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WeChat Beats Google in Releasing Apps That Don't Need Downloading or Installing (mashable.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Mashable report: Click on a link in China's top messaging app, WeChat, and you'll be taken to a rich app-like experience, but without needing to download or install anything. Tencent, WeChat's maker, on Monday released "mini programs." The new mini programs work within the messaging app, and the early crop at launch include a Prisma-like photo editing app, a Pomodoro Timer productivity app, a flight search engine, and one for recipe searches. With the mini programs, the already-dominant WeChat continues its march to become practically ubiquitous on Chinese handsets, where people already use the messenger for real-life tasks like paying at restaurants, to hailing a Didi Chuxing ride. Last year, Google too announced that it would soon allow users to check out apps without downloading or installing them. The feature is yet to go live.
>> app...without needing to install anything
Congratulations - you invented the World Wide Web
But will they beat them in withdrawing support? Google are still the fastest at this.
It's called 'Chrome' (as others have pointed out).
What Google *specifically* promised was run an application without installing under android. I presume we are talking about a read chunks of the application on demand rather than requiring the whole thing to download in advance, so the application would think the device just has *really* slow storage for accessing the application payload.
However it could be as simple as changing the UI to make the download be invisible to the user (which is how web apps work, they get downloaded and cached when possible on load rather than have a distinct 'install' phase) and the 'feature' only working with small apps where that's reasonably possible.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
But do I still have to load it into RAM before I can run it?
Once upon a time, 'powerful' computers were a precious resource that could not be dedicated to a single person, and so these impossibly dumb terminals were all people were allowed.
Then as things advanced, that model became obsolete, as devices much more powerful than the old powerful computers were so cheap, it just made sense to have everyone use dedicated computing devices, empowering the users and enabling a thriving home computer market of self-empowered users.
On the networking front, things started with BBSes and more relevant to most, walled garden environments like AOL and Prodigy. The scope of what they could provide was limited by network limitations, but to the extent communications and information flowed, it was controlled by your service provider with an iron fist. You *had* to pay AOL money if you wanted anyone to be able to find your data by keywords online, as an example.
Then as networking advanced, federated technologies like WWW and IRC prevailed, and suddenly the barriers of competition were reduced again and people could communicate and change who got their money and attention on a whim without repercussions. The late 90s were defined by standards and federated approaches displacing proprietary and isolated technologies. It represented a time where companies that had locked down their corners of the market had their customer base opened up to competition. Without this, Google, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and so forth never would have been able to start, it would have just been all-AOL.
In this century, we've seen a select few corporate interests get back much of the control. Google has become the de facto gatekeeper to the web, software vendors now don't need to let users download or can require their software to checkin and implement a 'rental-only' model for software, and applications that were once federated or at least could be instantiated by many are dominated instead by locked-in solutions (e.g. Slack is so much better than IRC, but is controlled by a single corporate interest, though MatterMost is pretty good at least...). Every little voice recognition clip is uploaded to remote servers for processing despite the fact the edge devices are orders of magnitude more powerful than systems that were doing voice dictation 20 years ago. We have been trained to treat multiprocessor multi-gigahertz devices with gigabytes of ram as dumb terminals not appropriate for any remotely serious task.
No, the old ways aren't better from a UI perspective or an experience perspective, but make no mistake that the power dynamic change that has come with it has downsides, and that's not so much the fault of the technology, just the usual power dynamic of human nature reasserting itself after a brief period where things were taken by surprise.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
"WeChat Beats Google in Releasing Apps That Don't Need Downloading or Installing"
A chatroom that doesn't require downloading anything? Whoop de fuckin' doo....1998 called and wants their chatroom back.
This is the most retarded "news" in months. In other words they "invented" something that's been around for almost 20 years.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
How is this different from Discord or any other web application that has existed for the last 15 years? I feel like there's some key piece I'm missing to make sense of how this isn't a totally bullshit article.
Did someone say cake?
What could possibly go wrong.
I remember! That time, my dick was huge! :P
X already did this like what, 30, 40 years ago?
Think of mind power, man!
There's a name for the only apps that don't need to be installed and downloaded. It's called bloatware.
I think it was about two years ago that W3C and Smartphone manufacturers standardized (mostly) and implemented the facilities necessary for web pages to work as apps. I programmed one that long ago and somehow never thought to claim credit for the invention on Slashdot :-)
As far as I can tell, there is little need for pre-installed apps any longer, or mobile sites.
I am not a tremendous fan of the graft of Javascript and a programmable DOM to static web pages as an afterthought. But given the way it grew, and the advent of websockets and the two dozen other new web APIs, it's implemented well enough now to do pretty much whatever you want.
Bruce Perens.
Overall, I agree, but I do disagree with a few of your statements.
1. UIs today are far less productive than they used to be. They mirror the reduced functionality of the software that implements them. The focus is on aesthetics rather than sane layouts. The 'experience' you speak of is fraught with frustration of 'feature-hunt', coupled with a passive aggressive struggle with the developers who pretend they don't understand why you wanted that feature they removed from the latest forced update.
2. Slack is not better than IRC. Slack IS IRC, with the negatives of 'mobile style' UI grafted on top of it. There's nothing about it that's really better than IRC. It's just someone's money grab. Discord is of similar ilk vs IRC/teamspeak/ventrilo/mumble.
On the UI front, at least I'll agree that some GNOME software has done that. MS fell into that big time with Windows 8, though they have walked back some of it. However I can't think of too many examples outside of those two where an existing software did big steps backwards.
On Slack v. IRC, it's not that *hard* what they added, but having the history available on reconnect, being able to paste text and images and such into chat rather than resorting to pastebins. Sure some things like emoji support may be a bit silly, but otherwise it's something that makes a lot of functionality a lot more accessible. We would be better off recognizing that IRC is *not* in fact perfect as is and think about actually competing instead of being in denial.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I think they either invented the Homeopathic download-- the less you download the more capable the software is or they invented Douglas Adams computer desk. The software just watches what you do, infers what app you need, and writes it on the spot.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
having the history available on reconnect
HexChat and other popular IRC clients keep client-side history by default, and some IRC servers support "bouncers" that provide server-side history. I guess the reason they're not used more often is that there's a culture against keeping a permanent record of things said in a channel (IRC's term for a group chat).
being able to paste text and images and such into chat rather than resorting to pastebins
Unless the IRC client automatically authenticates to a pastebin service on the user's behalf and sends any pasted image or pasted text longer than 4 lines there.
Sure some things like emoji support may be a bit silly
Silly, yet supported in any IRC client that processes UTF-8 encoded Unicode text.
wow, a whole flight simulator within html5
JavaScript NES emulators exist. The only thing keeping you from running Top Gun for NES in such an emulator is Konami's legal department.