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Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

blog.chromium.org

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Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#81

Post by coldtea »

tostitos1979 wrote: post #7
skybrian wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you used this at all, it was in a Chrome-only app; this is pretty far from mainstream. A good rule of thumb seems to be to use what everyone else uses, and make sure you're always ready to ship another version. People expecting compiled apps to survive unchanged for years are out of luck.

Not true. NaCl is pretty big in some areas of Consumer Electronics.

Except if you mean this NaCL, this is hardly true:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_chloride#Miscellaneous_...

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#82

Post by matt4077 »

irrational wrote: post #9
lwlml wrote: post #2

At this point, I really loathe adopting any facet of web-browser technology: there are too many broken APIs in too many browsers to maintain on both sides of the system: the browser developers have an insane number of combinations of features that need to be useful, secured and made reliable and developers for browsers are always at some weird disadvantage where they can spend months or years maintaining an applicati…

Yeah, we were looking at browser stats for our website today and during the last 30 days 20% of our distinct users were using IE 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, or 11. Of course most were on IE 11, but when you still have a significant number of people still using ancient versions of IE, I despair at ever being able to use modern web technologies.

I don't quite get your numbers, because 20% * IE6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 = 20% * 6 > 100%.

Or, alternatively, the 20% for all of them combined don't prove your point that "people are using ancient versions", because, as you point out yourself, "most were on IE 11".

FWIW IE 11 is around 3% globally, all other IE is around 0.5%, combined: http://caniuse.com/usage-table

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#83

Post by coldtea »

eriknstr wrote: post #53
kuschku wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if that VM ran on over 2 billion devices, on every toaster out there? In the end, this all is just reinventing the JVM, in slower, but more secure.

I think that's what parent commenter was implying. (However, I don't agree. I remember the horrible Java applets and I am thankful that I pretty much never encounter any of them these days.)

>I remember the horrible Java applets and I am thankful that I pretty much never encounter any of them these days.)

Yeah, yay for progress and horrible Electron apps..

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#84

Post by sp332 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #31
jepler wrote: post #16

OK, so where do I get a mosh client programmed in WebAssembly? Without it, my chromebooks might as well be bricks.

By the time Google disables PNaCl on Chrome Apps, this kind of thing won't be an issue. There is a reason why the announced 2018 deactivation excluded Chrome Apps and Extensions.

I haven't seen any real activity from browser makers to add raw UDP APIs.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#85

Post by catshirt »

Crontab wrote: post #79
duskwuff wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The suggestion I got was that "HTML5 Video" was the subject. Which still doesn't make sense; the alternatives which it replaced (Flash, QuickTime, WMV, Java-based video players...) were all radically worse, and much more abuseable.

HTML5 Video is just an example of shitty browser behavior, as for some reason, every web browser maker seems to think that autoplay videos are great. They're not because sites are abusing it. Worst, some sites these days will waiting until you've scrolled down a bit before they start playing a video, leaving the user to locate it and stop it. As for Flash, it was indeed bad, but at least I had the option of not insta…

"every web browser maker seems to think that autoplay videos are great"

eh. if this is your litmus for abuse you may want to reconsider having an email account or a doorbell.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#86

Post by coldtea »

irrational wrote: post #9
lwlml wrote: post #2

At this point, I really loathe adopting any facet of web-browser technology: there are too many broken APIs in too many browsers to maintain on both sides of the system: the browser developers have an insane number of combinations of features that need to be useful, secured and made reliable and developers for browsers are always at some weird disadvantage where they can spend months or years maintaining an applicati…

Yeah, we were looking at browser stats for our website today and during the last 30 days 20% of our distinct users were using IE 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, or 11. Of course most were on IE 11, but when you still have a significant number of people still using ancient versions of IE, I despair at ever being able to use modern web technologies.

Or, you could just stick with those at IE11 (which are most) + the other 80%, and ignore those < 10% of users.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#87

Post by matt4077 »

lvh wrote: post #65
eriknstr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's what parent commenter was implying. (However, I don't agree. I remember the horrible Java applets and I am thankful that I pretty much never encounter any of them these days.)

Is the horribleness of applets intrinsic in the concept of a common target?

It might be, because "common target" implies a lack of competition.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#88

Post by cromwellian »

jfbastien wrote: post #77
vvanders wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, when you consider that WASM can be polyfilled with Asm.js it's pretty obvious where things were headed.

Except with all browser vendors being involved with WebAssembly, efficient polyfill-ability hasn't been a goal for a while.

WASM has 64-bit ints, did asm.js support those? How can you polyfill that without a real slowdown.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#89

Post by matt4077 »

lwlml wrote: post #2

At this point, I really loathe adopting any facet of web-browser technology: there are too many broken APIs in too many browsers to maintain on both sides of the system: the browser developers have an insane number of combinations of features that need to be useful, secured and made reliable and developers for browsers are always at some weird disadvantage where they can spend months or years maintaining an applicati…

Have you been doing this for any amount of time? Because today browser compatibility is just excellent compared by historical standards. The only differences are usually that some new feature doesn't appear in all browser engines at the same time.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#90

Post by jlarocco »

eeZi wrote: post #21

This one I'm fine with since WebAssembly is a worthy replacement, but I'm still annoyed at Google discontinuing Chrome Apps. Some examples of specialized apps I use all the time that would require a native app otherwise: - Signal Desktop - TeamViewer - Postman - SSH client - Cleanflight drone configuration tool It was one of the best things that happened to Linux desktops in a long time and removing it hurts users an…

> It was one of the best things that happened to Linux desktops in a long time and removing it hurts users and makes them less secure.

It would be more accurate to say it was the best thing to happen to your use of Linux in a long time, and it looks like even that is only because you're trying to use a bunch of closed source, non-cross-platform stuff.

I also disagree that it makes users less secure. The teams working on Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, etc. have much better security track records than some random web developers who've made an "app". There's no way would I trust a web based SSH client, for example.

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