What Web Can Do Today • Hacker News Board

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#101

Post by initself » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 5:33 AM UTC

mei0Iesh wrote: post #62

majika wrote: post #48

What the web is increasingly unable to do today: provide text content without requiring a code execution environment. This site is another example of that. All non-application websites should provide all their content in semantic HTML at appropriate HTTP endpoints, with CSS styling (in as few requests as possible) as required per the design, and JavaScript (in as few requests as possible) that takes the semantic HTML…

It's the Flashification of the web. People who wanted to show off, or code web apps, used to use Macromedia Flash. People complained about it, in part because sometimes if you accessed a site without the Flash plugin you'd see a blank page. But Flash was great in many ways, and it was self-contained in objects, so websites were mostly still websites. JavaScript had been around for a long time, but there was still a c…

Rad idea. How would one initate a new network of this kind separately from what exists today? And what kind of interoperability would it have? Can't imagine it could go cold turkey!

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#102

Post by millstone » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 6:08 AM UTC

venning wrote: post #69

dheera wrote: post #50

More stuff the web can't do that native apps can do: * Request stuff from arbitrary URLs without a CORS proxy * Open TCP and UDP sockets * Be in the play store/app store AS a web app (home screen installation isn't enough; people still search for your thing in the app store, so even if the other problems aren't issues for your app, you still have to wrap your web app in a dummy native framework and upload it if you w…

> Scroll like a native app without Safari's stupid rubber band scrolling the entire app at very erratic times This is defeatable, either with `-webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch;` or other techniques. > Background geolocation, background anything really You mean, Service Workers? > Display long lists of styled content and scroll without stalling I could be wrong, but I think this is a Safari-specific concern. Android…

The web is crap at long lists in general. Try to build something like Mail on iOS or OS X, which shows you all of your email in a big list: the best you can do is infinite-scroll solutions like Yahoo! Mail, which are horrible on every browser.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#103

Post by bzbarsky » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 6:37 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #99

bzbarsky wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you characterize as an "arbitrary technical limitation" is there for a good reason, unfortunately: even anonymous requests made by the _browser_ are not equivalent to anonymous requests made by the _server_ the web page came from. That's because the browser and the server have different routing tables. Or to put is more simply, the browser can see the stuff on your LAN, behind your firewall, while the server can…

IMHO the true point of a web app is to replace the native app and kill the need for developing every app twice (Android + iOS), as well as moving toward the vision of putting ALL apps "in the cloud" and fully OS-independent. In order for this to happen, those web apps need to have every capability a native app can have, including access to the local area network, if you want to do "things that native apps do". What i…

Yes, this is why people are talking about having "installable" web apps. It sounds like you clearly agree that some sort of explicit user opt-in is needed to get out of the sandbox, which is good; I've seen some people argue that this is too high a bar.

Now it might happen that this will effectively happen as a result of convergence and standardization of browser extension APIs. It'll be interesting to see what happens there.

That said, the manifest of permissions idea is fundamentally broken in at least two related ways:

1) Most users have no rational basis on which to decide whether to grant the permission or not. In fact, I would argue this is all users, due to issue #2:

2) The permissions are either overbroad, such that pretty much any app that wants to do anything interesting asks for them (this is the "all my apps on want to be able to read my contacts and browsing history" syndrome) or there are so many of them that the list becomes way longer than any user would ever read at install time.

You example of a permission for opening arbitrary TCP sockets is an excellent case in point. As a standalone permission, what fraction of users do you think would understand what is actually being granted? Even if you restrict to computer professionals, I suspect that most would not understand the implications without a somewhat lengthy explanation of what the permission actually allows. And even then, in practice it would be rolled into some other more broad permission that would likewise not indicate the security implications of granting it.

http://robert.ocallahan.org/2011/06/permissions-for-web-appl... has some more in-depth discussion of the issues with this model.

> Native apps already ask for permissions when installed

Yes, and in practice everyone just grants whatever permissions are asked for without really even reading.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#104

Post by Joeri » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 6:40 AM UTC

pdkl95 wrote: post #100

bad_user wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about " progressive enhancement ". It's a romantic idea, but it never happened, probably because it's too hard and the cost is not justified given most users run with their browser's default settings. The precursor of the web made by Tim Berners-Lee dates back to 1980, but it was not based on HTML or HTTP. These happened later in 1990 and early 1991. But then CSS happened in 1994. And Javascript happen…

> it's too hard It's only hard if you want it to be hard. Your tools should be handling most of it for you. If they don't, pick tools that aren't broken or badly designed. When I was writing websites in Rails 2.x, progressive enhancement was usually automatic (same views are rendered as a page or a dynamically-loaded partial). Saying "It's hard because I want to write over-complicated pages with badly designed tools"…

