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

Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

blog.chromium.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 352 posts

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#101

Post by xoroshiro »

I'm not familiar with what goes in a browser, but for some reason, browsers seem to eat up a lot of resources.

While I am happy that it looks like this will (more or less) be standardized across browsers, I still hope for the day where running a more minimal browser (text, image, maybe videos) will become viable. Of course, I'm pessimistic on this, seeing as so many sites are probably not functional without javascript and other related technologies, but maybe some web developers care about choice. Who knows.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#102

Post by rhizome »

datguacdoh wrote: post #38
TimothyFitz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EOL for Chrome Apps outside of Chrome OS was announced in August 2016 https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.ht...

But OP is specifically calling out how this hurts Chrome OS, but it doesn't seem to affect that platform, from what I can tell.

OP isn't calling out how it hurts CrOS, they're describing how it's the place that Chrome Apps are still available, and thus could have that functionality copied out of CrOS and rejiggered to (continue to) work in Linux.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#103

Post by rhizome »

jlarocco wrote: post #90
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…

Your pique is noted, but as more anecdata I use Chrome Apps for Soundcloud and Mixcloud, where it's nice to have a Chrome window that won't collect tabs and have a recognizable icon. I have dozens of tabs open in each of several Chrome windows and it can be a pain to find the one I want. Insert complaint about not being able to switch to a tab from Chrome Task Manager.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#104

Post by eeZi »

jlarocco wrote: post #90
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…

Signal Desktop and Cleanflight are open source.

And sometimes, you have no choice - there's no FOSS alternative to TeamViewer, and thanks to it running inside Chrome, I no longer have to run a Windows VM.

The web based SSH client is published by Google themselves and they use it internally.

> The teams working on Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, etc. have much better security track records than some random web developers who've made an "app".

The way things are, right now, Chrome is much better at protecting apps from each other than my Linux desktop is. If, for example, the Cleanflight or TeamViewer apps were regular apps, a bug in them would fully compromise my account.

---

Off topic remark about Linux distro security: I really like Arch, but security isn't their strongest suit. For example, they still haven't enabled full-system ASLR, citing unfounded performance concerns, when other distributions did so years ago. Even Windows with all their third party apps has a higher percentage of ASLR binaries than the average Arch system.

They also have no central build system and instead rely on volunteers who build the packages on their personal systems and sign them using their personal GPG keys.

I really want ASLR in Arch so I'll keep complaining about it publicly until it finally happens :-)

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#105

Post by jhpriestley »

From the asm.js FAQ:

    Q. Why not NaCl or PNaCl instead? Are you just being 
    stubborn about JavaScript?
    A. The principal benefit of asm.js over whole new 
    technologies like NaCl and PNaCl is that it works today
asm.js however wasn't good enough to actually be useful, as evidenced by the lack of adoption and the move to wasm. So now we have wasm which is not backward compatible. We would be further along now if Mozilla/Eich would have gotten behind Google's more mature effort, this really was stubbornness IMO.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#106

Post by duskwuff »

matt4077 wrote: post #82
irrational wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> FWIW IE 11 is around 3% globally…

Out of all browsers, including on mobile devices -- which skews the results pretty significantly.

If you only consider desktop browsers, MSIE comes out between 9-10%, including about 7% on MSIE11. That's not counting Edge, which is another 3% or so.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#107

Post by withjive »

phonon wrote: post #100
withjive wrote: post #13

Looks like Mozilla won this fight. When Mozilla didn't accept PNaCl and Pepper API proposed by Google, Mozilla went down the ASM path which now led us to Web Assembly being the general way forward.

Uhhh, I think you missed this-- https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mortar_Project

Project Mortar is different in the fact that it is PDFium and Adobe Flash being allowed via Pepper API — basically it's for sandboxing those current native plugins. This would not be a public web use case.

PNaCl vs WebAssembly was all about letting everybody run sandboxed native code in the browser without any extensions or prompts.

Native Client (the portable version known as PNaCl) was an open source project by google to achieve native performance with sandbox security.

Mozilla wanted a more open web which led to Web Assembly.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#108

Post by duskwuff »

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

Huh? This has nothing to do with browsers; it's purely a site author decision. Autoplaying videos is a site author decision -- and one that they already frequently made before HTML5 video was widely available.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#109

Post by Analemma_ »

jhpriestley wrote: post #105

From the asm.js FAQ: Q. Why not NaCl or PNaCl instead? Are you just being stubborn about JavaScript? A. The principal benefit of asm.js over whole new technologies like NaCl and PNaCl is that it works today asm.js however wasn't good enough to actually be useful, as evidenced by the lack of adoption and the move to wasm. So now we have wasm which is not backward compatible. We would be further along now if Mozilla/Ei…

"Stubbornness" in refusing to let Google unilaterally decree web technologies and standards is stubbornness I support fully.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#110

Post by recursive »

cromwellian wrote: post #88
jfbastien wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A property with getter and setter backed by singleton typed array instance?
Post reply on HN