Progressive Web Apps offer home screen icons, push notifications and offline support
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2025 11:09 am
When creating a website, you define the content in HTML and the style in CSS. But rendering engines such as Skia paint the pixels. It means that you can tell the browser to create a blue circle, but it’s up to Skia to decide how.
Understanding Houdini
Houdini allows you to talk to these rendering engines. But instead of writing custom Skia code and shipping it as a native app, you can write the CSS and Javascript to talk to each browser’s rendering engine.
Houdini’s code will coexist with traditional CSS, providing another option should you need something to look a specific way.
Unfortunately, most of Houdini’s specs are still brazil whatsapp number database in the air and only Chrome allows you to test the ideas. But if web apps are ever to mimic the feel of native apps, Houdini is probably how.
To recap:
WebAssembly provides native or near-native performance
Houdini will provide the fancy style
What About Native APIs Among Web Apps?
Native APIs Have an Important Place Among Web Apps
Native apps will always have a place. They can take advantage of platform-specific advantages from various sources. For example, Google’s Visual Core chip, Apple’s ARKit, native graphics APIs and all the other features which keep operating systems competitive.
However, for apps that value convenience and ubiquity, web apps will grow in both number and importance. Though it’s difficult to predict which next-gen web apps will make the biggest impact.
While Twitter Lite is a prime example of Progressive Web Apps, lightweight WebAssembly-built games might soon be everywhere.
Understanding Houdini
Houdini allows you to talk to these rendering engines. But instead of writing custom Skia code and shipping it as a native app, you can write the CSS and Javascript to talk to each browser’s rendering engine.
Houdini’s code will coexist with traditional CSS, providing another option should you need something to look a specific way.
Unfortunately, most of Houdini’s specs are still brazil whatsapp number database in the air and only Chrome allows you to test the ideas. But if web apps are ever to mimic the feel of native apps, Houdini is probably how.
To recap:
WebAssembly provides native or near-native performance
Houdini will provide the fancy style
What About Native APIs Among Web Apps?
Native APIs Have an Important Place Among Web Apps
Native apps will always have a place. They can take advantage of platform-specific advantages from various sources. For example, Google’s Visual Core chip, Apple’s ARKit, native graphics APIs and all the other features which keep operating systems competitive.
However, for apps that value convenience and ubiquity, web apps will grow in both number and importance. Though it’s difficult to predict which next-gen web apps will make the biggest impact.
While Twitter Lite is a prime example of Progressive Web Apps, lightweight WebAssembly-built games might soon be everywhere.