Slashdot Mirror
Google Is Integrating Progressive Web Apps Deeper Into Android (chromium.org)
Yaron Friedman, a software engineer at Google, writes on Chromium blog: In 2015, we added a new feature to Chrome for Android that allows developers to prompt users to add their site to the Home screen for fast and convenient access. That feature uses an Android shortcut, which means that web apps don't show up throughout Android in the same way as installed native apps. In the next few weeks we'll be rolling out a new version of this experience in Chrome beta. With this new version, once a user adds a Progressive Web App to their Home screen, Chrome will integrate it into Android in a much deeper way than before. For example, Progressive Web Apps will now appear in the app drawer section of the launcher and in Android Settings, and will be able to receive incoming intents from other apps. Long presses on their notifications will also reveal the normal Android notification management controls rather than the notification management controls for Chrome.
nailed it, choads
I am sure this will be popular in California and NYC, but I don't think The GOP and the Donald will be very happy.
Looks like they're setting us up the bomb. For greater glory! Launch all apps!
You know how nasty they can get with built-in stuff.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
There goes getting paid to load up Android Studio and creating a project that is just one activity with a webview at to the companies URL.
I was at the last two Google Polymer Summits and last years definitely saw a push towards PWAs. One of the reasons Google want's to push these is that it bridges the gap between complex web apps, mobile capable websites and mobile apps. Another quite simple reason is the app-bloat we're alle experiencing on our cellphones. Apps clocking in at 40+ MB and weighing down on Smartphones budgeted memory and storage are a big problem, as are mobile performance hogs that only run satisfyingly on the most modern 1st world smartphones. Many updates people can't make, because the vendors apps are simply growing to big. PWAs are supposed to tackle this problem aswell.
PWAs is Googles attempt to leverage the ubiquity of the open web and offer mechanisms to integrate it further into native plattforms. It's actually quite a stunt, because libs like Polymer try to square the circle in offering web toolkits that are easy to use, mobile ready, powerfull, cross-plattform and still somehow don't weigh down to much on end-user systems. You can imagine what bucketload of work that is and what stunts the developers come up with to tackle this problem, but the crews at Google have come up with some really impressive stuff. Such as storage worker components that stabilise mobile webapps with flaky online uplink. These are basically websites that mask as mobile apps and behave offline just as well as they do online, syncing your stuff only when they have a chance too. There is some quite cool stuff out there in PWA space.
It's all quite some magic, but probably is also an attempt to counterbalance the fragmentation happening in the android space. Build once, run everywhere (iOS, Android, Chrome, Desktop OS, etc. ...) is actually not that far away with PWAs.
I'm experimenting with PWAs, and while they do have a point, they also have the usual problems of squaring the circle. Tricky stuff and once again a scenario that proves building modern feasible non-trivial web-apps actually is quite a serious development task, requireing carefull planning and big, complex pipelines akin to those in regular x-plattform development.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The things this generation deems as important.
I can't express how much I don't want these features. Intents? Unseen data sharing? Unwanted desktop links? More "apps" that are just PII-leaking bookmarks? Blurring every border? Solutions to 9000+ problems I don't have. Ffs Chrome is like Benjamin Button progressing backward in time to the bad old days of giant local applications engorged with ole and directory services and odbc and the kitchen sink, with so many attack surfaces that they become legion. I just want a damn browser not a Gitmo feeding tube.
I think not...(*poof*)
For example, Progressive Web Apps will now appear in the app drawer section of the launcher and in Android Settings, and will be able to receive incoming intents from other apps.
Thinking out load here as I didn't RTFA. If a financial app has an intent of showing you stock prices and company news, does the "Progressive" app receive that intent and change it to show how you're white and privileged? Do they receive intent from social media and display which victim class you fall into? :-)
Can we stuff this into a "does not program in annoying fad Web APIs" translator?
I get the feeling I've seen this feature before...
Dear Google,
Good luck defending this to the European Commission.
Thelasko
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Convince me these are not destined for a similar fate as Java applets - Go.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It just sounds like it lets you make a 'Web App Manifest'. So you package a directory on an SSL enabled web server as an application. Everything else seems like web good design.
By definition with this being a 'Progressive' web app you have to have workarounds incase the targeted platform doesn't support X feature. So.. are things like Service Workers, that might not work, really a big deal?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
But it reminds me of that goofy windows active desktop stuff back in line 98 or so. What could possibly go wrong?
> I have 64GB of internal storage (no sd card slot) and have 67% free space currently
In hope you're enjoying your brand new phone. ;)
We don't need no damn progressive apps in Texas!
They keep showing up, saying they know we have jobs for them here, so we set up a safe space for them, called Austin.
All the better to suck up every last bit of privacy you possess, my dear!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
If you don't have your own domain to use in email addresses, so that you can change email providers when they pull stuff like this on you, get one now. It's cheap, it looks more professional than a freemail address and it gives you more control.
LMAOLAMF AFAICT IANAL /. ABBR
Into the operating system?
I thought that was considered Illegal
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
The facts in this case differ substantially from the facts in the case of IE. First, practically everything in Chrome except Adobe Flash and Widevine digital restrictions management comes from Chromium, which is free software. Second, Google works with W3C to encourage the other browser publishers (Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft) to implement the same "progressive" APIs.
AOSP and Chromium are both free software. So other browser publishers can see what Android APIs Google is using to make web apps feel native and use them as well.
Google Is Integrating Progressive Web Apps Deeper Into Android. Where does that leave our Alt-Right Web Apps? Second class citizens in our own country?