUI I know).

The companies making web browsers and mobile operating systems are the same companies making native applications stores and requesting 30% of the revenue, so they don't have any good reason to make web applications better. They are not non profit.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#20

Post by smackeyacky »

hresvelgr wrote: post #6

Web still has by far the best developer experience + cross platform stability, not to mention the lowest barrier to entry. I would be really interested to see what happens with Tauri[1] as that looks like a more promising alternative to Electron. I do want to see a return to native apps but there are no worthwhile incentives to do so outside of "our customers demanded a native app." [1] https://tauri.studio/en/

It doesn't help that for the major consumer platform (Windows), Microsoft can't make their mind up about how to replace Win32 or WinForms. It seems like every other week there is some new framework announced, so even if you have a need to make a native app, choosing how to do it has become near impossible. Is it .NET Maui? Should I try Electronize? or take a huge punt on Avalonia? It's easier just to wrap up a web app and hand it over. Sure, that is kicking the can down the road a bit, but until Microsoft can manage to provide something other than vague, half finished plans we're all in limbo.
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