Dion Almaer

Software, Development, Products

Web Platform

App Mode

What would <html app> do? 🤔

The Web can continue to evolve by taking the long term view and chipping away with adding necessary functionality, and eliding some of the mistakes (albeit hard).

However, I have been pondering if we should be exploring some bigger bets:

  • First, looking at certain verticals (content, commerce, apps) and prioritizing web platform features and tooling to make them successful holistically
  • Second, breaking out of the “browser” and be progressive all the way to the native platforms by adding escape hatches

Now, let’s take another look at building the UI for apps on the Web in a very webby way, embracing what’s good about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but really re-thinking it for apps.

Don’t let evolution get in the way

How connected are we? Very.

Evolution is resilient and special. Pair it with immense time frames, and life will find a way, even as many experiments will be left on the way side. One of the strengths of the Web is how it evolves as a platform, but it can be a double edge sword.

We can’t expect to constantly evolve while keeping the entire history front and center. We have fragments in our DNA that go back to the birth of life, but much of it is very much hidden and ignored.

We can embrace evolution that allows us not to keep the baggage around. If you look at a hello world web app, that supports a decent set of browsers, you will find yourself setting up resets of sorts, meta tags, and a series of cruft. This cruft creates cognitive overhead for developers.

In hindsight, we will always make mistakes in the platform and come up with solutions. One simple example that we all know, is that of box-sizing.

I don’t want the default content-box model, and instead agree with Paul from 2012, and many since, who recommend we go all in and flip the default to: box-sizing: border-box;

In 2021, the vast majority of your users will be coming at you via an evergreen modern browser. This is huge, and allows us the ability to flip to a modern-first approach of development that doesn’t tax all of our users for the lowest common denominator. Finally, we can speed up evolution!

While it’s phenomenal that old content sitting on the Web can still be browsed (but of course, this isn’t always true, plenty of old content breaks), it also means that browsers are constrained. They can’t just flip the defaults because *new* content is being developed using new ways, thus we are a lil stuck.

How could browsers do the best job they can at rendering all content, including great content written many moons ago, whilst allowing for new content?

Multiple Rendering Paths

Remember quirksmode? I still see developers accidentally finding themselves confused, because they have put their document into quirks vs. standard mode.

We also have AMP, which forces a constrained mode, optimized for documents keyed off of:

<html ⚡ lang="en">

So, what if we took a leaf out of these books, and had something like:

<html app lang="en">

This could give us a way to tell the browser that we want a new world, one optimized for apps rather than documents. A way to trigger a reset. This would give us a chance to re-think building web apps that still uses HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and feels very webby, but in a sane way for the app use case that is quite different to content.

What could we see?

App-oriented Layout

I love our Grid and Flexbox world, but we could also look into constrained layout modes, working closely with tooling vendors as the Android team did when they shipped their most recent layout systems.

App-oriented Components

Take another look through the HTML spec and the various elements you have built in. I bet you will find some elements that you have never used, such as <aside>. There are a ton of document focused elements, which is great!

But we stopped. While it’s great to abstract and create our own components, either through Web Components themselves, or via framework abstractions that spew out div soup, why haven’t we undergrounded the great learnings from the ecosystem? My kingdom for tabbed UI, and the good ole UITableView! Fortunately, I am seeing more exploration and appetite for this!

App-oriented Data Flow

When you are building rich web apps, and you try to really build your app offline-first, with optimistic UI, you run into a lot of issues around data and syncing.

We just saw James Long dig into the mess that is IndexedDB and the lack of a portable WebSQL/SQLite. What can we do to really enable experiences that can rely on data?

Are we forcing it? What about WebAssembly?

But wait a minute, are we barking up the wrong tree here? Maybe the solution is to keep HTML, the DOM, and friends for the content Web? Or maybe content++… allowing for interactivity but not as far as full on apps!

Flutter using the Web as a target

With WebAssembly, we could keep URLs, but have them toss back apps that are WebGL renderers! We could just use Flutter for Web as an example. This would allow many runtimes to evolve on top, and bobs your uncle.

While this may make sense for some use cases, and I love that Flutter developers have a path to Web, I don’t think that we should cede all apps to this model, as it naturally ends up with blobs at the end of URLs, and we lose a lot of what is great about the HTML/CSS/JS web.

I know that it is quite niche, but I love how Chrome Extensions can compose and hack the Web. This is a super power akin to an after market for car parts. Someone can create functionality that helps you with another services, and I would like more of that, not less. The Web is fantastic at streaming UI, and we can do more to make this all work well with apps, versus the years of fighting against it and downloading the world before rendering anything.