I don't know a single person IRL who turns off javascript. It's the browsing equivalent of running only RMS-approved software, possible in theory, but not very practical, and definitely rare. The business needs of modern commercial websites are hard to build with progressive enhancement, and web apps basically require javascript to deliver a good user experience. Yes, you can build a personal website using progressive enhancement, and at one point I did, but I had to give up my progressive enhancement ways when i became a professional web dev because it was just not practical to do otherwise.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#105

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 6:50 AM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #104

pdkl95 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's too hard It's only hard if you want it to be hard. Your tools should be handling most of it for you. If they don't, pick tools that aren't broken or badly designed. When I was writing websites in Rails 2.x, progressive enhancement was usually automatic (same views are rendered as a page or a dynamically-loaded partial). Saying "It's hard because I want to write over-complicated pages with badly designed tools"…

I don't know a single person IRL who turns off javascript. It's the browsing equivalent of running only RMS-approved software, possible in theory, but not very practical, and definitely rare. The business needs of modern commercial websites are hard to build with progressive enhancement, and web apps basically require javascript to deliver a good user experience. Yes, you can build a personal website using progressiv…

Web apps can be excused, but most web sites? Not really. What exactly happened that made it not practical to write simple sites? Did browsers suddenly stop rendering HTML unless you generate it in JavaScript?

It's not business needs, it's cargo-cult web development. Going with the latest trends without a moment to stop whether it makes sense or is actually what the users want.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#106

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 6:50 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#107

Post by M2Ys4U » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 6:53 AM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #104

pdkl95 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's too hard It's only hard if you want it to be hard. Your tools should be handling most of it for you. If they don't, pick tools that aren't broken or badly designed. When I was writing websites in Rails 2.x, progressive enhancement was usually automatic (same views are rendered as a page or a dynamically-loaded partial). Saying "It's hard because I want to write over-complicated pages with badly designed tools"…

I don't know a single person IRL who turns off javascript. It's the browsing equivalent of running only RMS-approved software, possible in theory, but not very practical, and definitely rare. The business needs of modern commercial websites are hard to build with progressive enhancement, and web apps basically require javascript to deliver a good user experience. Yes, you can build a personal website using progressiv…

It's not only people who actively disable JS, though. See the How many people are missing out on JavaScript enhancement? blog post[0] by the UK's Government Digital Service (aka GOV.UK).

They calculated that 1.1% of users don't have the JS enhancements activated, and only 0.3% of those were browsers where JS execution was disabled.

[0] https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missi...

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#108

Post by datashovel » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 7:09 AM UTC

M2Ys4U wrote: post #107

Joeri wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know a single person IRL who turns off javascript. It's the browsing equivalent of running only RMS-approved software, possible in theory, but not very practical, and definitely rare. The business needs of modern commercial websites are hard to build with progressive enhancement, and web apps basically require javascript to deliver a good user experience. Yes, you can build a personal website using progressiv…

It's not only people who actively disable JS, though. See the How many people are missing out on JavaScript enhancement? blog post[0] by the UK's Government Digital Service (aka GOV.UK). They calculated that 1.1% of users don't have the JS enhancements activated, and only 0.3% of those were browsers where JS execution was disabled. [0] https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missi...

I would guess a majority of that traffic is going to be crawlers. It's probably more like a small fraction of 1% who are actually missing out.

EDIT: Looks like they covered this in comments. Even that doesn't convince me for some reason.

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#109

Post by Too » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 7:17 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #105

Joeri wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know a single person IRL who turns off javascript. It's the browsing equivalent of running only RMS-approved software, possible in theory, but not very practical, and definitely rare. The business needs of modern commercial websites are hard to build with progressive enhancement, and web apps basically require javascript to deliver a good user experience. Yes, you can build a personal website using progressiv…

Web apps can be excused, but most web sites? Not really. What exactly happened that made it not practical to write simple sites? Did browsers suddenly stop rendering HTML unless you generate it in JavaScript? It's not business needs, it's cargo-cult web development. Going with the latest trends without a moment to stop whether it makes sense or is actually what the users want.

What exactly is the issue with having the HTML generated with javascript? You can still run "view source", overridden CSS or Greasemonkey on it...

Re: What Web Can Do Today

#110

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Nov 30, 2015, 7:30 AM UTC

Too wrote: post #109

TeMPOraL wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web apps can be excused, but most web sites? Not really. What exactly happened that made it not practical to write simple sites? Did browsers suddenly stop rendering HTML unless you generate it in JavaScript? It's not business needs, it's cargo-cult web development. Going with the latest trends without a moment to stop whether it makes sense or is actually what the users want.

What exactly is the issue with having the HTML generated with javascript? You can still run "view source", overridden CSS or Greasemonkey on it...

Why do you need to generate HTML with JS in the first place? There rarely is a need to do so on a website. There's definitely no need for the e.g. loading content of a blog post dynamically just to achieve a fade-in effect[0]. And yet, most of the modern web practices is silly stuff like that.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10646025