Email clients, word processors and video chat would be very much possible without Javascript.

Email clients, sure.

Word processors? Only if you're requiring something like Markdown.

Video chat seems right out, unless you're permitting a Flash solution, which would be severely cheating.

He's not talking about cancerous in-browser webapps. He's talking about actual clients.

You mean clients i can hardly update, and most often clunky as well? I dont see the improvement.

I can use web apps on any platform without waiting for the company to do it.

I refuse to install apps on my devices.

> You mean clients i can hardly update

Yes! You dont have to update if you dont want to. Thats a feature. Of course, the rise of proprietary APIs over interoperable protocols has lessened that advantage.

> You mean clients i can hardly update, and most often clunky as well? I dont see the improvement.

Is better performance and more features not an improvement to you?

What more features? All can be done in javascript, without making users install garbage, without spending extra resources. I prefer companies spend their resources on improving the product instead of implementing same thing thrice.

What most people dont realize is web apps are a boon to linux people. Most companies would not develop for linux at all.

> What more features?

Support for most platform APIs?

> I prefer companies spend their resources on improving the product instead of implementing same thing thrice.

Funny, this is exactly my issue with web apps. I don't want to use software where the engineers have done a poor job reimplementing things the system provides for free.

Build the tools to enable them. Dont blame engineers lack of experience on the language. I used libreoffice early on, was not impressed. Same story.

> Word processors? Only if you're requiring something like Markdown.

You havent heard of LibreOffice?

Everything old is new again.

'offline' apps, 'local' cloud. Its the future!

Web apps are boon to linux people. Most companies would not even bother developing for linux first

personally I havent found a webapp that I need, or even doesn't just make me think a normal app would be better.

That's not to say I disagree though. The tech world is very good at creating monopolies.

Why would i install some hundreds of mbs of apps when i am complaining about javascript.

Because you don't have the redownload libreoffice everytime you want to write something?

Theres Ted if you cant stretch to libreoffice though. https://www.nllgg.nl/Ted/

> You havent heard of LibreOffice?

Don't be disingenuous. The thread's about Firefox and JavaScript. It's quite clear @tehlike wasn't talking about native desktop apps, but web apps.

I dont disagree that web apps would not exist if web apps did not exist.

You can upload and download video streams just fine without any Javascript.

In a browser? We're on a thread talking about Gmail (a web app) in a thread about Firefox.

The main Gmail app would not work. There is an html only Gmail and I use it all the time!