I'm reassured that my comparison to Electron was not far off. My point was, if a PWA is usable when all the above is implemented, what you end up with is very similar to a self-updating Electron app, just one that may or may not rely much more heavily on the network at runtime and might work offline (or not).
I admit I didn't realize creating a shortcut to a PWA was already supported as it's not pushed very hard. In Chromium it's buried under dots, "Cast, Save and Share" (which is a bizarre mashup of disparate functions), and finally "Install page as app".
The window that loads still has browser chrome, in the form of a back, refresh, and three dots button. As soon as you navigate somewhere, even within the same app, the url bar appears again, but you can't edit it. It seems that to be able to always hide this bar, you'd need a way to differentiate between "internal" links that should navigate within the page, and external links that should open in a browser.
I tried turning off my internet, and neither figma nor openDAW showed anything more than a blank page, which confirms my feeling of uncertainty around PWAs, namely, how do you know what will actually work offline. It feels fragile, like if I reset my browser or my clear my cache, my installed applications will disappear. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the blurring of the lines between bookmarks and installed applications.
All this is of course addressable with a lot more infrastructure and work from browser and OS makers. To me it seems like a lot of development to end up with something that behaves a lot like Electron, with the added easteregg of being able to access applications in a browser, without intending that anybody actually do so.
But it makes me question why "the browser" is apparently still the inevitable platform of the future.
In order for a PWA to be normal and usable, it must be available offline, open in a window without browser chrome, have similar performance to a native application, be launchable via a shortcut on the host OS, and respond to the mouse and keybaord shortcuts the way you'd expect. I think I've just described... an Electron app?
It's cool that this kind of thing can run in a web browser. With no install hurdle, it's much easier to convince people to try it out, and it's cross platform. Beyond that I can't really think of any advantages to having it run in the browser.
If what's lacking is an easy way to try software, I can't help but imagine lots of ways this could be addressed that would be much more pleasant to use than loading PWAs. Right now I can't seriously see myself enjoying using a PWA for work.
I say this having recently finished several large design projects in Figma, which is apparently a gold standard success story for browser based apps. Despite the years of development and herculean engineering efforts, I can still feel the browser jank. I begrudgingly open the thing in chrome, as it completely chokes in Firefox. It still chokes on moderately sized canvases, moving things is slow and laggy compared to native apps, keyboard shortcuts sometimes don't work or keys get stuck in a weird pressed or unpressed state, loading is slow, elements pop-in over tens of seconds.
I know I'm an old man yelling at clouds at this point, I'm just disappointed that we seem to be going backwards in performance and usability of software.
It is not defense of TikTok to point out that all platforms are practically identical: centralized, closed source networks that collect ridiculously detailed data about millions of people, and are in a position to process that data for all kinds of fun stuff like surveilling people's physical movement, creating recommendation algorithms, performing sentiment analysis, and using those tools to try to manipulate populations, influence public thought, and sway elections.
There is no behavior that TikTok exhibits that isn't equally applicable to every major social media.
I don't particularly care whether right now, the CCP happens to use that manipulative potential for its own ends more than the US does. It shouldn't be hard to take a principled stand against dystopian surveillance.
I don't understand people who correctly point out that TikTok is a "vector for influence of public opinion", but somehow think that's only a bad thing if it's controlled by a "geopolitical adversary".
I have no opinion on the sit-in, but it is always hilarious to see ex-Twitterites breathlessly bemoaning the sale, as if massive centralized ad-based networks feeding algorithmically presented "content" to the masses are somehow a boon to society as long as they are owned by a "good guy".
Any normal sidewalk would be wide enough that a single person could not conceivably block it, and wearing headphones while walking, especially noise canceling ones, is popular because US cities are largely unpleasant, deafeningly loud places full of fast-moving cars.
I used to agree with you, but a pure text web looks like Gemini, which I abandoned after a few days of getting lost in endless identical looking blogs.
There is no reason that websites shouldn't have room for some creative expression. For as long as writing has existed, images, fonts, spacing, embellishment, borders, and generally every imaginable axis has been used as additional expression, beyond the literal meaning of the text.
The body width is necessary because web browsers have long since abandoned any pretense of developing html for the average joe. It is normal to use web browsers maximized, so without limiting the body width the text is ridiculously long and uncomfortable to read.
As somewhat of a Zune fanatic, it always makes me happy to see a new Metro-inspired UI, but every one of these Zune-inspired projects falls short when compared to the actual Zune application, which imo is the absolutely pinnacle of music players. It presents your music library in a way that to me is aesthetically pleasing and entirely intuitive. The three column layout, with sorting options for each, is ideal. Filtering does not dump you into a new page. It's hard to describe what makes it so pleasant to use, but no application I've found yet comes close.
I encourage anyone with a local music collection to go download Zune and give it a try.
Yes, channels and groups are most likely what makes Telegram a threat where Signal isn't. That's an excellent argument for decentralized social media.
You're probably exasperated that others don't see what to you seems like an obvious truth. Rather than mocking the opposing argument, it's probably still worth rehashing yours when the topic comes up, even if it feels like banging the same drum with nobody listening.
This was entirely predictable and inevitable. I don't understand what Durov thought would happen nor why he rejects E2EE as a liberating technology.
Policy will never be the key to digital privacy, it must always be accompanied by cryptography. The status quo of allowing a third party read and store your messages forever, slurping up all the metadata along the way, is insane.
"Selon le quotidien The Australian, qui relaie les déclarations du ministère australien des Affaires intérieures, l'entreprise Crowdstrike pourrait être en cause, après avoir été victime d'une brèche au sein de sa plateforme."
Translated/summarized: "According to the publication The Australian, Crowdstrike may be the cause of the outage after having suffered a security breach"
I like how it redirects blame away from those responsible and perpetuates the idea that "hackers" are the real threat.
That's not a recording. I'm willing to accept he said something similar but the linked article appears to be a hitpiece with quite a lot of motivation to stretch the truth.
I find it difficult to imagine ubiquitous surveillance not shaping behavior and thought.
I was born in the mid 90s and remember some of my friends getting flip phones in the early 2000s. One friend was given a phone that would report its location to their parents, presumably through some web-portal. I vaguely remember the conversation where my friend told me about this phone and the location tracking, and I remember the uncomfortable feeling that new idea provoked. I believe that reaction is a natural one to the idea of being followed everywhere you go, but that reaction is only possible if the idea hasn't been normalized from birth.
Just because surveillance is largely ubiquitous and societally normalized doesn't mean it has no impact, and that impact is unlikely to be articulated by those experiencing it.
It's been brought up for some time, and kind of looks like one of those open-source situations where any progress that falls short of perfection is deemed not worth implementing. Just my interpretation though.