Thus, I find myself dreaming of layers, or adding the primitives that allow for evolution, but also having another go at baking app UI right into the web as a first class citizen, instead of it being a render target with so many foot guns and uncanny valleys. I dream of a studio of tools, aligned with the platform, to make this possible working hand in hand.

And then I wake up to see debates around a simple alert(), and how hard it is to make changes, and I once again ponder escape hatches that allow us to make bold changes.

It’s complex and hard to make some moves, as when you have a platform you need to make sure that both:

  • developers have a happy path, know when they are doing something sub-optimal and how to fix it, and make that happy path the one that doesn’t lead you there
  • and, we minimize the attack surface to make it as hard as possible for bad actors to do harmful things to users and businesses.

And there’s often the rub, as the same capabilities and loopholes can be used for both.

Apps were born on a document platform, and we are still lacking a holistic web-first app platform that could unlock experiences that have great attributes from the web, but are also more fun and productive for developers to build.

What is in your app mode?

Time to Embrace Escape Hatches on the Web Platform?

Progressive Web Apps aren’t reaching their potential at scale. I just spoke about how I think it’s important for the Web to push on its own vision as a platform, but as a universal app platform (one of the key segments, along with content and commerce) it isn’t hitting the mark, mainly on mobile. What if we rethink the web platform, and embrace the “progressive” quality to allow for escape hatches on top of web standards as an interop layer for maximal reach?

The default mode of evolution on the web is deliberate. This gives us a nice eventual consistency across multiple implementations, but  there are times in which it is held back too much and at those times I think it is important for us to break out of the mold, branch off and prove value, while always looking to merge back in the future. We are at one of those times, and here is why our current situation isn’t working for users and developers (and thus the platform).

User Expectations

People go to app stores to find apps. On desktop, the browser as a virtual machine kinda works, and there is enough real estate for the browser chrome to be a feature not just a bug. On mobile that isn’t the case. And expecting users to understand Add to Home Screen is swimming upstream. And of course, there are plenty of uncanny valley situations when using a PWA. It doesn’t come across when you migrate devices. It doesn’t show up across an ecosystem (e.g. widgets, watches, notifications on some platforms, etc).

Developer Expectations

As a developer, knowing that I can’t hit the user bar already has me thinking about how far I can go. I sure as hell don’t want to rewrite a mobile app to target multiple platforms, and LOVE the idea of not reinventing the wheel, but I need to not be locked out of key platform capabilities and user flows.

Add to that the notion of FOMO. When iOS and Android release their new SDKs, how long will it take for me to get access via a web standard feature? Can I risk being locked out of $SOME_COOL_NEW_FEATURE?

And will Apple ever implement what I need? They have shown, through action, that they have a different vision for the Web, one that is much more focused on the content Web. Given their business and app strategy, it isn’t being evil, it makes sense. They want developers building on their native stack and offering experiences that are differentiated.

We have all tried to push on this for some time, but maybe it’s time for a different tact. Instead of slowly doing all we can to change the calculus for Apple to implement something (e.g. finding ways for their internal teams to request a feature, or getting adoption of something so that it works poorly or slowly, such as YouTube supporting Web Components) let’s think different.

Web as an Interop Layer

It’s interesting to look at iMessage and SMS as another path. The SMS standard acts as an interop layer, where you are able to text between iOS and Android. It doesn’t have all of the fancy features… but it allows for fast iterations when each platform is talking to another device on it’s own system.

This is far from perfect. How frustrating is it to react to a text on iOS, but because someone on the thread is on Android, you get another text with: Liked “repeat of the message”. I see this and conspiracy theories start up in my head…. Surely you could write the Regex to see the pattern and just show the reaction on that message :/

And then there is Spotify and podcasts. Originally, you were very much locked in, but recently Spotify supported RSS and your ability to monetize your own way if you wish. If you can offer choice to developers where they can get different levels of integration based on the direction they go (doing extra work for a platform vs. open standards) that is a real trade off with real choice. Once again though, far from perfect, and I am frustrated with Spotify sucking up “exclusives”, and shoving podcasts down my throat in the app when I just use it for music.

What would this look like for the Web? The standards (and really the implementation of them… which is why compat efforts will always be so important) are the interop layer that gives you the base level functionality and allows you to reach every user with a device that implements a web client. We use progressive enhancement as always to do the right thing to make the experience work as well as it can for the given device and modalities and browser and version that a user is browsing your site with.

