Editing 1367: Installing

{{comic
| number    = 1367
| date      = May 12, 2014
| title     = Installing
| image     = installing.png
| titletext = But still, my scheme for creating and saving user config files and data locally to preserve them across reinstalls might be useful for--wait, that's cookies.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic refers to the kind of "inventions" which seem new from the point of view of a {{w|smartphone}} user but have already been around for a long time on desktop or {{w|laptop}}/notebook computers.

[[Cueball]] has a clever idea to skip the installing of applications on mobile phones: he would host the applications online instead and provide links to the servers. The apps wouldn't stay on the phone all the time; instead, the phone would download each app again every time the user wanted to run it.

However, web pages and {{w|web application}}s already work like this. Clicking a link will make the browser download a web page and render {{w|HTML|HTML code}} and {{w|JavaScript}} that it links to.

The page usually isn't saved long-term on the user's computer; instead, the browser downloads it again when needed. {{w|HTML5}} does however offer the option of {{w|Cache_manifest_in_HTML5|caching web application files locally}} so it can remain operational when there is no network connection.

In the title text, Cueball's idea for local application storage already exists in the HTTP protocol as {{w|HTTP cookie|cookies}}. The more flexible {{w|Web storage|web storage}} was originally part of the HTML5 specification, but it's now in a separate specification.

Native phone applications and web applications are not completely interchangeable. Web applications may not allow access to more advanced or platform-specific resources. Projects like {{w|Apache Cordova}} make these resources available to web applications by creating a native application wrapper for the web application.

A comic with a similar point of view is [[1174: App]]: Want to visit an incomplete version of our website where you can't zoom? '''Download our app!'''

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan are standing next to each other.]
:Cueball: Installing things has gotten so fast and painless.
:Cueball: Why not skip it entirely, and make a phone that has every app "installed" already and just downloads and runs them on the fly?

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I felt pretty clever until I realized I'd invented webpages.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Smartphones]]