Comparison with other apps:
What is a webpage-based app? A comparison of different application types:
- Local application - a program you can run from your local computer (just about everything listed in the TFPC database)
- Web application - something run from a distant server, e.g. gmail. This can be a problem if you lose network connectivity or are on an especially slow network, and these tools will go away if the individuals/company behind them shuts down. Here's a collection of various web applications.
- Local web application - a program you can run from a server running on your local computer to enable various tools like PHP, MariaDB, Perl, etc. You often have to run a separate program like XAMPP and it can sometimes require some configuration steps.
- Webpage-based application (the focus of this thread) - a program that functions entirely within a web browser, no server components needed. These are usually javascript-based.
The advantages of webpage-based applications are really the same as portable freeware except that they function on any system that can run a modern browser and therefore extremely cross-platform. As they are run entirely in the browser, there's little security concern, but new browser updates and controls or tweaks could also break functionality.
Negatively, very old webpage may not behave reliably but this is fairly common across any platforms. Even Microsoft Windows, which is very good about backwards-compatibility, will see some issues with 10+ year old applications.
Background
Everyone is familiar with web-based applications applications, programs that work entirely via a web browser e.g. any web mail service, Google Docs, and Slack. They have two obvious issues: they require an Internet connection (a good one if you're working with large images or video), and occasionally the services behind them die. There's of course always questions of privacy and security for anything not done on your local machine, and many tools require a login of some sort.
One thing that can solve this issue is that some web-based programs will let you download the whole thing to your local machine, meaning you run the whole thing locally and thereafter no internet connection is required.
Related
* The Year The Desktop App Died
* Make desktop apps with HTML, CSS, and Javascript (thanks thepiney)
* Docu-wiki on a stick