How to understand the Light App technology in the post-app era
Tags: miniapps, appclips
Published: 2022-10-18 08:48:59

Who is the competitor of the miniapp-based light application technology for enterprises? The answer is not the Internet platform with a miniapp ecosystem, but the traditional native app development model, web application development model and desktop software development model. This is just as HTML and JavaScript which were first prevalent in the Internet website and then gradually used in enterprise applications. This made the so-called "B/S architecture" (Browser-Server architecture) once popular in China. They competed with the C/S architecture in the PC era and the application development based on Visual Basic/Visual C++, and eventually replaced the latter. Miniapp-based light application technology is at the moment of entering the enterprise market from the Internet.

For many users, the App seems to be the most natural way for people to deal with machines, as if it has been the case since ancient times. For the generation after 00s, using apps is innate. However, for the 70- and 80-year-olds who have never touched a computer, their first contact with the "machine with a chip" may be through the use of cell phones, and the App is also the first software they have ever come into contact with in their lives. In the past few years, the digitalization of many enterprises also cannot be separated from the App.

But the App has only appeared for twelve or thirteen years with the great popularity of smartphones, and the peak of mobile Internet development has obviously passed. Several years ago, software in the form of App has shown its weakness after encountering dilemmas, as it has certain limitations for both users and developers.

## The weakness of App class technology

The form of Apps shows these problems:

- They are information islands in users’ cell phones because they cannot jump to each other to connect though they are obviously on the same device. In particular, they cannot connect or interoperate with the open Web smoothly. It can even be said that the mobile Internet between mobile apps and the Internet in the browser since the PC era are two parallel worlds.
- The process of discovering, installing and running an app is not smooth. One discovery mechanism is to find the links to jump to Google Play, Apple App Store, Huawei App Gallery, etc. through Internet search engines or some media content introduction, and then download apps from these application stores. The other discovery mechanism is to search and download apps directly in the application stores, and then install and use them. However, there is no particularly convenient mechanism for users to recommend and share with each other - one sends links via email, SMS, and then the receiver repeats the above process, during which the churn rate is high.
- The existence of the app store is somewhat useless for both developers and consumers. It cuts off the possibility for users to download apps directly through links on the open Web, and its content usually cannot be directly indexed by Internet search engines either, so users have to “shop” on their own. They initiate searches there, or scan the current App ranking list to find something interesting. But apparently less and less people are going to do that now. For the developers, when they apply for the launch of their apps, they will find the time for review uncontrollable, the reasons for rejection opaque and the release cycle long. After release, it is extremely expensive to market their apps to make them stand out from millions of apps in the App store.
- For any enterprise, informatization means raising a team to support iOS, Android and Web at the same time; the functions of the three are not easy to align, the progress is not easy to synchronize, and the experience is completely different.

## The era calls for new software forms - Light App

The "heavy" nature of apps has led to the emergence of a series of technology tools to make them "lighter", including Apple App Clips, Google Instant Apps, the "Quick Apps", developed in the Chinese market and driven by cell phone manufacturers’ alliance, and miniapps which are the most successful. These technology carriers have different standards and specifications, and their development tools, development methods and running environments are also various. But they undoubtedly share the same aim to be "light and fast".

	
### Apple’s App Clips

Apple's App Clip, said to be Apple's version of "miniapps", is officially called the "light app". It can be understood as a lightweight version of an app, which has some of the functions of the app (the ontology) and can be regarded as a functional fragment of an existing app. The size of App Clips is relatively small, and the maximum package size before compression is no more than 10 M. Especially, they do not need to be downloaded from the App Store, so the timeliness can be ensured. From this perspective, they do seem a little like miniapps.

The interface of App Clips is a card, and the code behind it has almost installed on the device by the time the user sees interface displayed on the iPhone, so it is responsive. As a small part of an App, App Clip is available on demand so it is a convenient way for users to quickly access and experience the function of the app. Also, the app to which the Clip belongs does not need to be pre-installed on users' devices at the time of use - that's the main selling point of App Clips: to let users quickly experience part of the App before deciding whether to download the complete App.

App Clips provides the opportunity to quickly demonstrate the value of the ontology App. To make it easier for users to access the complete App, developers can display download options in App Clips at the proper time. App Clips can even retain any information provided by users and transfer it seamlessly to the complete App.

