Having them be proper applications would be a huge problem for the security and therefore the computing autonomy of the average person. The fact that you don't generally download unsandboxed, unsigned apps from the internets any more (and don't run shrink-wrapped apps from the local CompUSA that are full of C string parsing vulnerabilities, either) is one of the most meaningful accomplishments in computer security in the last decade. If you want to throw it out, you personally can clean up the Bonzi Buddies on every Windows user's computer. The most malicious JavaScript web page still can't install Bonzi Buddy. We've even gotten to an era where most people don't need to install anti-virus, because moving everything to the web has fixed the fundamental problems with desktop OS design that required a quasi-snake-oil, theoretically-untenable approach to maintain a semblance of integrity.

There's another alternative, which is curated and audited app stores à la iOS, but the fact that you can't use applications unless they're approved by a megacorporation would also be bad for people's computing autonomy.

(Also, what makes you think that the developers of bloated JS apps won't make bloated desktop apps?)

Thats a false dilemma. You can have sandboxing without running pseudo-applications in a document viewer and without walled gardens.

> (Also, what makes you think that the developers of bloated JS apps won't make bloated desktop apps?)

Nothing. Its possible to create garbage desktop apps. But its impossible to create non-garbage web apps.

> You can have sandboxing without running pseudo-applications in a document viewer and without walled gardens.

Please expand on this claim. What is a "pseudo-application" and what is a "document viewer"? In particular, how does having an app runtime outside a "document viewer" accomplish the goals you would like to see?

> Its possible to create garbage desktop apps. But its impossible to create non-garbage web apps.

Please expand on this claim. I've seen tons of non-garbage web apps.

> What is a "pseudo-application" and what is a "document viewer"?

Presumably, a webpage in a browser.

> In particular, how does having an app runtime outside a "document viewer" accomplish the goals you would like to see?

> I've seen tons of non-garbage web apps.

Good web software can't compete with good native software in things like performance and platform features, so this is my guess as to what is considered to be non-"garbage".

They are applications. They run in a safe sandbox in the browser, rather than being all-powerful programs running directly on the system. They allow nuances of trust ("I trust this application with the data I'm giving it") rather than absolute trust ("I trust this application with access to my entire system and all my data").

Proper applications follow OS UI conventions, they appear in the task bar, are launched from the application launcher etc. Proper applications can also be sandboxed, though Spectre makes it a bad idea to run untrusted code anyway.

> Proper applications follow OS UI conventions

(I'm going to ignore the use of "proper application" instead of "native (non-web) application"; it isn't helping your argument.)

Native applications can choose whether they follow UI conventions or not; many games don't, for instance. Web applications have the same choice; they can use native controls provided by the browser, and I certainly agree that well-behaved web applications should if they don't have a good reason to do otherwise (e.g. use standard form controls for native look-and-feel and better integration/interaction).

> they appear in the task bar

So do progressive web apps (PWAs).

> are launched from the application launcher

PWAs are as well. (Likewise for many other aspects of integration with the rest of the system.)

> Proper applications can also be sandboxed

But there aren't yet standard mechanisms for that (outside of mobile platforms), and you can't necessarily trust that an application will sandbox itself. Current sandbox mechanisms mostly get used by applications to protect against exploits, not for users to protect themselves against applications.

> there aren't yet standard mechanisms for that (outside of mobile platforms)

macOS certainly has one.

That has downsides of its own.

For example, url sharing / deep linking goes out the window. I can't share what I'm looking at in macOS' Maps.app like I can on the Google Maps website, pure downgrade.

I also don't want to download an application for everything. Very few things deserve a permanent spot on my computer. I have much less control over desktop apps than I do a website.

Or look at macOS' News.app. Another downgrade from reading news in a browser tab. It has no tabs. There's no right-click. It implemented its own back button. It only supports the few news sources that come preinstalled on it. I can't add my own. Why would I prefer this?

Obviously native applications have their place, but let's not suggest there aren't trade-offs.

What's odd about your posts is that you suggest it's an inconvenience that you might have to disable Javascript. Maybe you have to use NoScript or uMatrix or uBlock. But at least you have the option and this sort of control over the web browser. If a native application does something that you don't like, you have basically zero recourse beyond uninstalling it or begging the developer to change something you could've done in the browser with a quick browser extension or CSS tweak.

> I can't share what I'm looking at in macOS' Maps.app like I can on the Google Maps website, pure downgrade.

But you can? For example, https://maps.apple.com/?ll=36.103117,-103.901438&spn=0.00098...

> Or look at macOS' News.app. Another downgrade from reading news in a browser tab. It has no tabs. There's no right-click. It implemented its own back button. It only supports the few news sources that come preinstalled on it. I can't add my own. Why would I prefer this?

You shouldn't; you should be annoyed that Apple shipped this and demand that they give you better.

Your maps.apple.com example is perfect: the recipient needs to have an Apple device and Maps.app to see the link. It's like a peek into how things might've been in a dismal alternate reality.

Now try this: https://goo.gl/maps/dvhDpd93gJs

Did you try clicking on the link I posted? On my Linux machine, it redirects to Google Maps.

> For example, url sharing / deep linking goes out the window.

Yes, thats the one good thing about the web. But there is no reason proper applications cannot support this.

> Or look at macOS' News.app.

Im not familiar with that app but I guess its some sort of reader for hypertext documents (published by news organizations)? The one thing a browser is good at?

Not really. It's way harder (and therefore the barrier is higher, they'd be less likely to exist, etc) to develop cross platform native applications than it is to just implement them as webapps.

If it was just as easy to write and distribute native applications, we'd be doing that, instead of bolting it onto the web. But it's pretty clearly not.

Its the other way round. If web apps didnt exist, there would be more pressure to develop tools that make it easy to write and distribute proper applications.

Serious question: do you remember the late '90s and early '00s? Have you used Visual Basic, or Qt, or anything? There was an era before web apps existed, and there were tools that made it easy to write and distribute proper applications - are you claiming that that didn't happen, or what?

I didnt, dymk did.

You're the one claiming that tools would exist to make it easy. I am saying that they did exist, and they were as easy as possible. What remains to be done, and why didn't it happen before the invention of XMLHTTPRequest? Could it get easier, and if so, how?

Under what circumstances would webapps not exist in some form or another? It's a system for deploying applications via the web, and JavaScript is primarily the language that they're implemented in.

I will bet you that in 99% of alternative timelines, we'd end up with something incredibly similar to what we've got today, and you'd still be complaining that applications aren't "native" enough, because practically nobody cares that a taskbar or button isn't a native OS component. They care that their application works, and can be quickly deployed and updated.

> Under what circumstances would webapps not exist in some form or another?

Browsers not supporting nonsense like Javascript.