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Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps

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Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps

#81

Post by dep_b »

ericelliott wrote: post #74
dep_b wrote: post #61

You can't do push notifications on iOS from a web app. But apart from that there's a category of apps for websites that never should have been made, if that's the kind of apps you have been building in the past 5 years it's OK you realise it's time to stop making apps nobody uses. I've built some of those apps in my time but the majority of my apps couldn't be done without sacrificing or completely preventing functio…

You can with Cordova. I've worked on several hybrid apps in recent years that took advantage of native features through a thin native wrapper. But there are a lot of apps that don't need those features at all, and those apps are a great fit for PWAs.

Yeah but that's not what the author is talking about. Cordova applications still go through the very Apple specific tooling pipeline before end users can use it.

Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps

#82

Post by SkyMarshal »

pjmlp wrote: post #55
SkyMarshal wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding #2 I feel like Oracle is dropping the ball here with Java for the desktop. They need to provide a lightweight JVM tailored specifically for desktop apps and for bundling into a self-contained install package, so that the app doesn't have to confuse users by downloading the JVM separately. Just pack it all into a single .msi/.dmg/.dpkg/etc, download one file, install it, and you're good to go. The JVM should…

I imagine you are out of touch with Java efforts. Since Java 8, the JDK offers tooling to package applications, making it standard the way many third party bundlers used to work. In Java 9 there is a linker, which will allow for an application personalised JRE, coupled with the startup code. The biggest problem was that using Swing properly required a mix of programming and designer skills, which most didn't bother t…

I am a bit out of touch, last looked at this stuff in spring of 2015, thanks for the update, good to see!

Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps

#83

Post by SkyMarshal »

skissane wrote: post #37
SkyMarshal wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding #2 I feel like Oracle is dropping the ball here with Java for the desktop. They need to provide a lightweight JVM tailored specifically for desktop apps and for bundling into a self-contained install package, so that the app doesn't have to confuse users by downloading the JVM separately. Just pack it all into a single .msi/.dmg/.dpkg/etc, download one file, install it, and you're good to go. The JVM should…

Have you looked at "Self-Contained Application Packaging"? https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/deplo... (Disclaimer: I work for Oracle but I don't speak for them)

Thank you! Is this supported/automated well in any IDEs?

Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps

#84

Post by SkyMarshal »

jaysoncena wrote: post #53
gioele wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Qt is not open source Not only is Qt open source, it is also free software according to FSF. Core Qt and most modules are released under the LGPL, the rest under the GPL. https://www.qt.io/licensing/ Qt even has a binding poison-pill promise that will make the code BSD-licensed should Qt (the company) stop releasing it. See https://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/Software_License_Agr... and https://www.kde.org/comm…

He's probably referring to QT5. If you're a for-profit business and using QT, most likely your software is closed-sourced which requires a commercial license. I've worked with a team who develops a windows app which still uses QT4. They cannot migrate to QT5 since it requires a commercial license.

Yes, we looked at Qt 1.5yrs ago, and we were a for-profit startup creating an MIT-licensed open source desktop software that we needed to add a UI to, for which we were considering Qt5 for specific features. It was a weird, edge case mix.

Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps

#85

Post by skissane »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #83
skissane wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked at "Self-Contained Application Packaging"? https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/deplo... (Disclaimer: I work for Oracle but I don't speak for them)

Thank you! Is this supported/automated well in any IDEs?

NetBeans supports it - https://netbeans.org/kb/docs/java/native_pkg.html

(I can't comment on whether it is supported well since I've never used that part of NetBeans.)

Eclipse was apparently working on support for it at one point, but it looks to me like the work has stalled (just my impression from their bug database, I don't really know):

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=441274

https://wiki.eclipse.org/JDT_UI/Java_Packager

Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps

#86

Post by SkyMarshal »

skissane wrote: post #85
SkyMarshal wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! Is this supported/automated well in any IDEs?

NetBeans supports it - https://netbeans.org/kb/docs/java/native_pkg.html (I can't comment on whether it is supported well since I've never used that part of NetBeans.) Eclipse was apparently working on support for it at one point, but it looks to me like the work has stalled (just my impression from their bug database, I don't really know): https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=441274 https://wiki.eclipse.org…

Thanks!

Re: Moving from Native Apps to Progressive Web Apps

#87

Post by aikah »

daleharvey wrote: post #68
qwtel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we built an OS and application suite that on low end hardware compared often favorably than the equivalent on Android I haven't heard this before. I assumed firefox os failed because the web stack proved to be too crufty for the low end hardware. Are you aware of any resources that go into more detail?

Most of the code and metrics are now outdated but https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox_OS/Performance will have some historical perspective, http://eideticker.mozilla.org/#/android/lg-g2x/mozilla-centr... was our test for comparison between android and fxos. When we started it was an open question whether we could build a fast enough platform to compete with native applications, thats no longer a question I think about.…

That's a lot of do this/do that. With native apps you get all that for free with no effort and there is always a lot of room for optimization. The web on the other hand is hostile to apps.
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