However, it has some major limitations:

1. The development of App Clips is iOS native development and the development process is almost the same as native development. Therefore, companies or teams can't expect to rely on HTML5 front-end engineers to do this job without iOS development engineers.
2. Although App Clips claim that they don't need to be downloaded from App Store, don't think they don’t need to undergo a relatively painful review process of Apple. Sadly, you don't have that freedom. Since they are part of Apps, each upgrade of them still has to be submitted for review.
3. Since App Clip is an implementation of native iOS code, it obviously can't exist on other platforms such as Android. So, it is not a mechanism that can guarantee a consistent experience across platforms. For example, you will probably need to use Google Instant Apps to re-implement similar functions (but the user experience will undoubtedly be very different)

Because of technical reasons mentioned above, and even more because of the huge success of apps in such miniapps’ form in the domestic market, App Clips are estimated to be difficult to be widely used.

### Google Instant App

The Google Instant App mainly aims to improve the ability of the ontology App to be found by users. For example, users can discover and directly open an Instant App through search engines and products’ websites, and thus are attracted to download and install a complete ontology App. Other aspects of the Google Instant App are similar to Apple's App Clips. Of course, the specific technical implementation means are completely different from programming language to tools. It is also a part of native app development.

### Miniapps

When it comes to miniapps, the first impression of most readers may be the miniapps on some Internet social networking platforms and payment platforms. Indeed, the concept of miniapps is deeply rooted and conventionally bound to some Internet companies' apps so that the public cannot tell whether it refers to an enterprise's miniapp platform, an organization's miniapp application, or a type of miniapp software technology when they hear the concept.

Under the category of miniapps alone, there are several technology competitors from Internet giants. In addition to the "WeChat Miniapps", familiar to people aged 8 to 80, there are still many other platforms such as Alipay, Baidu, Meituan, NASDAQ:JD, AAuto Quicker, Toutiao and so on.

The reason why miniapps are "light" is that they spread in text format, based on HTML, CSS, JavaScript and some DSLs (Domain Specific Language, usually in the form of XML) based on JavaScript, and are parsed, rendered and executed by the "host" app after being loaded. That is, they are just some instructions for parsing. They can be regarded as the optimization of human-computer interaction experience based on HTML5, which are lightweight, easy to spread, agile to publish, and can produce network effects, seamlessly integrate with Web content and offer cross-device support. Overall, they inherit both the universality of HTML5 and the mobile experience of the App.

### Quick App

It is a technology form inspired by the technology of the miniapp and jointly initiated by domestic cell phone manufacturers and operators. As the Quick App shares some similarity with the principle of miniapps, it will not be repeated here. It is worth mentioning that OW2, an Open-Source Initiative that claims to be the direct descendant of the EU and the EU gene, supports the promotion of fast applications in Europe.

	
## What is the viable and sustainable light application

In our own opinion, we are not optimistic that these technology forms can achieve much success although there are giants like Apple and Google promoting their own "light app" technologies. What are our criteria?

**Whether cross-device and all-end support problems can be solved:** Companies want to have their apps developed once and run in multiple places. Obviously, hardware/OS vendors are not the best choice to solve this problem. Even though there are cross-platform technologies such as Flutter and RN to replace native app development to some extent, they are not "light app" type technology alternatives. When it comes to App Clips and Instant Apps, the native means of iOS and Android are still needed.

**Whether flexible and diverse discovery mechanisms can be provided:** Not only can users discover apps by searching in app stores, but they can also get information about apps by internet search engines, websites, and friends' sharing and forwarding, and use them in place after discovery.

**Whether it is also “light” enough for developers:** Programming in an imperative, parsing language, i.e., basing on scripting dynamic language, markup language, should be easier for most developers and can speed up development. In fact, it is only with this type of technology that the code can be made light, small and easy to download and forward.

**Whether the network effect can be formed:**As the digital era is all about the network effect of users, business scenarios are shared, spread, and leveraged from person to person, device to device, which generates fission. Essentially, this is using user nodes in the network for software distribution. The network effect cannot be achieved if the software is large and recipients need to go through the clear stage of downloading and installing. So it is necessary to make it easy for forwarders to send, and receivers to click and use, just like opening a web link to see the content immediately.

**Whether it is safe for spread:** With the relatively great access rights to OS resources of devices, native code distributes freely beyond the app store mechanism, like a jailbreak, resulting in virus flooding, which does great harm to data security and privacy protection of consumers. App Clips and Instant Apps are attempting to provide both secure and convenient solutions in addition to the app store mechanism. But the cost is that the technical mechanism should be more complex.

