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Comment by prezjordan | Hacker News Reader

The Chrome extension example is pretty weak. I don't know why anyone would think you could get something form the Chrome Web Store using Firefox.

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The point is not being open, the point is platform lockin. Once you accept it, you will "never" be able to leave chrome because you have all of your things in chrome apps now.

It was a huge effort to leave the Microsoft lockin back then, and the Web(togheter with Linux, GNU and open source), a open platform did it! It was like the 'man in the moon' back then; And now we are simply going back, and we are just repeating the same mistakes again

Thank you for pointing this out - I hadn't thought of it that way.

I disagree. Two points:

1. The vast majority of things on the Chrome Web Store are web apps, not browser extensions.

2. Should GMail really only be able to work offline in Chrome?

I understand that many of them are just shortcuts, but the point is still weaker than anything else posted here.

As for your second point, no it shouldn't :( Seems they built this "offline app" stuff into Chrome and plan on keeping it there.

>2. Should GMail really only be able to work offline in Chrome?

Does anyone but me remember offline email clients (hello Thunderbird!)? You can take Gmail offline already.

I really enjoy nmh, with sufficient scripting and aliases.

There are specific things you can do in Chrome Apps like access the Hard Drive.

Why can't you at least download it? You can download Firefox .xpi files from https://addons.mozilla.org using Chrome.

They disabled normal local / offline installation of CRX packages a while ago due to "security" concerns.

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2811969

Because “everyone” means people who don’t necessarily follow browser development trends.

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