>The browser is essentially the operating system for most computing today so access to peripherals is reasonable.
Sure, but the fact that browsers became operating systems is unreasonable in the first place.
Sure, but the fact that browsers became operating systems is unreasonable in the first place.
Sure, we all complain about Chrome and its outsized influence, but at the end of the day the standards are more open than not and Safari and Firefox mostly work most of the time on most of the pages. That's a stark contrast to, say, .NET vs Cocoa or Android vs Apple app stores.
well, that sounds perfectly reasonable that only some pages are not standards compliant. :facepalm:
I don't think so at all. Web-based applications tend to suck, and it seems to me that much of the reason is because the browser is very imperfect as an OS.
And don't forget shopping online, there are a few small web shops out there with great UX.
And you can use 20 year old websites just fine, the web has great backwards compatibility too.
Web apps don't have to suck.
Which has 0 to do with the virtues of the Web as OS and much more to do with catharting the pain and frustration induced by sharing the digital world with people with shockingly bad points of view through acting in kind. A game nobody wins; alas...
I think if HN counts as a web app, then "web app" has no meaningful definition.
> Web apps don't have to suck.
Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that the ones I've used (and have to use at work) do suck.
I never considered them as such, no. Those (including HN) are just ordinary websites with some amount of interactivity.
To me, a "web app" is a thing that replicates a normal application in web form. Things like GMail, Office, etc. In other words, they aren't things that uniquely leverage the web, they're things that are using the web as a shortcut to platform independence.
But perhaps the definition has changed, and I need to be much more explicit and specific instead of using the term "web app". I could buy that, but it also means that I don't actually know what a "web app" is anymore.
I don't think it makes a functional difference, except for "more" links instead of universal scrolling. Just like can't tell between static blog and dynamic blog, can't tell between static HTML and dynamic JavaScript. I would say "web app" is where download JavaScript, and the JavaScript builds the page.
Sure it's not great, but the alternatives are worse.