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Microsoft Software

Microsoft Starts Talking Up Its Progressive Web App Plans (zdnet.com) 27

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
A year ago, Microsoft seemed to be pushing full steam-ahead with Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). Since then, the company's PWA momentum -- at least publicly -- seemed to have waned. However, this week, a couple of different teams at Microsoft have started talking about their PWA plans. From a report: Google has been the main champion of PWAs, which are basically web sites and/or apps that behave like native apps. But other vendors have jumped on the PWA bandwagon, as well, in recent years. Microsoft has been working to make PWA support part of its overall Windows 10 and Edge browser stories. Microsoft is turning its Outlook.com and Outlook on the Web applications into PWAs, as noted by Thurrott.com. Thurrott.com's Paul Thurrott noted that Outlook on the Web is displaying a PWA "Install" button in the Brave browser address bar. That same Install option is visible to some using the Canary version of the Chromium-based Edge browser, he reported on November 25. Outlook.com also now has an Install prompt available in the Brave address bar, he reported today, November 26, which means Outlook.com also is on its way to becoming a PWA.
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Microsoft Starts Talking Up Its Progressive Web App Plans More

Microsoft Starts Talking Up Its Progressive Web App Plans

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  • Do Not
    Develop
    His App

  • All walled garden, no interlinked or deeplinked documents anymore. Tim Bernards Lee would role in his grave if he were dead.

  • This is the future (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2019 @11:35AM (#59462270) Homepage

    First two comments are pretty negative but I think this is the natural evolution of user applications.

    From the average /. visitor/contributor, I agree this is not the best way for things to go but for the average consumer, this provides a consistent easily installed application for the platforms they're most likely to be working on (phone, tablet, laptop, game machine) at the lowest possible development cost for the provider (they don't have to support versions ported to iOS, Android, Windows, Linux (and ChromeOS) & Mac).

    Security for the apps is going to be something of a nightmare (but I would argue that it's been a concern for a while now anyway) and this will be a pretty major shift for most developers meaning they have a lot to learn (and probably unlearn) as well as turning what consumers think is the "magic sauce" away from what's going on under the covers to the UI.

    • 10-12 years ago, Steve Jobs, a man who had a big part in showing how a company could monetize an app store, thought this was the way things would eventually go.

      I'm biased. I know how to build a web site, but not really an app. I did build an app once a long time ago, but it was basically web site built using jQuery and converted using PhoneGap. So I'd prefer PWAs should I ever have the need to "appify" something again. However, I don't envision needing deep access to the phone's structure, maybe a notificat

    • Sounds like reinventing the wheel (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Now everything has to be built from the ground up again, ignoring all local tools and APIs that have been hardened and become robust over decades for something new and shiny and with horrible UI issues that won't match the rest of your UI (shortcuts, accessibility tools) and won't be able to sync/work with your other apps because it isn't even aware of them?

      Sounds like crap. No thanks.

      • Is this two sides of the same coin?

        Wanted: keep robust APIs and tooling and knowledge

        Wanted: expand the APIs to allow more features such as whatever styling is necessary to handle many screen sizes and access minimal device hardware including some robust local storage.

    • Security of the apps is probably better because at least there's probably permissions taken into account. Regular desktop apps have the full control the user would have and don't have any type of sandboxing whatsoever.

  • We need to stop PWAs.
    They are solutions to over bloated website that they themselves have all caused.
  • At first I disliked this notion, do we really need an app in an app in an app? Why doesn't Twitter just write a better mobile app instead of sticking it inside a browser? But now I am leaning towards positive, since the PWA is still inside the browser it is subject to whatever limits you might build inside the browser as far as security, tracking evasion, etc. I'm not sure how extensions like NoScript might relate to the PWA.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It also drives the SaS model, meaning greatly increased revenue and the ability to deny access to delinquent accounts and lockdown of user data that can be a great source of leverage if needed and even another potential revenue stream.

    • Why doesn't Twitter just write a better mobile app instead of sticking it inside a browser?

      Because that would involve work. Better to let it infect the browser parasitically so it can fuck more shit up.

  • PWAs sound like a neat idea. (Score:3)

    by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2019 @12:18PM (#59462460)
    It seems like one of the better attempts at write once, run anywhere. If you go to Google's page on PWAs and watch the YouTube video they have posted there, they (somewhat surprisingly to me) seem to have a pretty solid understanding of the pros and cons for both "web apps" versus traditional installable programs, and PWAs are an attempt to take the best features from both sets.

