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Things you can do with a browser in 2020

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101–110 of 387 posts

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#102
post #45

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 distr…

IIRC I think it was because it was used to fingerprint browsers

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#103
post #96

If you'd have told me in 2010 that this would be the state of the art of the web in 2020, I'd have been sorely disappointed...

personal opinion -- almost all of these features are really cool to me as a user and a developer.

just shows, everyone's got an opinion.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#104
post #86

A few things that aren't mentioned: - Web MIDI - access digital keyboards/synthesizers. I believe in some browsers there's no prompt, unlike Web USB. - Screen sharing via getDisplayMedia, analogous to getUserMedia for cameras. - WebRTC, peer-to-peer connections. - Security keys (WebAuthn), specific support for cheap ($10-$50 depending on features) devices that do second-factor login to websites. Importantly, these de…

Is WebRTC really peer-to-peer if you need a server?

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#105
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you don't need that, you can cmd-comma and disable that.

But there's no such an easy way to enable a feature you need, but which wasn't implemented.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#106
post #30

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.

Do you mean the proprietary Apple push notifications in Safari? In this case I've only seen it ever once (as opposed to seeing the "normal" notifications on pretty much every shitty blogspam website) so it seems like the 100$ acts like a good filter against BS notifications.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#107
post #86

A few things that aren't mentioned: - Web MIDI - access digital keyboards/synthesizers. I believe in some browsers there's no prompt, unlike Web USB. - Screen sharing via getDisplayMedia, analogous to getUserMedia for cameras. - WebRTC, peer-to-peer connections. - Security keys (WebAuthn), specific support for cheap ($10-$50 depending on features) devices that do second-factor login to websites. Importantly, these de…

Is WebRTC really peer-to-peer if you need a server?

The server is for convenience.

If you can handle signaling in another way, you're free to do so.

When I played around with WebRTC the first time, I did it by copying the signaling data via TextAreas and WhatsApp.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#110
post #79

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 you're out of step with what users want these days. Nothing wrong with that! But to take an example, when I hit a share button on a page I want to see the native share box, not some hideous iframed monstrosity that only works with Facebook. So I want Web Share. And I don't want to download an entire native app just so that I can receive a push alert when my food order is on the way, a web site works much better…

If they were OSes they would have a kernel and user land

You would have ring0 and ring3

You could decide what to install or what remove

In the browser everything is exposed to everyone by default

More than an OS is a disaster waiting to happen

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