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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

#91

Post by ehsankia »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #83
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.

Then turn them off. All these things landed because users _do_ use them. I 100% want web share, page visibility, usb, and native file system, for instance, because the browser has become a convenient replacement for a bunch of playgroup/PoC/testbed applications that I might have used 10 years ago.

To clarify, most of these work by asking for permission first, and you can set them to "always deny" in the browser settings: chrome://settings/content

There are similar site content settings in any major browser.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#92

Post by ehsankia »

swiley wrote: post #30
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.

At least with the push notifications I can get notified about my stuff. On the iPhone they require paying apple $100 a year which almost ensures most will be ads.

Could you use an existing solution such as pushover [0]?

[0] https://pushover.net/

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#93

Post by ehsankia »

stronglikedan wrote: post #18
_bxg1 wrote: post #6

Worth noting is that "prefers-color-scheme" works in all major OSes at this point, mobile and desktop. If your site already has a dark theme, there is no reason at all not to be integrating it this way. Even if you don't have a dark theme already, it's a huge value-add..... (@dang?)

It's funny to me that dark themes seem to be the preferred theme type in online discussions, because in practice, most people I know prefer a light theme on a monitor set to high contrast and relatively low brightness in a well lit setting. I too prefer that, as it seems to reduce (eliminate?) my eyestrain after hours on the computer.

> on a monitor set to high contrast and relatively low brightness in a well lit setting

That's 3 pretty big assumptions :)

Sure, in that situation light mode is great, but if I'm browsing HN on my laptop at night in bed in the dark, I would definitely prefer dark mode.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#97

Post by dijit »

thosakwe wrote: post #67
dijit wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure why I read this in a negative tone, this is fantastic.

What's fantastic about a vendor intentionally ignoring multiple standards, in favor of their own walled-garden? You might be ignoring the wishes of actual users when you say it's "fantastic."

I'm only speaking as a user.

As a user I don't want push notifications from websites.

I know there are some exceptions (like messengers), but really, those should be apps because Apples centralised push messaging system is better for my battery life.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#99

Post by AgentME »

millstone wrote: post #68
AgentME wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it really be better if we didn't evolve the web, and we had more OS-specific unsandboxed applications and greater fragmentation between OSes (and a stronger incentive for everyone to stick to one OS, like Windows) instead?

Yes, OS-specific applications are good, and we should have more of them. By "sticking to one OS", and apps that follow the OS's conventions, users actually have a chance to develop expertise in those apps. But the web ensures that everyone stays an amateur. While website capabilities have evolved, the web UI itself has regressed. No major UI paradigms have emerged from the web since the 90s (except tabs, arguably). U…

My point is that if the web didn't evolve, then Windows would have further cemented its position. If people made Windows apps instead of websites, then other operating systems and mobile wouldn't have taken off as much because fewer people would make multiple apps than the number of people in our world who made cross-platform web apps.

Also, all of those features that rkagerer complained about would be even more abusable, because in general, Windows apps don't have to ask for permissions to those things. I don't get how someone could complain that it's bad for a web app to be able to ask for permissions to their contacts, and would prefer to have a native app (that can get them silently by default).

Maybe you could replace "Windows" with "iOS" in this hypothetical, which would improve the permissions side of things, but I think it's likely that Windows was only supplantable in the first place because of the popularity of things being on the cross-platform web instead of on native Windows apps, and especially as someone without an iOS device, I'd be pretty sour if the effort on the web went purely into a locked-down non-open platform I didn't have. I think the way the web has approached being a universal open-source/open-standard app platform is extremely exciting. The fact that web app buttons look different than iOS/etc buttons is a small price compared to the benefits, and is the sort of thing that can probably be solved within the model once developers think it's important enough to. (I think modern frameworks and/or the web components standard will provide a good base to get more native-like experiences common in the web.)

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#100

Post by masswerk »

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.

While agree that most of these are highly invasive and certainly not a requirement, the Visibility API is actually a good thing. Apps which are running continuous scripts, like games, etc, may and should detect, when they are hidden (i.e. the tab they are in isn't the front most one) and pause. This is explicitely meant to preserve resources on the client machine and to benefit the user. On the other hand, there isn't much to gain from on the app's side, beyond receiving a notification to wake up and to possibly check for any updates that happened in the meantime to be applied.
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