Chrome App Migration?

[bgiesing]

In case you haven't seen yet @creationix, Google is discontinuing Chrome apps on every platform except Chrome OS. Any plans for this then? Google says devs should convert it to either Progressive Web Apps or native packaging with Electron/NW.js.

https://developers.chrome.com/apps/migration

[creationix]

That's a shame. I would love to use a plain web app, but none of the git providers provide cross-origin https access to their repos. A web page would need a browser extension or a man-in-the-middle proxy to get around the lack of CORS on github and others.

That said, my temporary solution was to use the proprietary github API. It's super slow and inefficient and has extremely low rate limits unless you authenticate with github first. (a pure web app can't go through the oauth flow or use secret app tokens so personal access tokens are the only option there). Even after you're authenticated, the rate limit can still be quite low if you're trying to sync down a large repository. Needless to say, this is royal pain in the rear, not to a mention terrible user experience.

An electron app would have no such limitations, but then it would be huge and heavy. It might be the way to go though. Also chromebooks were my main target with tedit anyway and things like electron don't work there. So I can't drop support for chrome apps, I would just have to add yet another build for non chrome-os platforms.

Currently I'm working on a second generation of the tedit idea at https://github.com/creationix/revision. I'm building it as a plain website first. I'm toying with the idea of having my own protocols instead of git for syncing with plugins to import and export to git repos. We'll see if it's a good idea, but I'm very frustrated with years of trying to access git from a browser.

[lhwitherspoon]

I have heard through a contact in the tech industry that the migration away from Chrome apps has been put on hold due to negative feedback from users. I'd make your voice heard on this. Meanwhile, I've noticed that my Mac can still access new Chrome apps on the Chrome Web Store just fine.

[creationix]

Thanks. I'm now working on yet another version as an app on the daplie platform I'm working on. But I'm glad personally to hear chrome apps might stay around. I found them very useful and easy to write.