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Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section

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Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section

#81

Post by seanwilson »

rvanmil wrote: post #76
seanwilson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I don't see how e.g. making Spotify or Slack into native apps would dramatically improve their UX. Well then that is something you might want to do something about if you're an app developer. There's no reason arguing if you are unable to discern the big difference between the UX of a (both properly built) native app and an Electron app. I think this might be one of the reasons Electron is actually successful; a lo…

> Well then that is something you might want to do something about if you're an app developer. There's no reason arguing if you are unable to discern the big difference between the UX of a (both properly built) native app and an Electron app.

I'm able to tell the difference thanks. I'm saying that with native apps the UX can be better but for a large cost and a lot of the time that cost is not worth it. I'd also argue that most coders fixate on bad examples of non-native apps because when non-native apps are done well they don't notice. For example, Visual Studio Code is based on Electron and there's always lots of comments from people being surprised how performant it is. People also use lots of web apps day-to-day that they're happy with.

Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section

#82

Post by yoodenvranx »

MBCook wrote: post #78
yoodenvranx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YouTube Even Youtube is not safe, have a look at the Adpocalypse a few months ago or all the wrong/incorrect demonetization of innocent videos.

You mean that they finally started to pay attention to the ludicrous crap they were giving money to that advertisers wanted nothing to do with? What a surprise. It was deserved and a long time coming. People need to learn that whatever horrible thing you put online doesn’t automatically get you paid. Advertisers don’t want to sponsor “anything” because it reflects poorly on them.

No, the problem is that a lot of good content got flagged while a lot of garbage is still monetized.

Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section

#83

Post by jack9 »

grandalf wrote: post #69
coldtea wrote: post #21

Hopefully 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.

> More evidence that Google is hurting financially.

Google routinely kills off products. Because this is a standard Google platform life cycle, it doesn't look like evidence of anything in particular.

Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section

#84

Post by ctrl-j »

owebmaster wrote: post #36
cotillion wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big plus for Chrome Apps for me was that the store made it possible to actually get new users for your apps. For organizations without $ this was useful as a good app would get good visibility once it had a lot of happy users and got good reviews. This was probably a good thing both for users and developers. Now we instead have to pay Google for ads to get visibility for our PWA. Now we're probably going to turn…

> Now we're probably going to turn to Facebook and try to get some traction there.. And that is why the web is dying.

You have an alternative to offer? Facebook is where the users are. What is your non-facebook approach to get visibility from new users?

Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section

#85

Post by oneweekwonder »

tonetheman wrote: post #70
danirod wrote: post #18

Honestly, 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.

> who needs the low level functionality will end up with a native app

All please note. Electron is not a native app. It is a horrible hack that everybody use because it is easy.

Hybrid apps will always suck! ~ <3 hobbyist hybrid gamedev with client side js crypto mining on his mind }:‑)

Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section

#86

Post by bad_user »

MBCook wrote: post #77
tootie wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good. Every time browsers get new features people (ESPECIALLY ad networks) abuse it for tracking and other nefarious purposes. Battery level, light level, probably even gyroscope stuff. Hell they fingerprint canvas which isn’t even an iOS thing. I don’t want these issues. I LIKE these restrictions so random sites I visit (and even worse random code injected in them) can’t watch me as easy. Apps have issues but I cont…

Wait, what?

That's not an argument. Desktop browsers have features and add-ons for the privacy conscious right now. You can block trackers, third party cookies, JavaScript execution and anything you need. Personally I feel much, much safer loading a website than when executing a binary on my computer or phone.

You can block any elements on any website from loading, but you can't inspect application binaries and block specific elements from it — only requests to certain IPs or domains, if you had root access that is.

Can you block Facebook's in-app advertising on your iPhone? You can't and even more so, the app insists on opening all URLs in its own dumbed down view instead of Safari, which means they track those visits and their duration as well, probably without content blocking active, because AFAIK it doesn't work in web views.

Well I can block Facebook's ads and tracking in my Firefox for Android, since it supports extensions and it probably works using iOS Safari's content blockers as well.

Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section

#88

Post by kerbalspacepro »

majewsky wrote: post #49
bwang29 wrote: post #11

This is really going to hurt Windows users who do not want to use .exe or Windows 10 apps, which are both very heavy and less secure when it comes to https or remote content loading compared to Chrome Apps (Windows UWP in this case). Disclaimer: It's interesting to see that our app (Polarr) is in the screenshot (link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/polarr-photo-edito... ) Although ChromeOS is the smallest…

That's the first time I've seen someone use "Disclaimer" for an ad. Usually the ad is everything except for the disclaimer.

To be honest, if ads were more like that comment in the "These are our performance statistics relevant to the topic" vein, then I would be happy to see more ads.

Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section

#89

Post by brazzledazzle »

LordKano wrote: post #87

After the frustration I faced when google killed iGoogle, I decided that I would never again become invested in anything from Google other than search and email.

Is the expectation that Google maintain products even when they're not profitable or beneficial for them? I can understand if they don't provide a reasonable sunset date but investing yourself in any company's product is a risk. At least with Google you'll get notice instead of a static html page one day announcing the shuttering of the service.

Re: Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section

#90

Post by [deleted] »

rvanmil wrote: post #76
seanwilson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I don't see how e.g. making Spotify or Slack into native apps would dramatically improve their UX. Well then that is something you might want to do something about if you're an app developer. There's no reason arguing if you are unable to discern the big difference between the UX of a (both properly built) native app and an Electron app. I think this might be one of the reasons Electron is actually successful; a lo…

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