Future of the UWP app

[Jaifroid]

Following on from #274, it's probably time to think about the future of the UWP app given that increasingly sites will not support Edge Legacy (in the webview). As I wrote there, while I can make a UWP app using WebView2, which uses Chromium, there are no UWP file access APIs incorporated, and we'd fall back to using the File System Access API. But in that case, why bother wrapping the app in UWP, when a PWA does the same job? (PWA Studio provides tooling for Visual Studio Code for this scenario, which is a bonus.)

I guess the question is whether it is worth having the PWA wrapped in the Store in any case. For a period I could probably serve two packages from the Store, the old Edge Legacy UWP to those devices that don't support the new WebView (this would include Windows Mobile, increasingly irrelevant), and the new Chromium webview (using only JavaScript APIs, and based on the PWA) to those with systems that support it.

Anything based on a PWA raises the issue that at least one-time access to a secure server is required to load it into the Cache. However, getting an app from a Store is pretty much the same thing. And to run in SW mode, the current UWP app needs the PWA workaround anyway, so it wouldn't be a huge jump.

There is the Electron alternative, i.e. I could put an Electron appx (UWP) in the Store. This has Electron (Node) File Access APIs, but it's quite a bit heavier than an app based on a PWA (~78MB vs ~12MB with sample ZIM). It does allow full offline usage after download/installation.

@kelson42 Do you have any thoughts/guidance?

[Jaifroid]

I decided to go (for now) down the route of providing an Electron app in the Store, alongside the UWP legacy app. See #329.