But we progressively enhance further, breaking out of the sandbox as needed. The starting point is on getting browser vendors onboard, but if to bogged down you aren’t stuck. We lean into Capacitor type approaches, letting you reach to native when needed, and getting you into the stores that don’t support you with a simple URL. Platforms can give you extras and you can choose to put in the extra work to enhance to them if the ROI is there. We learn from this evolution and always push to eventually bake it into the standards. Just like how I wish that reactions get baked into new versions of texting standards, and how chat apps could eventually get interop (fun fact: I used to be an IRC admin for the University of Minnesota!)

What does this look like?

Let’s say I build an image editor application. On ChromeOS the web is the app platform, so I want my users to be able to double click on the PNG file on their desktop and have it launch and load in the PWA. If this feature isn’t fully implemented on other browsers, give me a way to do it on ChromeOS first. It’s OK!

Now let’s say we want to bring this editor to mobile and are frustrated at the lack of support for *simple* features such as access to a file system. If one OS isn’t getting you what you need, we break off and have a wrapper API that bridges through the native SDK. We have polyfills where we can, and clean ways to use enhanced APIs that don’t break the web experience when we can’t. We can even embrace the fact that the app install step is a nod that the user cares about this experience.

Trust is important. The ephemeral nature of the web is key, and I’m all for leveling the field, but we also need user signals that don’t make UX of an API awful.

Let’s take the image editor example and say that we want to add rich font support and we want to be able to access your local system fonts. If you meet with the security and privacy team first they may point out that a web site knowing which fonts you have is just what finger printing folks would love to see. Instead, what if we protect users and when you sign in we ask users to choose which fonts they want to share…. Like sharing images via a picker vs granting access to your camera roll. You nod for a bit, and then you think through that UX.

Wait, how do I know which fonts I want to use in the future? In my editor I want users to be able to play with their design and quickly flip through fonts to see how they look with the content I have?

Now imagine that this image editor is from Adobe, and picture the user…. Logging into creative cloud which they pay for, and seeing this? Does this keep them safe? Or does it result in closing the web app and just switching to native?

We have this working now!

We a history of this evolution. On desktop with Electron, and a huge number of mobile apps embed WebViews, use custom bridges, and use products such as Capacitor.

And we are seeing success stories, particularly within certain verticals such as enterprise and publishing. I remember meeting with a huge media company in Latin America who switched from their native apps to using web + native where needed. It wasn’t just useful for their general ROI, all of their metrics went up and to the right:

  • Positive App Store ratings increased by 25%
  • App size was reduced by 70%
  • Crashes reduced by about 80%
  • Engagement increased.

But how? Well, context matters. They had a large web team and small native teams and this resulted in native always being far behind in features and the overall quality not being the best. You don’t get platform leverage for free. You still need native skills but a core group could watch over some of that and the feature teams could run faster.

And now when this years SDK comes out, they can bridge over to it and access that new branch of evolution.

Let’s consider how to keep up the pace and deliver on user and developer expectations by offering progressive enhancement down to the underlying platform vis escape hatches, and do it in a way that learns from the past (e.g. MS universal apps) allowing us to be constantly merging improvements into main, which are the web standards that we hold dear.

The difference between Platforms and Ecosystems

tl;dr: “What’s the difference between a platform and an ecosystem?” This simple question resulted in an ecosystem strategy to connect sub-ecosystems that work on the Web. What if we lean in and deeply connect our tools, services, frameworks, and platforms….. and align on the right incentives for a healthy web?

I work in a product area of Google that is called Platforms and Ecosystems, and I sometimes reflect on the question “what’s the difference between a platform and an ecosystem?”

There are many, but I have found myself diving into the differences in complexity of a rich ecosystem.

With platforms we often think in layers, each layer building on each other, and the interfaces mostly being at the boundaries. This is a nice abstraction when done right, as it isn’t leaking all over the place.

The layers view of a platform

An ecosystem often forms on top of a platform, or if it gets connected enough, you get combinations. Sub-ecosystems form that have their own fractal view of the world, and they may connect with multiple technical platforms (e.g. the React ecosystem touching Web, iOS, Android, Desktop, ….).

The Web is complex enough that it is one of the canonical examples of an ecosystem that has many sub-ecosystems. You can even slice “the web” itself into pieces including the technical client platform that is embedded in almost every native platform there is (WebView anyone?) as well as the connected open Web, where many technical stacks are available to run as well.

A week ago, I had the pleasure of spending some time with representatives from major global CMSes, and they are a fantastic example of sub-ecosystems.

