And... what problem do they solve? They create an application which you have to download over-and-over again instead of providing downloadable application which starts quickly. Then there is a boatload of problems (how to store data, how to refresh data) and then reinventing technologies to solve those problems that didn't exist in the first place.
Supposedly the benefit is being portable and "independent" therefore we are required to install Chrome everywhere.
I recently toyed a bit with JavaWebStart and JavaFX and... this is quite nice actually - it allows easily distribute portable applications, that look good (IMHO) and they are cached well (or you can provide normal binary to download). And quite often they are smaller. The problem is - Java got this label of "slow and bloated" but nowadays Java apps are way snappier and start faster (and they are smaller) than JavaScript SPAs…
I recently toyed a bit with JavaWebStart and JavaFX and... this is quite nice actually - it allows easily distribute portable applications, that look good (IMHO) and they are cached well (or you can provide normal binary to download). And quite often they are smaller. The problem is - Java got this label of "slow and bloated" but nowadays Java apps are way snappier and start faster (and they are smaller) than JavaScript SPAs…