zlacker

That's true. I have started getting a militant attitude towards web apps and I really shouldn't think like that.

I use web apps every day (JIRA, CircleCI, Slack, Google Docs). And reflecting on it, Google Docs has always been pretty damn good.

But I get irked every single time I try to do something like paste an image, or drag-and-drop, or lookup in the system dictionary and it just fails or works weirdly. I let those annoyances blind me to the value that these web apps provide.

I want the web to continue as a modern and relevant platform. But I don't see the point of trying to "escape" the browser chrome, or trying to copy the look and feel of native apps. If web apps are going to be cross-platform then they should embrace not being truly integrated with any native platform.

The article we are commenting on feels focused on making web apps "more like" native apps. I do not like that direction at all. I don't need, or want, to pretend my web apps are just like native apps. Because they never will be, and putting them side-by-side on my home screen with launch images will just increase my expectations of them to behave natively, and my annoyance with them when they fail to do so.

>>interp+(OP)
" ...I don't see the point of trying to "escape" the browser chrome, or trying to copy the look and feel of native apps. If web apps are going to be cross-platform then they should embrace not being truly integrated with any native platform."

I kinda feel you on that one - and to be honest, I'm not sure how you would "turn that off" but if memory serves I think it only happens if you opt to "add to home screen" which Chrome only prompts for things you visit a lot.

>>interp+(OP)
I had an idea for a tiny app a while ago. It didn't have business potential and was certainly not something I would bother putting in the App Store (let alone trying to figure out how to make the equivalent in Java and submit to Play Store).

I could easily have made it in HTML and JS except it required access to the camera which Mobile Safari doesn't (well didn't, I think maybe it has changed now) allow. So I ended up doing nothing.

Now, that's obviously just an anecdote and the world is at worst one useless app down but I think it makes for a good example as to why arguing against these improvements is silly: it's not in order to make websites more app-like, it's to allow things that would otherwise not exist. Yes, we should all write everything natively if we could, but sometimes that will just mean that things won't be developed at all.