I’ve been using wefwef WebApps to browse the fediverse and am curious to understand how it works. I do not have knowledge deep knowledge about coding or programming.

  • Cr4yfish
    link
    81 year ago

    I would also like to add that there are PWAs (Progressive Web Apps).

    PWAs can be installed on most devices and share even more similarities with native apps (Native app = usually installed through app store). For example installed PWAs can be viewed in Fullscreen or work offline, even though they are still technically a webpage.

    So the advantage here is that you don’t need to use an App Store to have an app installed on your phone.

    And the main disadvantage is that the PWA can’t access most of the device’s APIs, that you could access through a native app. This means worse performance usually, no support for theming beyond dark/light (like Material You), no good access to on-device databases etc. This is also the reason why most apps aren’t PWAs.

    • @Blunon
      link
      21 year ago

      Although that is changing slowly. PWAs are starting to get more and more support for APIs on the devices. For example if you install te Microsoft teams app, afaik it’s also just a web app, but bundled with all the rest so that it seems like a normal app.

      PWA’s can even have hardware GPU support nowadays.

      • Kale
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        fedilink
        41 year ago

        Regarding Teams, you mean it’s a web app on mobile? I thought the MS Teams Windows application was written in that API that uses insane amounts of resources for what it does (although it does work, so I’m not necessarily criticizing using a library that works).

        • @[email protected]
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          fedilink
          31 year ago

          The Microsoft teams desktop app is written using a JavaScript framework called Electron. Electron is just a framework that allows you to write a single-page web app and install/launch it like a native application. Because it’s written in JavaScript (the same language web browsers use. Electron apps are literally their own chromium based web browser. It’s part of the reason those apps use so much of your computers resources) it is OS agnostic and cross platform without really needing consideration.