We spoke of ecosystem loops, and how an ecosystem has so many more connection points that are not restricted to layers, and are multi-directional.

These connection points, when strong, can enable a healthy web ecosystem. This realization has changed the way that we work, thinking about we can truly enable healthy connections.

Foundationally, we obviously want to build web platform APIs that work for as many ecosystems as possible, whilst also push the web. We also work to build clear guidance on web.dev that helps developers understand what is possible on the web across key pillars and principles. We want to deliver new and better tools that help you create, debug, and deliver actionable insights to you (e.g. DevTools, Lighthouse, CrUX).

Speak the right language

Lighthouse Stack Packs can speak your language

One of the problems we see, is that there is often an impedance mismatch between the layer of abstraction that a developer uses (e.g. using a particular framework, set of libraries, or backend infra) and the feedback that tools and services surface.

We are on a journey across our portfolio to fix this, and the best example is probably Lighthouse:

  • Lighthouse plugins allow you to build on the platform to offer your own audits and rulesets, enabling you to enforce you own criteria or requirements. For example, a framework may have important linting tests, or an ecommerce platform may have retail oriented audits.
  • Lighthouse Stackpacks bring an understanding of the ecosystem into the existing core rules. Don’t give generic guidance on next generation images when you could give custom guidance for particular plugins or point the developer to a setting in the admin console.

Elsewhere we are thinking of similar evolutions:

  • web.dev offers framework specific guidance, but what if the base guidance changed based on your needs?
  • There are many Chrome extensions for developers which extend DevTools, but what if there was a strong plugin API where knowledge can be brought to the core tools?

I am excited to work with the ecosystem to enable this kind of intelligence for our collective developers.

Show me the incentives!

We can make life much better for developers, but we have also learned that this isn’t enough to fully elevate the web together.

We want to see the flywheel moving nicely on the above ecosystem loops, with users engaging with high quality content from developers and their sites and platforms.

As platforms, how do we enable this outcome? It’s hard, but we have learned a lot from the work that the ecosystem did to move to HTTPS.

Moar TLS!

It may be hard to think back to the days when HTTPS wasn’t the norm, and only 30% of traffic was secured. How could we make it the vast majority? I remember hearing thought such as: “it can’t be done!”, “people just don’t actually care enough!”, “it’s too hard!”

In retrospect, it’s interesting to reflect on the parts and pieces that I think collectively drove things forward:

#1 Knowledge and Insights
There was a lot of content on *why* this is important, and *how* to do it. I remember it being really quite hard to do, and also waking up in a sweat on a couple of occasions with my brain racing: “did my certificate expire?“

#2 Tooling
The ecosystem jumped in to help make it MUCH easier. LetsEncrypt changed the game, and servers and hosts jumped in too.

#3 Demand
Now it’s easier, and it’s the right thing to do, but companies have huge backlogs. How do we make “the right thing to do” blindingly aligned to users and the company?

We need the right incentives, and this was the final puzzle piece. How do we reward developers that do the right thing? Some examples here are:

  • Browser UI surfacing quality: At first browsers changed their UI to highlight the good (e.g. showcase “secure”), and then…. over time…. deliberately…. switch to the point where the default is secure and we highlight the insecure
  • HTTPS required for API usage: WIth Service Workers, and powerful capabilities such as those being worked on via Project Fugu we need to make sure that we aren’t setting users up for attacks. This keeps our users secure, and also incentivizes developers to move to HTTPS to gain access to said APIs.
  • Acquisition: highly quality content is better for our users, so we want to make sure that Google Search is driving engagement to that content. When HTTP was added as a ranking factor we noticed an increase in adoption.
    It has been great to see the sum of the parts add up to the great adoption of HTTPS and we continue to push.

Moar Incentives!

How do we learn from HTTPS and bring this to the other areas of quality such as performance?

We will make sure that:

  • We will be clear about the metrics that we think represent quality
  • We will surface data and insights for developers and decision makers across our suite of products, and accessible for third party tooling solutions
  • We are very deliberate in carrots and sticks so everyone has time to plan
  • We will work with the sub-ecosystems so we can align on everything above so we row in the same direction. For example, if you are an established CMS provider, it isn’t solely important to track how many themes and plugins you have in your marketplace, but also note the quality of the output and how you can use said marketplace to share the same incentives (surfacing the right metrics etc).

How can we build connections that will strengthen us all? Do you see anything we should be doing? I am all ears.

The right thing to do, is the right thing to do.