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."

Comments

Jesus Christ

[FunkSoulBrother]

Jesus Christ just compile the damn code for each plaform so I can run it locally!

Re:Jesus Christ

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the point. Artificially tying apps that should be able to function locally to Google's online services is stupid. It's the reason Chromebooks and web apps will never catch on.

Nobody should have to have an active internet connection just to write documents, edit pictures, listen to music or watch movies.

WTF is Progressive Web Apps?

[UnknownSoldier]

And how are they different from normal web apps?

Re:WTF is Progressive Web Apps?

[Z80a]

They ask you for your preferred pronouns before running and have fonts adapted for reading with problem glasses.

Re:WTF is Progressive Web Apps?

[Hal_Porter]

https://medium.com/@adactio/wh...

Reliable - Load instantly and never show the downasaur, even in uncertain network conditions

Jeremy Keith
A web developer and author living and working in Brighton, England.

Why does that not surprise me? Brighton is basically the hipster capital of the UK.

Likewise, Progressive Web Apps consist of:

1. HTTPS,
2. A service worker, and
3. A Web App Manifest

It seems like cache some html pages. They have an Javascript worker thread, and the thread queries the remote server. If there's no connection to the server you get the cached html page with the old data rather than that irritating T Rex jumping cactuses game that you'd otherwise get in Chrome Mobile.

I suppose it's progress of a sort - Google have finally realised that not everyone has a internet connection all the time. Then again that's rather obvious - even in somewhere like NYC you lose your network connection on the subway between stops so an application which needs a connection all the time to run is unusable. Also it's a lot easier to find developers who can do Javascript and HTML than it is ones who can do Java.

Re:WTF is Progressive Web Apps?

[AmiMoJo]

They are web sites that are installable and can run like native apps.

They are an interesting idea because they bring mobile app style sandboxing and permissions to desktop apps. Since the app it basically HTML, CSS and Javascript there are very mature sandboxes available to run them in, and in fact you have a choice of sandbox from your favourite browser vendor, opening up the possibility of extreme levels of control and in-app ad-blocking.

There are limits to what these apps can do, so they are mostly suited to highly networked stuff like cloud services, advanced web site interfaces like the Twitter and Facebook apps on mobile, messenger clients etc.

Microsoft are in trouble because these compete with their failed Metro apps on Windows, and make Windows itself kind of irrelevant because now the browser is the OS and the cloud is the disk. Obviously /.ers are not going to be happy with that.

Re:WTF is Progressive Web Apps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aaaand can be turned off at a whim leaving you high and dry.

At least with genuine installable apps, if the company turns its servers off because "oh we're not supporting it anymore", you aren't going to be completely f*cked.

This is why PWA should be treated like a disease and avoided.

Think of it like DRM, when you have bought a load of stuff, and then the company goes bump or simply stops supporting it's auth servers. All those nice things you bought suddenly no longer work and you would need to replace them. Nice for the company, but not so nice to shit on the customer.

Re:WTF is Progressive Web Apps?

[TheRaven64]

As I understand it, they're basically web apps that support offline use. HTML5 supports local storage and so it's possible to write apps that run in a browser but still work when the web site is down. They also adopt a bunch of ideas from Java Web Start (remember that?) where they'll quickly download the code required to get the core UI working and then download the rest on demand. If the network isn't present, then some features may not work (or may not work if you don't use them the first time when you're connected), but in theory you shouldn't lose any data. Unlike Google's office suite, where if they install an update on the server while you're offline then when you reconnect you'll get a nice dialog telling you that you'll lose all data when you hit okay, with no other buttons.

Re:WTF is Progressive Web Apps?

[Hal_Porter]

Loads of London hipsters moved there and gentrified the place.

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/...

Now it's Shoreditch by Sea.

Re:WTF is Progressive Web Apps?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what apps do you use that do not rely on a central server anyway because the primary goal of such apps is to do stuff together with others (chat, social network, managing data) or to offer computationally intensive features (voice recognition, route planning with many realtime variables etc.). It all requires a central server anyway

Err, no it doesn't. Half a seconds thought and I've come up with a multitude of things which do not need a central server for anything. How ever did you come up with such a stupid statement?

So, without further ado, that'll be Excel for your accounts, Word for your CV, and any other number of *many* apps out there that do not /need/ a central server to do local work. Writing a book? Doesn't need a central server. Playing a local game? Those don't 'need' central servers and certainly worked before the internets.

A great many /creative/ things do /not/ need to plugged into the f*cking internet to get stuff done.

If you don't like a Google API

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait a week, and it will be replaced with a new one.

Re:If you don't like a Google API

[Hal_Porter]

Yup, Google seem to be going the way Microsoft did once they got too much market share.

As much as despise Apple's overpriced, locked in ecosystem debugging on it is a joy. Breakpoints work for example. On Google's more open ecosystem as someone put it 'Nothing works, everything keeps changing and no one knows why'.

This is why I don't use develop using Google tech

[Anonymous Coward]

So if you made a Chrome app, Google now made your work useless. And what next year? Will they phase out web apps for the new flavor of the year? Google tech doesn't stick and can be abandoned by Google at any moment. I can't build on that.

Fantastic!

[Gravis Zero]

I can't wait to transition to PWAs so that one day they can tell me it will stop functioning at the end of the month and all my related data will be deleted. This is much better than the garbage applications that keep working even when you are offline. Honestly, how do they expect to spy on my entire life without internet connectivity?! ;)

Re:Fantastic!

[sgrover]

I've looked into PWAs some, but am no expert (yet). From what I see, they have very little to do with Google per se. Your web app declares a service worker. That worker retrieves some pre-cached data to "install" the app (stuff like icons, fonts, etc.). Then as you use your app you can have the service worker cache the retrieved data locally for offline use. Nowhere in that process have I seen "Thou shalt use Google's version of PWAs". It just so happens that the best documentation for PWAs comes from Google postings and Google is trying to control the flow. If I build my app to use a third party resource that can be turned off, that's a bad choice by me, IMO. But adopting the PWA structure does not tightly tie me to any particular vendor. It is a Javascript technique for structuring an app - much like using CSS for styling instead of putting your color/font/positioning markup directly in the HTML. At least that's my take on it thus far.

Re:Fantastic!

[sgrover]

This statement is not fully accurate. PWAs are meant to address the issue of an application that works fine when connected, but also should continue working when the online connection disappears. By caching the retrieved data and using that, the application can continue to run fine except where new data is needed. A non-PWA approach would just give the standard 404 or service not available error when you try to access the new data. The PWA approach allows that situation to be anticipated and an appropriate error or message given - within the look/feel of the application. So, claiming "All PWAs rely on retrieving online data and always have an internet connection" is not quite right. PWAs work best when the online connection is available, but can degrade gracefully when that is not the case. (If the developers choose to handle the service not available situation - but now it is a choice, not a default)

Re:This is why I don't use develop using Google te

[bickerdyke]

There is a 99.9% chance that your "web app" was either nothing more than a glorified bookmark that registered an icon in your start menu and did nothing more than redirecting to a regular website. If you actually used javascript running locally, local storage, or other webapp features, that was basically only thenew fancy HTML5 stuff to begin with and that won't go away either, You mostly have to do a boilerplate update.

Re:This is why I don't use develop using Google te

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Chrome "APPS"

[ColaMan]

I have a Chrome photo editing app called "Polarr" - when I run it under Chrome on linux, it spawns a new window and then looks and behaves very much like its Windows and Android variants.

So it tells me that developers can do some pretty nice things with the technology, but the quickest way to do anything with it (read: monetize) is to just package up some web 2.0 and call it a day.