    I'm actually sold on the idea despite my general dislike of Javascript. I was thinking about how text-based game frameworks would probably work really well on this system (think roguelikes e.g. Nethack, text adventures/interactive fiction e.g. Zork, and other kinds of games you could deconstruct into a text-based system). It'd be really neat to be able to visit e.g. game.nethack.org and have it right there in the browser with working offline but also be able to immediately transition it to an "installed" version that's persistent on your device and doesn't require launching into a browser (ignoring what's happening underneath, of course). And PWAs seem to have support with most of the major desktop and mobile browsers, too.

    I'm always suspicious of Google (as anyone should be), but they've done some interesting things in the development space. Go is also pretty neat despite its ties to Google, for that matter. And considering this seems to have widespread adoption (and even Microsoft's playing now apparently), I think it'll avoid the Google graveyard.

  • Another Flash disaster in the making (Score:3)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2019 @12:18PM (#59462466) Journal

    "Paul Thurrott noted that Outlook on the Web is displaying a PWA "Install" button in the Brave browser address bar."

    Didn't we learn ANYTHING in the last 10 years about letting the user install any old shit that runs in the browser?

    They should just label the button, "Install Malware" and be done with it.

    • PWA is just metadata for the app icon, and a background worker thread that intercepts http requests and builds responses from the browsers local storage.

      You're only "installing" a bookmark.

      • Well, not really.
        "Installing" a bookmark or shortcut has been possible since before PWAs. These are actual apps that are just wrapped up PWAs. When you click "add to home screen" the browser gets a web service to wrap the PWA into a webapk and it then gets that apk installed on your home screen.
        There is a visual difference since a shortcut has a small browser icon superimposed, while an installed webapk just looks like a native app, because it actually is just a native app. They launch differently too.
        The

        • A WebAPK is just a simple placeholder android app. What does it do? It launches a browser control and opens your web page url. And it registers an intent filter so that any other app or browser that tries to open your url will launch this app instead.

          Your web page is still a web page. It is not magically converted to a native app. However you do have some control over which bits of a normal browser frame are visible to give the impression that it is not just a web page.

        • In other words, a WebAPK is the implementation details of how android manages the browser bookmark, and how it allows the user to manage the lifecycle of the browser control that is hosting it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dwater ( 72834 )

            Perhaps something like that. The upshot is that the user really doesn't know - to him/her, it is the same as an app. Except, not really since the browser can decide to clear the service worker caches for any reason it decides, and then they user has to be online again.
            Also, installed PWAs get more (potential) permissions, I think, since they've had user interaction...and don't get the chrome of the browser, like when they are launched from the browser.
            I don't think Android really knows much about it - it's

  • a cancer forms? Small, insignificant at first, then becomes full blown cancer that can only be treated by "authorized" medicos who have all the answers approved by society.

    Less invasive, alternative remedies are not even looked at since they might be more effective and less costly.

    Or look at it this way. A group of non-elected people who create a financial system that puts everyone into a deep hole of debt and then tell you the only way to get out of debt is to create more debt.

    Or better yet, having one
  • Do we really need progressive and conservative web applications? So one half of the users are going to get a version of the site that is shiny and new where everybody is accepted but burdened with an excessive amount of quality of life crimes and other inconveniences. And the other half get an HTML 1.0 version of the site that loads slowly and full of disinformation that has already been thoroughly debunked. This is what happens when companies focus too much on politics and too little on technology.
    • Today's lesson is that mod points are assigned without regard to whether or not somebody has a sense of humor!

  • The boundary between caching web resources and "installing" is fuzzy. If the caching has better management features, then maybe we don't need "install". The caching system can potentially check the website for any updates to components rather than re-downloading for each session. If you are offline, then the browser uses the cached version.

    The user would have final choice for how long an app can be cached. If you set it to "forever", it's essentially the same as installed. The user should also have to choic

  • more politics!

  • I have issues with this web of everything. Servers accessing my data across each other with only tokens and no other security.
    See my blog that really stirred up Microsoft Denmark. Was running as VULN-012060
    https://securityintheenterpris... [blogspot.com]

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