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Comment by webwielder | Hacker News Reader

This is really nice, but I just can't get too excited over web apps. Whether it's not having direct access to my source files, relying on the service to stay up (either from server or business issues), working when offline, not having access to OS-level services, the clunkiness and slowness compared to native, or the cognitive overhead of the app being inside another app, I think I'll always prefer desktop apps.

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These limitations are all slowly disappearing as web standards are advancing fast to fill these gaps. I think soon we'll be able to give trusted web apps permission to read/write to our file systems and reach out to more OS-level interfaces that our browsers have access to.

Web apps also offer advantages over native apps, like zero installation, universal compatibility regardless of OS, and the ability for publishers to put updates/patches out instantly.

>universal compatibility regardless of OS

The browser becomes the OS for web apps, and in this case Webflow only supports one OS, Chrome.

Making changes to the code to bring support to new "OS's" in this case is easy as long we're talking about the webkit gang + Firefox, which makes up most users who will have interest in webapps.

We're very close to having Firefox and IE10 support, so this will not be true for long.

This sounds like something perhaps the dropbox api would be useful for? The webapp would simply modify files in your dropbox through the api, and changes could then be pushed to your local machine through dropbox's service.

Serious question, as I enjoy posting on HN and don't want to run afoul of the community. Was my comment negged because I was seen as hijacking a thread by making general comments about web apps rather than addressing Webflow specifically?

Or is it because of my negativity toward web apps and an appearance of ignorance on the state the art?

Don't worry. I have been downvoted just for mentioning a project that has the same name. Just wanted to make sure, that the creators are aware... I think, some posters have strong negativity sensors, which cause false positives from time to time. :)

In case you are wondering, we did not do any downvoting of the parent. He/she voiced a very valid concern which we've heard from many people, so no negativity sensors triggered here :)

I don't understand how this comment is relevant to this post, and I'm a little sad it's currently the top comment in this thread.

Don't be sad, it's only the top post because I just posted it. As for how it's relevant, I believe I'm saying in a roundabout way that I'd much prefer Webflow if it was a native app, while making a larger point about my reservations over web apps, especially the web design web apps I've been seeing a lot of lately.

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