Re:Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper that ...
by zahllos on Thursday November 13, 2025 @03:57AM
(#45912497)
We could call it Flash. Or Java Applets.
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Re:Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper that ...
by hliyan on Thursday November 13, 2025 @04:08AM
(#45912588)
You have completely misunderstood the proposal. None of those drive OS native UI widgets through markup and scripts downloaded from the web.
Re:Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper that ...
by zahllos on Thursday November 13, 2025 @08:04AM
(#45914429)
Ah no I was just being snarky and not at you. We're all missing (hyper)text markup language as the UI markup layer, plus js. We previously had some kind of alternative "load app from internet" but the runtimes were external (and provided lots of fun security holes).
I completely agree it would be better to rethink what we want and have markup/code/etc optimised to the task of rendering applications. I don't think it'll happen unfortunately.
Re:Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper that ...
by qcnguy on Thursday November 13, 2025 @10:44AM
(#45916245)
Java applets drove native widgets in their first iteration. It wasn't markup but that hardly matters, you could have easily slapped some XML over AWT and the difference between a .jar and a .js isn't big.
They had to stop because native widgets aren't secure enough.