• Semi-Hemi-Demigod
      49•1 year ago

      What’s possible for web apps today is insane considering where it started. I remember when AJAX was a brand new technology, and now you can do videoconferences with screenshare right in a web browser.

      I think the push toward apps is because of influence from mobile. Everyone wants their own app, just like everyone wanted a dot com in the 90s. Hopefully we’ll stabilize around browsers and open standards.

      • onoEnglish
        39•1 year ago

        Hopefully we’ll stabilize around browsers and open standards.

        I would love this, but I think it will require major privacy reform. The push toward apps comes overwhelmingly from a single source: surveillance capitalism.

      • @QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world
        8•1 year ago

        The push towards apps is due to a collection of corporate interests that are of dubious value to the end user.

        Apple, Google, and Microsoft prefer apps over websites because they can exert much more control over their functionality and operation (as well as collect that sweet sweet 30% royalty on all digital purchases). This is why they intentionally make Home Screen bookmarks so unintuitive and inconvenient compared to downloading an app (at least on iOS and Windows; not sure about Android). They’re also more difficult to make cross-platform, although this is becoming less and less of an issue as cross-platform libraries evolve).

        App developers push for apps because they’re much stickier (especially due to the aforementioned bookmark situation; it’s all very intentional). Their app is right at the user’s fingertips until they explicitly decide to delete it. For streaming services and the like, app SDKs also tend to offer more robust DRM than their browser counterparts. That’s why, e.g., Hulu cripples their streaming bandwidth on browsers like Edge while their Windows app is not, even though their Windows app is very obviously just an Edge WebView 2 window. It’s pathetic, but it’s something they can point to in a meeting with their investors and say, “See? We’re doing something about piracy!” as if one trip to a piracy website doesn’t refute all their hard work.

    • Bipta
      27•1 year ago

      It took a wrong turn in the 90s. There’s been no real feasible way to fix it without breaking the web for many decades now. Some things are just forever despite their problems, like QWERTY.

    • Throwaway
      17•1 year ago

      Half the problem is that js was made over a weekend and we cant seem to come up with a different solution.

  • Bipta
    32•1 year ago

    This meme is really only true for things like Slack where the app is just the webpage in an app, and even then it’s not quite true because Electron is a lot heavier than a webpage because it has to now run the webpage and the app - which I think is terrible.

    But then also, Electron enables actual apps to be developed using web standards - which I think is great.

    TLDR: Use Electron to make apps, not glorified webpages.

        • @habanhero@lemmy.ca
          3•1 year ago

          Calling Slack a webpage is like calling an office building a room.

          Slack is just as much a complex app as anything else even if it’s built on web tech and standards.

          • EthanEnglish
            4•1 year ago

            The point is that Slack does not take advantage of Electron at all. It’s no better than running it in a browser.

            • @habanhero@lemmy.ca
              1•1 year ago

              For Slack it does. Building an app via Electron means it’s cross-platform by default, so Slack doesn’t need to invest in separate platform teams to solve the same problem (Windows, macOS, Linux).

              Electron also has better support for things like native notifications, video and voice calls, offline capabilities, and to other native APIs etc that are either unsupported or spottily supported via the browser.

                • @habanhero@lemmy.ca
                  1•1 year ago

                  It has all this support for native platforms yet it’s always a clunky memory hog

                  Maybe so but it has improved a lot over time. The app devs share some responsibility too so it’s not all on Electron.

                  zero effort to respect the design language of the OS it’s running on.

                  That’s the Dev’s design choice, not a limitation of Electron.

                  I’m on macOS, I want the app to be a native macOS app. If I wanted it to look like a webpage, or Windows, or Linux GTK then I’d switch to one of those and expect it to match those paradigms.

                  I don’t disagree but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter to enough people for it to become an issue. People are used to Slack and the way it works.

                  Moreover the cost of building the same app 2x or 3x simply doesn’t make business sense.

  • @Acters@lemmy.world
    12•1 year ago

    People kept arguing with me that not using is a choice and wonder why it is not freedom of choice.

  • @space@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    8•1 year ago

    Main difference is the electron app has access to more things on your computer, like files, sensors, microphone, camera etc.

  • TigrisMorte
    2•1 year ago

    It isn’t to save RAM the you should use the website over the app for.