What do you think about using browser apps over standalone apps?

MattX

I've found that browser apps work pretty well and sometimes better than standalone apps for stuff like WhatsApp or Spotify. I even make ones for Netflix, Prime Video, Gmail. Most popular browsers support them. Maybe it would be good idea to include a manager similar to ICE found in Peppermint OS in Solus? What do you think?

CorvusRuber

Useless. You've got a browser for that (and you're not using an iPhone, but a full blown PC: segregating a single website into its own personal instance of a browser runtime it's a waste of resources).
There are some specific use cases that could need a proper sandboxed browser instance (with Firejail, for example) but watching movies and listening to music are not among them.

MattX

CorvusRuber Is this really that bad? Because some standalone apps were slower than browser apps. And I got very low-end hardware (a rotten potato of a PC to be exact) so I can see if they get slow. 😅 In some cases i just want to use just one thing at a time without anything else out there and browser app is pretty simple window with only back and reload buttons at the top.

CorvusRuber

MattX
That tool simply either creates a standalone browser instance (Chromium/Blink, I guess) with a single, hardcoded address to reach or goes out of the way to do something like this to create an Electron wrapper for a single website. You could literally get the same result (with probably better security) by simply opening a single tab in your browser pointing at what you need.
Apart from that, Nativefier itself has already been requested for inclusion (and rejected) for the excellent reason that it doesn't do anything really useful apart from being a wrapper. I'm fairly sure that requesting anything else with a similar use case will be rejected as well.

YuriTheHenrique

I find it pretty useful, it uses internal browser kiosk mode to create easily manageable and customizable web-apps, without all the fuzz of extra packages.
Also, some web-apps works better without full screen, just an small window, simulating a phone, and being separated from the main browser is an extra, sometimes we don't need the full browser.

It would be an amazing new entry for the repository.

MattX

YuriTheHenrique This is Spotify running as an external app through Brave. It works great and blocks the freaking ad banners that on my 1280x800 screen take a lot of space. I used different Spotify standalone apps and they don't block these ads.

algent

MattX I am not sure if spotify's command from terminal is just spotify, but you can try to run:
spotify --disable-gpu and check if performs better.

Brucehankins

MattX PWA's don't have wide support across browser makers, not even all chromium based browsers support. Firefox dropped their implementation noting that it wasn't worth their resource investment. It's a great way for Peppermint to add software to their repo with limited need for dependencies and keeping the system footprint minimal. But Peppermint is also an extremely lightweight distro, so it's not for everyone.

WetGeek

I think it'd be great if such an option were available for anyone who might appreciate it. And those who find nothing appealing about the idea simply wouldn't need to bother with it.

Personally, I seldom want to start up a browser to view a single site -- most often for several related ones. For example, several news sources that I read every morning, several business sites like my bank and such, places where I frequently shop, 4 or 5 streaming services like Netflix, BritBox, and Disney+ on the media machine, sports I subscribe to, like soccer, rugby, motorcycle racing, and so on.

Creating individual applications for each of those and needing to open a menu to launch each of them seems cumbersome to me. Several instances of Vivaldi, each in its own workspace, makes more sense to me. (And with its new Tab Stacks feature I've been thinking of changing that to just one instance of Vivaldi. Today might be a good day to set that up!)

But not everyone uses a computer exactly the way I do, and for those who would find Ice useful, I think it's a pretty cool idea.

MattX

Thaks guys for really hepful replies.

I really like this feature on Brave and it works just fine. I would only like to have an app like Ice to have control over these apps and change an icon when I need or choose what browser it works under.

And as WetGeek said I open them on different workspaces so they don't create a 'tab hell' in my browser.

I agree wih some of you that I could use those standalone apps from the repos/snaps/flapaks but I tried some of them and they were slower on my hobotop, some of them display ads I hate (like Amazon job offers and other stupid stuff 😆). I don't know what engine are they using since I'm not a programmer. They just work fine and I don't see any performance issues. I can have 3 of them opened at the same time along with a full browser with few tabs and I see that my RAM usage is something about 1.5/4GB, so it's not that bad.

Sorry if I preach too much. Just wanted to share my experience as low-end junk user. 🥔

DataDrake

Friendly reminder to read our Package Inclusion Policy before requesting a package

A web wrapper which adds value, such as Discord, with the global push-to-talk shortcut, is eligible for inclusion.

A web page wrapper, that adds no further value other than “convenient desktop shortcut” or “tray icon”, are not eligible for inclusion. Web browsers already support desktop notifications.