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Comment by butz | Hacker News Reader

Progressive Web Apps are better solution. Chrome and Edge have PWA installation on desktop, and work is already under way for missing native features, like file system access. In a year or so they will replace need for Electron completely. Although they will never be as good integrated or performant as real native apps.

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PWA certainly solve some challenges around installation and delivery, but they don't do that without additional tradeoffs, and you still end up with an electron style app, which is what Gruber doesn't like.

Yeah, but I get to keep a single browser instance.

Progressive Web Apps + missing features like file system access is exactly what Electron is.

Do N Electron apps consume more RAM than N browser tabs?

It maybe does not mean that much, but at least code memory can be shared among electron app instances if it is deployed with shared libraries by a distribution package manager e.g. https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/electron...

Of course the main markets for Electron are Windows and Mac where it's probably not shared (although MS may try to fix this).

Except that you need a complete browser per application and a browser is heavier now than some CAD tools.

Not at all, because I already have the browser. Don't need yet another one.

Eventually if electron gets popular enough you will have only one additional browser per system - the linux distriburion packaged shared electron. (e.g. https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/electron... ) (not sure but even that could use a shared choromium lib - or am i wrong?)

It is the same as having shared GTK or QT libraries (both with embedded web engine BTW - so plenty of engines already), or having a shared global python deployment with shared global packages (from these you sometimes need two: v2 and v3)

So you will have one extra component per system.

In Windows world maybe you will have one additional electron component per app, but there, it is the "normal" way (you have qt dlls in every qt app etc...) anyway, so not much difference compared to other frameworks there too.

The security model seems to be quite different. For example, the proposed file access API for a PWA is sandboxed to a file or directory tree.

Also, the platform for a PWA gets upgraded more regularly, which can be good (security patches or bad (breakage).

Pwa can never replace electron. Pwa will always be in limited sandboxed api's that give little control over necessary features.

In a future where all apps are sandboxed there will be no major differences.

On Windows(UWP) and ChromeOS/Android, PWAs have the same rights as other apps if properly signed.

Where did you find this out? My quick search for how to sign a progressive web app didn't find anything.

PWA in Windows 10 can access the same APIs as UWP C# & C++ apps https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-....

I don't know about Android / ChromeOS.

On ChromeOS you get access to these extra APIs, as it is a browser based OS. They have only been dropped for Chrome Apps.

https://developer.chrome.com/apps/api_index

As for Android, the "What Web Can Do" PWA displays what extensions are currently available, https://whatwebcando.today/

Those are useful links but are they don't give PWA's the same rights as native apps.

Chrome apps do use HTML and JavaScript but aren't PWA's. The API's and sandboxing is different.

There are many useful HTML5 API's, but they don't require code signing as far as I know, and they don't have the same permissions as Android apps. (The permission system is entirely different.)

You are missing an important thing on how PWA are supposed to be coded.

PWAs are supposed to check the avaialbe sandbox APIs and adapt accordingly.

So if a PWA is running on Windows on an UWP context, it can check it and then access UWP APIs, if they are running on Chrome OS instead, then check accordingly and act upon it.

Finally if only play old HTML 5 APIs are available, then make the best of it.

That is the whole point of Progressive, to enhance the experience depending on the surrounding context.

I thought the point of PWA would be ‘free’ compatibility with every OS that can run PWA. Checking for several different APIs and using the appropriate one seems counter to this.

The point of PWAs is to offer native like experiences with web technologies if you pay attention to talks done by Chrome/ChromeOS/UWP teams.

Browser specific APIs are a thing since the Web became a platform instead of plain hypertext documents.

I don't want to live in this future.

I prefer a future where random applications cannot roam free on my $HOME contents.

I prefer a future where I can actually access my $HOME contents without "security" getting in the way.

This is not going to happen.

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