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Google Wants Progressive Web Apps To Replace Chrome Apps (androidpolice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Police: The Chrome Web Store originally launched in 2010, and serves a hub for installing apps, extensions, and themes packaged for Chrome. Over a year ago, Google announced that it would phase out Chrome apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux in 2018. Today, the company sent out an email to developers with additional information, as well as news about future Progressive Web App support. The existing schedule is mostly still in place -- Chrome apps on the Web Store will no longer be discoverable for Mac, Windows, and Linux users. In fact, if you visit the store right now on anything but a Chromebook, the Apps page is gone. Google originally planned to remove app support on all platforms (except Chrome OS) entirely by Q1 2018, but Google has decided to transition to Progressive Web Apps:
"The Chrome team is now working to enable Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) to be installed on the desktop. Once this functionality ships (roughly targeting mid-2018), users will be able to install web apps to the desktop and launch them via icons and shortcuts; similar to the way that Chrome Apps can be installed today. In order to enable a more seamless transition from Chrome Apps to the web, Chrome will not fully remove support for Chrome Apps on Windows, Mac or Linux until after Desktop PWA installability becomes available in 2018. Timelines are still rough, but this will be a number of months later than the originally planned deprecation timeline of 'early 2018.' We also recognize that Desktop PWAs will not replace all Chrome App capabilities. We have been investigating ways to simplify the transition for developers that depend on exclusive Chrome App APIs, and will continue to focus on this -- in particular the Sockets, HID and Serial APIs."
"The Chrome team is now working to enable Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) to be installed on the desktop. Once this functionality ships (roughly targeting mid-2018), users will be able to install web apps to the desktop and launch them via icons and shortcuts; similar to the way that Chrome Apps can be installed today. In order to enable a more seamless transition from Chrome Apps to the web, Chrome will not fully remove support for Chrome Apps on Windows, Mac or Linux until after Desktop PWA installability becomes available in 2018. Timelines are still rough, but this will be a number of months later than the originally planned deprecation timeline of 'early 2018.' We also recognize that Desktop PWAs will not replace all Chrome App capabilities. We have been investigating ways to simplify the transition for developers that depend on exclusive Chrome App APIs, and will continue to focus on this -- in particular the Sockets, HID and Serial APIs."
Jesus Christ just compile the damn code for each plaform so I can run it locally!
You know I just ported a big application to Android 7.1.
It's so flakey now, I cannot guarantee that the background service will continue to run. It gets killed every so often when the OS decides to run Bixby or similar. I have to block the reload of the gui on rotation of the device because a leak in Samsungs stylus in the text edit field makes it run out of bitmap memory (I thought Google would fix this heap by now, but no, it seems not). So I literally have to move existing controls around the screen myself, changing their layout so they are not unloaded and reloaded.
I have to keep the data in a holding service, because Android kills activities and reloads them seemingly at random. Hundreds of megabytes of preprocessed data I am supposed to save in a bundle of "key = graphView, value = 102.23,123.45..,,..." key pairs, then reload when you flip back to the application, then magically stitch the gui and data together in an instant.
I have a module that Art won't compile because its too big.... at 12000 lines, it runs as interpreted code. Seriously it won't compile a class of 12000 lines.
It's so much work keeping up with Google's fucking incompetent shit.
They changed from Eclipse to Intellij development platform..... completely different file layout, unsupported version plugins, and a whole different set of bugs! This one crashes when debugging if it gets confused about breakpoints. This bug has been there for 2 years.
Each change they make is done in a way designed to break the maximum number of applications for the minimum gain. Can you imagine developing a corporate app, where you can't even ensure it will continue to run? Or that it won't be unloaded to reduce the ram footprint.... even if there's plenty of free ram?
Chrome OS was always a noddy OS designed to run webapps, so I have little sympathy for people who developed for that platform. I had hopes that Android would mature into a full OS, instead it's becoming more like Chrome with each change. It's good enough to run a control panel and a todo list and an SMS/messenger app, not much else.