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Things you can do with a browser in 2020

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Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#41

Post by ryukafalz »

rkagerer wrote: post #28

As a user, so many of these I wish did NOT exist. E.g: Push Notifications, Banners, Web Share, Contacts, Page Visibility, Badging. Uncertain about USB, Bluetooth, Locks, Keyboard Lock, and Native File System. I don't want my browser doing those things.

I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, websites that should be just documents are turning into resource-intensive applications, which is frustrating. Generally I do not want most websites using these features.

On the other hand, the web as a runtime is one of the most universal platforms we have. If I run Slack in a browser, I sure do want it to be able to notify me! (Though I wish doing so felt more like the Electron app - I’d rather use my browser than Electron if the UX were similar enough. I already have a browser, I don’t need another per application!)

And as an occasional user of less popular mobile platforms (Ubuntu Touch, etc) a more featureful web runtime helps close the gap between those platforms and Android/iOS.

I do think it’d be better if these two use cases were more explicitly distinct than they are now, though.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#44

Post by fenwick67 »

iameli wrote: post #35
fenwick67 wrote: post #19

Who seriously thought the Battery Status API was a good idea? Someone thought this was useful enough to write a spec for it...

Fullscreen games providing a battery indicator is always nice.

Seems legit, although that should probably be the OSes job to overlay that

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#45

Post by jan6 »

I'm rather sad that for example Battery API is deprecated... possibly might need a browser-wide toggle, but still... It can both be cool, and useful....mostly cool, though... you could have a complete web desktop (there several web desktops, and even more "fake" ones, like windows93) that shows the status, or a webpage that switches to dark mode with minimal javascript and theming, when battery is low, or a low distraction writing environment for example, that still notifies you of low battery, etc... more and more people are using battery-powered devices ;)

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#46

Post by Arcsech »

ryukafalz wrote: post #41
rkagerer wrote: post #28

As a user, so many of these I wish did NOT exist. E.g: Push Notifications, Banners, Web Share, Contacts, Page Visibility, Badging. Uncertain about USB, Bluetooth, Locks, Keyboard Lock, and Native File System. I don't want my browser doing those things.

I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, websites that should be just documents are turning into resource-intensive applications, which is frustrating. Generally I do not want most websites using these features. On the other hand, the web as a runtime is one of the most universal platforms we have. If I run Slack in a browser, I sure do want it to be able to notify me! (Though I wish doing so felt more like the El…

It's almost like we shouldn't have tortured a document transfer system until it was able to run full-on applications.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#47

Post by salawat »

dstaley wrote: post #40
rolltiide wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except you have to opt out of them all before you can consume that 1 website's content hm I wonder if there is a chrome extension for that

> except you have to opt out of them all before you can consume that 1 website's content This is an issue with that particular website's implementation, not something inherent to the browser or the API.

>This is an issue with that particular website's implementation, not something inherent to the browser or the API.

When that statement applies to 90% of pages out there, that argument gets more stale than cracker left out for the better part of a year.

That staleness, in fact, is why no one is encouraged to run blind unauthenticated proxies on the Internet anymore. Completely valid technology. Very problematic use case.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#48

Post by MaxBarraclough »

ipsum2 wrote: post #33
rkagerer wrote: post #28

As a user, so many of these I wish did NOT exist. E.g: Push Notifications, Banners, Web Share, Contacts, Page Visibility, Badging. Uncertain about USB, Bluetooth, Locks, Keyboard Lock, and Native File System. I don't want my browser doing those things.

Consider that different users have different needs, and almost all features listed are opt-in.

Even if it's opt-in, we still pay a price. Complexity has its costs.

It means my browser is more bigger and more complex. It broadens the attack surface exposed by my browser, perhaps even if I don't opt-in. It dilutes the efforts of the Firefox team. It introduces new ways for browsers to be subtly incompatible. It further raises the barrier to someone making a serious browser from scratch.

Also, are we guaranteed that these features will be opt-in? There were serious security issues with WebGL (predictably), and I don't think WebGL was opt-in.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#49

Post by lbebber »

rkagerer wrote: post #28

As a user, so many of these I wish did NOT exist. E.g: Push Notifications, Banners, Web Share, Contacts, Page Visibility, Badging. Uncertain about USB, Bluetooth, Locks, Keyboard Lock, and Native File System. I don't want my browser doing those things.

I like that push notifications on the browser exist (for e.g. Slack, WhatsApp), I just wish there were no popups for it--just an unintrusive button you could press to enable it.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#50

Post by duxup »

uk_programmer wrote: post #15

This is a great list some of these APIs look pretty interesting and didn't know about them this is a great list. Push notifications are becoming an irritation mainly because of their overuse. The number of sites where you go to them to have a look at one piece of information and you have to tell them no to push notifications is becoming quite an annoyance.

There's a lot of those APIs that are awesome for corporate web apps ... but brutal on the web.
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