**Whether there are public or industry standards to rely on:** It is much less risky for developers to use technology built on standards. Firstly, they do not have to worry about the developed content being locked by the technology platform. Secondly, there are standard tools available. There is always a rich technology ecosystem formed around a technology standard - development tools, testing tools, plug-ins, documentation, open-source components and developer communities all form an accumulation.

**Whether it is built on a loosely coupled architecture:**Light applications are often functional units and scenario fragments. If they are highly coupled, interdependent, indistinguishable from each other, the development testing will be hard to be done independently and the releases will be affected by each other. It seems like server-side services. If they are closely related to each other, they will eventually form a single application in fact, which is difficult to split or expand and even more impossible to develop in parallel by multiple teams. Apple App Clips and Google Instant Apps are essentially pieces of an app, which are one-to-one corresponding and closely coupled with the ontology App. In contrast, as for the miniapp, the host application holds a discrete relationship with the dynamic "plug-in", which is so loose that there can be endless plug-in developers and owners, and no need to have any prior commercial relationship with the host owner. An app of a large Internet platform can easily support millions of miniapps. Only this loosely coupled technical architecture can support high agility, high operability, and large scale.

Based on the above judgment conditions, we are optimistic that the technology form of miniapps is a good choice for the light application area. Because:

-It is easy to share and spread among users and devices
- Recommendation among users is also a discovery mechanism
- It is easier to develop when its extensions/derivatives are based on JavaScript, CSS and XML so a large number of web developers can be found to do this work
- As the code runs in a container based on the browser kernel, often isolated from other hardware and software resources of the device where it is running, the security is guaranteed when the complexity is low (no need for developers to understand the internal principles in depth)
- It will still be compatible in the future- just because the technology stack is built on Web technology, open-source frameworks and tools that are emerging on the Web can often be leveraged
- It makes being agile and lightweight possible when the host application is extremely loosely coupled to the miniapp

So, next we will mainly discuss miniapps as the mainstream light application form in the future.

## It's time to re-understand miniapps

It has been more than five or six years since the appearance of miniapps. Has it reached its peak or even passed its heyday? Actually, it is a field that continues to evolve and there is still a lot of room for innovation. It is time to re-examine and make some clarifications on the concept of the miniapp because it is loaded with too many meanings and often means different things in different contexts, which makes it difficult to explain clearly during communication.

From the perspective of cell phone users, the miniapp is a kind of application, that is, the service interaction mode of various life scenes, such as clothing, food, housing, transportation, medical treatment and health, municipal services and so on. So in the end users' impression, miniapps seem to be attached or attributed to the App of a large Internet platform.

But for developers, miniapps are a kind of technical carrier first. To apply for releasing on a specific Internet platform, the miniapps need to be developed with specific tools and programming languages, following specific specifications, formats, and requirements.

For enterprises, they often consider to put their miniapps on multiple platforms, each of which has its own fully controlled miniapps content ecology. So enterprises are just "stationing" their business on these platforms in the form of miniapps.

In addition, miniapps are an emerging Internet technology standard as the Mini-App Working Group of W3C is forming a standardized draft proposal (the implementation of quick apps supported by OW2, the EU open-source organization mentioned above, will follow this standard as well). It is no longer the "patent" of a certain Internet company, and the name, "miniapps", does not mean the technology of any one company. It is a kind of light application form, a representation way of digital content, or what we call "the miniapp-based digital content ".

After the standard is formed, the underlying implementation of miniapp technology can still vary from one manufacturer to another. This is like that browser manufacturers, such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, Opera, etc., produce their own products, such as Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox, Opera, etc., entirely basing on their respective technologies, but this does not affect the fact that they can all correctly parse, render and present HTML content on various computers and cell phones.

The formation of specifications, fait accompli standards and ultimate industry standards has brought about a re-deconstruction of enterprises’ applications. A new technology category has emerged in the market, which allows enterprises to use miniapps as technology carriers to realize business functions and helps them develop, operate and manage their "miniapp-based" business scenarios, application services and business content in an agile manner. The miniapp-based way first occurred in the digitalization process of enterprises, holding no necessary connection with the Internet platforms. A miniapp of a company is prior for its own App. As for whether to put it on the third-party platform, it depends on joint decisions of business, legal, compliance and other departments.

## The new idea: the light application solution with miniapps as carriers for enterprises

The content of miniapps released on the Internet giants' own platforms would be reviewed and decided by these platforms. The ecology formed by millions of miniapps content is also in the hands of the platforms. Of course, these miniapps can only run in the apps they provide as well.

