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Chromium devs want the browser to talk to devices, computers directly

theregister.com

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Re: Chromium devs want the browser to talk to devices, computers directly

#81

Post by amadeuspagel »

jart wrote: post #40

Could we please just fix native software development, so it doesn't suck, rather than adding the kitchen sink to web browsers? Web pages and JavaScript are the only universally trusted medium for sharing information and simple software. Making it possible for news websites to touch ethernet/usb/serial/gpu compromises that. Same goes for optimizations ilke JIT'ing and WebAssembly which have certainly done a great job…

> Could we please just fix native software development, so it doesn't suck, rather than adding the kitchen sink to web browsers?

People have been trying to fix native software development forever, from the JVM to electron. But the web remains the only open platform for distributing software that works on every device. Fixing native software development will eventually mean making the web native, so that your OS is just a browser.

> Making it possible for news websites to touch ethernet/usb/serial/gpu compromises that.

There's a simple and obvious solution for that, which is to make them ask for permission, just like with desktop notifications.

> Same goes for optimizations ilke JIT'ing and WebAssembly which have certainly done a great job making it possible for Gawker to reprogram the microcode in AMD K8 CPUs.

What kind of argument is this? Someone who doesn't need a technology uses it anyway, so ... it's worthless?

Re: Chromium devs want the browser to talk to devices, computers directly

#82

Post by amadeuspagel »

Animats wrote: post #11

"Note that this capability is already available to Chrome Apps and Extensions and in no scenario will we be handing it out like candy to any website that asks nicely; [the API] will come with a higher barrier to use." Involving Google as a gatekeeper, of course. Google is trying to establish the level of control on the Web it has on Android.

For god's sake, if a website has to ask for permissions the browser is the "gatekeeper" I guess, and if the browser is made by google then in some sense google is the "gatekeeper", in the same sense in which google is the "gatekeeper" for desktop notifactions. Does this really justify the term "gatekeeping" or speculations about any dark plans of world conquest on google's part? Proposing an API, for which the website will have to ask the user for permission?

Re: Chromium devs want the browser to talk to devices, computers directly

#83

Post by cannedslime »

I am kind of against all of this, as it will inevitably lead to better fingerprinting. I already think its a serious breach of privacy that browsers supply hardware information such as joysticks and game controllers connected etc. without any kind of permission dialog. This is even worse because it allows for malicious websites to absolutely pwn the living sh*t out of the end user. You thought that ebays port scanning through websockets was bad, then just wait to see what they will use this for.

Re: Chromium devs want the browser to talk to devices, computers directly

#84

Post by amadeuspagel »

ffpip wrote: post #15
Animats wrote: post #11

"Note that this capability is already available to Chrome Apps and Extensions and in no scenario will we be handing it out like candy to any website that asks nicely; [the API] will come with a higher barrier to use." Involving Google as a gatekeeper, of course. Google is trying to establish the level of control on the Web it has on Android.

Google just wants browsers to become more powerful cuz then more people will use Chromebooks. since everything can be done on a browser. Why do you think PWA's are being pushed so hard by google? So people can build PWA's that also run on Chromebooks. No need for native apps

It's the other way round. Google wants people to use chromebooks so that no other company controls the distribution. This is still about the search engine. Google doesn't want people to search some kind of app store, they want people to search the web - with google of course.

Re: Chromium devs want the browser to talk to devices, computers directly

#85

Post by anamax »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #81
jart wrote: post #40

Could we please just fix native software development, so it doesn't suck, rather than adding the kitchen sink to web browsers? Web pages and JavaScript are the only universally trusted medium for sharing information and simple software. Making it possible for news websites to touch ethernet/usb/serial/gpu compromises that. Same goes for optimizations ilke JIT'ing and WebAssembly which have certainly done a great job…

> Could we please just fix native software development, so it doesn't suck, rather than adding the kitchen sink to web browsers? People have been trying to fix native software development forever, from the JVM to electron. But the web remains the only open platform for distributing software that works on every device. Fixing native software development will eventually mean making the web native, so that your OS is ju…

> Fixing native software development will eventually mean making the web native, so that your OS is just a browser.

The OS will become a set of poorly debugged device drivers?

Re: Chromium devs want the browser to talk to devices, computers directly

#86

Post by theandrewbailey »

kevingadd wrote: post #3

Until widespread code-signing exists on the web this seems incredibly reckless to expose. Even if you require https and put it behind a modal, history has shown that both of those measures are not impenetrable barriers to attackers and raw sockets open up a whole new set of attacks. HTTPS is basically useless for authenticating dangerous code: There are thousands of https domains out there that you can easily put you…

The closest to code-signing on the web is subresource integrity, a feature that adds an integrity hash to script and style tags.[0] There was a directive in content-security-policy that allowed you to require them for everything on a page, but that looks like it's been depreciated.[1]

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Subres...

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Co...

Re: Chromium devs want the browser to talk to devices, computers directly

#87

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #81
jart wrote: post #40

Could we please just fix native software development, so it doesn't suck, rather than adding the kitchen sink to web browsers? Web pages and JavaScript are the only universally trusted medium for sharing information and simple software. Making it possible for news websites to touch ethernet/usb/serial/gpu compromises that. Same goes for optimizations ilke JIT'ing and WebAssembly which have certainly done a great job…

> Could we please just fix native software development, so it doesn't suck, rather than adding the kitchen sink to web browsers? People have been trying to fix native software development forever, from the JVM to electron. But the web remains the only open platform for distributing software that works on every device. Fixing native software development will eventually mean making the web native, so that your OS is ju…

> Fixing native software development will eventually mean making the web native, so that your OS is just a browser.

Frankly, it is hard to imagine a more hellish future for personal computing than that.

Re: Chromium devs want the browser to talk to devices, computers directly

#88

Post by WorldMaker »

thwarted wrote: post #74
rubber_duck wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm - a large group of most popular productivity apps are cross platform and look nothing like native - from dev tools like IDEA, VSCode over Slack, MS Office, to multimedia tools like Adobe tools, almost all 3D modeling software like maya, max, audio software like Ableton, FL. None of the apps I use on a day to day basis look native (ie. like the apps provided by Apple) You are confusing cross platform UI with frame…

If MS Office was truly cross platform in look, feel, and operation, then finance people who insist on using Excel wouldn't also insist on using Windows just to use Excel. All those specialized tools can get away with having completely-unlike-anything else UI/UX because people are paying for them and they are considered best(and only)-of-breed. Electron apps are cross platform only in terms of them looking alike on di…

In my experience, finance people who insist on using Excel only on Windows generally do so not because of any reliance on "native controls", but on longstanding dependencies upon VBA macros with hard-coded dependencies on specific legacy COM components.
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