Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Web Can Do Today

whatwebcando.today

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 136 posts

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#21

Post by thrownaway2424 »

Raed667 wrote: post #13
Sephr wrote: post #11

Why is the Network Information API still a thing? I don't feel like it should even be listed on this website, as it's an anti-feature. It only encourages discrimination on connection types, as it doesn't expose the only important part: is this connection metered? Developers are going to use this API to serve me higher resolution assets over my metered WiFi & Ethernet connections (assuming they are unmetered) and lowe…

I think this is important in case of 2G/3G/LTE distinction. Where phones that can access only 2G networks should get served "light" version of websites.

I think it's likely that most people would prefer the "light" version.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#22

Post by eridius »

Sephr wrote: post #11

Why is the Network Information API still a thing? I don't feel like it should even be listed on this website, as it's an anti-feature. It only encourages discrimination on connection types, as it doesn't expose the only important part: is this connection metered? Developers are going to use this API to serve me higher resolution assets over my metered WiFi & Ethernet connections (assuming they are unmetered) and lowe…

Network type can be used for more than just serving higher-resolution assets. It can also be used for doing aggressive pre-fetching of assets that may not be needed when on wifi. For example, my native RSS client will pre-fetch images from blog posts when it refreshes on wifi, but won't do that on cell. It's not unreasonable to think that various web apps might want to do the same sort of thing.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#23

Post by Sephr »

eridius wrote: post #22
Sephr wrote: post #11

Why is the Network Information API still a thing? I don't feel like it should even be listed on this website, as it's an anti-feature. It only encourages discrimination on connection types, as it doesn't expose the only important part: is this connection metered? Developers are going to use this API to serve me higher resolution assets over my metered WiFi & Ethernet connections (assuming they are unmetered) and lowe…

Network type can be used for more than just serving higher-resolution assets. It can also be used for doing aggressive pre-fetching of assets that may not be needed when on wifi. For example, my native RSS client will pre-fetch images from blog posts when it refreshes on wifi, but won't do that on cell. It's not unreasonable to think that various web apps might want to do the same sort of thing.

That's the same issue though. Your RSS client is assuming that all cellular connections are metered and all WiFi connections are unmetered, so it intentionally uses less data when you are on a cellular connection.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#24

Post by Sephr »

Raed667 wrote: post #13
Sephr wrote: post #11

Why is the Network Information API still a thing? I don't feel like it should even be listed on this website, as it's an anti-feature. It only encourages discrimination on connection types, as it doesn't expose the only important part: is this connection metered? Developers are going to use this API to serve me higher resolution assets over my metered WiFi & Ethernet connections (assuming they are unmetered) and lowe…

I think this is important in case of 2G/3G/LTE distinction. Where phones that can access only 2G networks should get served "light" version of websites.

This use case is already handled by navigator.connection.downlinkMax. There is no reason to include navigator.connection.type in this API if you want to serve different content based on downlink bandwidth.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#25

Post by rimantas »

slimsag wrote: post #7

This is really awesome :) The truth is that the 'web' is really becoming the cross-platform application architecture. Just a few years back I despised the very idea of this -- I want to program in my favorite language, not JavaScript (no matter how nice it is these days). I'd love to write applications that can act like native ones while also being cross platform (and use multiple threads at that!). The fact that Web…

The truth is that web is getting deeper and deeper into identity crisis. And if any platform is further away from having coherent architecture, it is web.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#26

Post by pi-rat »

mmahemoff wrote: post #20
Sephr wrote: post #11

Why is the Network Information API still a thing? I don't feel like it should even be listed on this website, as it's an anti-feature. It only encourages discrimination on connection types, as it doesn't expose the only important part: is this connection metered? Developers are going to use this API to serve me higher resolution assets over my metered WiFi & Ethernet connections (assuming they are unmetered) and lowe…

How can a web browser or even native OS determine if a user's wifi network is metered? I agree it would be nice in theory if there was some kind of "dollars per MB" API, but I don't see how web browsers could implement that in practice. I work on a podcast app. When people are downloading hundreds of MB or more daily, they emphatically want control over when downloading takes place. In practice, almost all of them ar…

Through DHCP, the DHCP server can set different DHCP-options to notify clients what type of connection it is. For example: Android Phones set up to be a hotspot will set DHCP option 43 to a value indicating that it's a metered cellular connection.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#27

Post by eridius »

I'm very surprised to see this claim that Safari on OS X[1] can't handle Push Notifications, because it's been able to do that for a few years now. It's just not using Service Workers. It uses a separate solution built around the Apple Push Notification service. Granted, this isn't cross-platform and isn't a W3C standard, but it is a capability that can be used today. But of course the whole section on "Push Notifications" is actually just a description of Service Workers.

[1] Which isn't actually a listed browser, but it has the X next to it when viewed in Safari and the underlying caniuse.com data is for Service Workers, which Safari doesn't support.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#28

Post by azakai »

What does the X axis in the "browser support" graphs mean? It seems to go up to 30, and has fractions along the way, both of which suggest it isn't a simple version number. A percentage of something, perhaps?

edit: I guess it's market share? but which measurement?

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#29

Post by eridius »

Sephr wrote: post #23
eridius wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Network type can be used for more than just serving higher-resolution assets. It can also be used for doing aggressive pre-fetching of assets that may not be needed when on wifi. For example, my native RSS client will pre-fetch images from blog posts when it refreshes on wifi, but won't do that on cell. It's not unreasonable to think that various web apps might want to do the same sort of thing.

That's the same issue though. Your RSS client is assuming that all cellular connections are metered and all WiFi connections are unmetered, so it intentionally uses less data when you are on a cellular connection.

Which is usually a correct assumption. But it's more than just metered, it's also assuming that my wifi connection is likely to be faster and therefore downloading a bunch of assets in the background will have less of an impact on my available bandwidth.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#30

Post by JohnTHaller »

adevine wrote: post #5

I think this should be called "What the web can do someday." I mean, push notifications? If it's not supported by mobile safari, it's a non-starter for actual widespread adoption.

While this will affect the 44% of users that are locked into Mobile Safari IE6-style, there's no reason not to start adding the features supported by the open mobile platforms and desktop OSes to your web app.
Post reply on HN