But can this technology of strong connectivity, high digitalization and rich ecological content be mastered by ordinary enterprises? The so-called "master" here does not mean that enterprises have the ability to develop miniapps and then release them on an Internet platform to carry out business and become part of others’ ecology, but they can have similar technology to build their own miniapp operation platforms, miniapp stores, developer centers, and master the right of review and management. It also means that enterprises can put miniapps into their own apps and make others become their own cooperative ecology.

With such technology, internally, any enterprise can let IT turn business content into miniapps, and externally can purchase or introduce miniapp-based application systems provided by developers, and then release them in their own "miniapp store" for distribution to their own employees and customers.

This kind of tool, which we call the technology base of miniapp-based light applications, lets enterprises develop software functions in the "format", "specification" and "standard" of miniapps, and realize the lifecycle management, release review as well as the placement and monitoring of spread channels for these functional units.

Who is the competitor of the miniapp-based light application technology for enterprises? The answer is not the Internet platform with an miniapp ecosystem, but the traditional native app development model, web application development model and desktop software development model. This is just as HTML and JavaScript which were first prevalent in the Internet website and then gradually used in enterprise applications. This made the so-called "B/S architecture" (Browser-Server architecture) once popular in China. They competed with the C/S architecture in the PC era and the application development based on Visual Basic/Visual C++, and eventually replaced the latter. Miniapp-based light application technology is at the moment of entering the enterprise market from the Internet.

## [FinClip](https://www.finclip.com/): the technology base of light applications originating in the financial industry

The earliest product to use miniapps as the technology carrier for light applications of enterprises is FinClip - an area that Finogeeks has been deeply involved in since around 2019.

The purpose of FinClip's technology solution is to give any enterprise in any industry the ability to independently build a miniapp ecosystem, release and manage miniapp content, and run miniapps in their own apps. Because the FinClip team believes that:

- Miniapps are the best carrier to promote digital connectivity
- Connectivity is the key to enterprises’ digital transformation
- The miniapp for assets with digital content is most conducive for agile release in business scenarios, real-time risk control, and cost reduction and efficiency increase

The name FinClip comes from FinTech + Clip. The technology, originated in the field of financial technology, was originally designed for banks, securities companies and other financial institutions to develop digital business scenarios with complex functions, strict compliance requirements and strong data security risk control in a technology form of "light applications". It also aims to help the business segment to independently manage the release of functional fragments by the “on-and-off” mechanism, and consumers to load the content into the App on demand for use when the latest version is always automatically obtained for each use. Considering the needs of the financial business scenario, the R&D team of FinClip decided to adopt the format of "miniapp" and called it "Clip" after an in-depth study of a series of related technologies.

The word "Clip" is also adopted by Apple in its technology of App Clips. It has multiple meanings, condensing the connotations of multiple Chinese translations, and is particularly suitable for technical naming.

- [Meaning 1]: Pin, paperclip. This is probably familiar to most people.
- [Meaning 2]: A part cut from a newspaper, movie or TV, for example, "I watched a clip of the movie".
- [Meaning 3]: Quickly, fast. For example, "We set off at a good clip, but we gradually slowed down".
- [Meaning 4]: Cartridge. A container that is fastened to a gun, from which bullets go into the gun to be fired
- [Meaning 5]: When used as a verb, it can be used as "to clip on" something.

Because the technical form of the miniapp perfectly matches several meanings contained in this word: Firstly, as a code "snippet", it is “clipped” on an application "host" to run quickly. Secondly, the code is loaded into a "cartridge" (or "container") embedded in the host and ready to be shot out. Thirdly, it is suitable for application fragments which can be forwarded and shared with short start-up time and fast running speed like attachments. Therefore, the meaning of FinClip is "agile and light application for FinTech scenarios".

FinClip enables financial institutions to release business scenarios in an agile and dynamic way, and quickly take down scenarios with any potential compliance and information security risks in real time, without having to re-release the app and go through the review for days or even knockback in the app stores and app markets of mobile OS platforms. After all, the risk treatment of financial business faces a huge time pressure and the accountability pressure from the regulators. Risk control is never too "real-time".

Today, FinClip is no longer a technology dedicated to financial business scenarios. As it turns out, it can meet the demands of the financial industry with strong supervision, strong regulations of information security and privacy protection, and strong risk control requirements, so it can meet the application demands of various other industries as well. It no longer only supports running light applications in mobile apps, but also supports running them in various desktop and IoT smart devices. So, it has gradually developed into a platform technology tool for digital content release, monitoring and control in multiple terminals and devices.