Hahahaha. There's an amazing flattering IR photo of me in there :)
Things you can do with a browser in 2020
131–140 of 387 posts
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#132I think WebUSB is all but dead. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22228879
It is very much not dead and is used for educational products all the time. We use it ourselves for our internal ecommerce backend system. We made our own WebUSB Postage Scales and Label Printer that enables 1-click creation of consignment labels. We pull weights from the postage scales and chuck raw ZPL over the wire to the Label Printer. Being able to skip the bugs in operating system printing queues is amazing. De…
It's also used to flash Android devices too.
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#133As 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.
The native file system access mentioned near the bottom sounds like a massive security hole
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Share API isn't needed for sharing content, copy and paste worked better than share api and it was around decades ago. About what percent of push notification requests do you accept? I think my percentage is 0, and the number of requests is high tens if not hundreds. I don't trust browser notifications at all. Here's some stats: https://www.businessofapps.com/marketplace/push-notification... Opt-in rates are around 6…
You consider them undesirable, but they are a critical feature for many applications. Specifically, chat. More specifically... support agents providing live chat support. (And for that matter, end users interacting via chat appreciate push notifications on reply) Without browser push notifications, there really isn’t a good alternative. The fact that opt in rates are close to 50% is probably a good thing! It means th…
Chat is probably one of the only functionalities that are still better served by an ad-hoc app
If you need notifications, just use a native app (or even a web one wrapped in a native app)
Anyway, most of these "features" are used because they are already there, remove them from the base install of the browser, distribute them as a plugin and make the devs consider that the feature could not be present and they will stop nagging the users begging for their attention
Any website I visit from mobile wants the permission to notify me, 99% of them don't if I visit from desktop
Why is that?
I guess we all know the answer
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
If operating systems had ever provided security strong enough to run untrusted code, we wouldn't have needed to. It's really a failing of operating system security. Even today no operating system provides an application sandbox as strong and versatile as the browser. Platforms have fallen back on walled gardens (app stores) with centralized control of all code execution to compensate for the deficiencies of their sec…
Is letting Google, Facebook or Apple control every aspect of our lives by sending them all our personal data, contacts and network information voluntary more secure? I would rather run every application in its own VM under a different unprivileged user P.s. the browser is the main attack vector on mobile, not only because it's so complex that bugs are everywhere, but mostly because web app security sucks
> the browser is the main attack vector on mobile
Citation needed. Browser-based attacks are difficult to come by, because it's just easier to attack an application instead.
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#136A 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…
Web MIDI is really cool. I recently bought a new MIDI keyboard controller from Novation and was really impressed when I learned that the configuration tool can run entirely in the browser without requiring local installation. In Chrome, it displays a permission prompt.
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I do not want an opt out, I do not want it. I _do_ _not_ want it. I do not want it to be expected. I do not want it to be assumed. I do not want to have to configure anything. _I DO NOT WANT IT_
[deleted]
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#138Worth 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?)
Yes, it's such an obscure feature that many of the people who enable it don't even realize it... Ever since I added dark mode to gwern.net, I've been getting or seeing complaints about how my website is broken or 'defaults to black-on-white' (it doesn't). :(
I enjoy the prefers-color-scheme support!
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
But people still download and run apps every day. Some even prefer it. I doubt that the cause of this migration was due to security concerns -- since when are app developers particularly concerned about the quality of the security controls imposed on them? I suspect the shift was more due to ease of access, both by the user and for the developer, helped along by easier compatibility.
Users care about security (at least a lot). That's why they don't install every random app that they could.
Right, but users can only use an app once it has been developed, and ultimately if the user needs an app, they will go with whatever format it's being distributed in. Then there's also the convenience factor — Gmail is a good example of this — where a web app is more convenient than a downloadable app that does the same thing, because it requires no installation or updates.
I would also suspect that most users haven't any clue of the security implications of using something in a browser versus using an app.
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure why I read this in a negative tone, this is fantastic.
What's fantastic about native apps? I mean, I know why nation-state attackers love them - it's super easy to exploit them, and once you do, you have full access to everything in the user account (including all browser login sessions). But what's the advantage to users?
> I mean, I know why nation-state attackers love them - it's super easy to exploit them, and once you do, you have full access to everything in the user account (including all browser login sessions).
Not on mobile.