Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#91

Post by dmitriid » Wed, May 12, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #36

cj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd like to know if there are reasons to move to canvas for strictly technical merits. In Google's announcements, they say the reason is performance.

That seems like a moderately weak argument. DOM tables are slow, but if you know what you are doing the DOM is otherwise an insanely fast interface. You can get sub-nanosecond response speed from DOM calls in Firefox (faster than a billion operations per second). It would be interesting to see the performance differences in numbers. The performance impact of a canvas based approach can be approximated from measuring…

Raw calls to DOM mean literally nothing when you have to layout those nodes.

And yes, tables are slow. "If you know what you're doing" routinely becomes "let's reinvent virtual lists on an interface that doesn't have a single API to make this pleasant or performant in any conceivable way".

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#92

Post by nvrspyx » Wed, May 12, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

silicon2401 wrote: post #64

hctaw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Word, Pages and Open Office don't seem to be bottlenecked by rendering performance like Google Docs. Perhaps the browser is the wrong platform for document editing.

I believe this 100%. After using google office for years (just because it's free and cloud-based), I recently tried MS Word and Excel recently at work. The different was mind-blowing. I forgot just how functional and straightforward MS Office is compared to the clunky, barebones google options. If I wanted a desktop-first, cloud-backed solution, what would be the most future-proof and durable? Can I use Open Office a…

I prefer LibreOffice over Open Office, but I believe both are cross-platform (Linux, Windows, macOS). Then, I'd just use Dropbox or similar to save the files to for cloud storage. The only downside is no real-time collaboration. You can also look into Collabora, but I don't have any experience with it.

If you don't require Linux support or if the web is tolerable for Linux, I personally recommend the Microsoft Office suite. There's the obvious compatibility concern because nearly everyone uses those, they have real-time collaboration built in for both desktop and the web, comes with OneDrive storage, and will obviously be extremely future-proof. I cannot recall a single time any of the apps have crashed on me on both Windows and macOS, so I think it's pretty "durable".

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#93

Post by rektide » Wed, May 12, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

This is incredibly destructive, an attack on the core technologies & interoperability of the DOM. It's highly concerning, highly scary that they would do this.

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#94

Post by MereInterest » Wed, May 12, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

notyourwork wrote: post #3

I don't build extensions or work on much front end web lately but this reads like Google wants more control over their stuff. The web is becoming less open. > By moving away from HTML-based rendering to a canvas-based rendering, some Chrome extensions may not function as intended on docs.google.com and may need to be updated. > If you are building your own integrations with Google Docs, we recommend using Google Work…

> this reads like Google wants more control over their stuff. The web is becoming less open.

Absolutely agreed. I'd also be surprised if they don't try to roll out the same for search results, ostensibly for the purpose of improving performance, but actually to thwart ad-blockers.

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#95

Post by chalcolithic » Wed, May 12, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

est31 wrote: post #80

jcelerier wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The dom is really, really fast, no, it is barely tolerable. Web apps in 2021 have trouble reaching the UI performance (latency) of early 2000 desktop software.

It depends on what you do with it. HN is extremely fast.

(Un)folding a 100+ comment subtree is kind of slow, don't you think?

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#96

Post by sgt » Wed, May 12, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

defrex wrote: post #7

jerry1979 wrote: post #4

I would like to know which ui library they use.

Perhaps Flutter. It uses Canvas to render in the web. https://flutter.dev/

Flutter web can use both DOM and Canvas, but the default is Canvas. I haven't to this day seen any disadvantages of using Canvas though, possibly speed on slow mobile devices.

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#97

Post by notjustanymike » Wed, May 12, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

It makes a hell of a lot of sense, even from a QA perspective alone. Canvas is going to be far more predictable as a rendering target than the wide swath of browsers they manage now.

The DOM certainly has a place, but if you've looked at Google docs rendered output you'd notice it left web standards behind a long long time ago. This is an application which happens to be served on the web, not a traditional website.

It's more Figma, less NYTimes.

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#98

Post by remram » Wed, May 12, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

jerry1979 wrote: post #51

notyourwork wrote: post #3

I don't build extensions or work on much front end web lately but this reads like Google wants more control over their stuff. The web is becoming less open. > By moving away from HTML-based rendering to a canvas-based rendering, some Chrome extensions may not function as intended on docs.google.com and may need to be updated. > If you are building your own integrations with Google Docs, we recommend using Google Work…

I would not consider myself super deep in web technology, but rendering to canvas allows programmers to have pixel perfect control over the look of their applications across all devices. Currently, web developers need to "reset" lots of default rendering behaviors in every major browser to ensure that their applications look the same. After building lots of specialized UI components within the HTML standard, a progra…

Do your users care about your app looking the same or do they care about their browser looking and acting like a browser?

Moving to canvas is sure to break many features such as text selection, adblocking, and accessibility. All in the name of more controls over the pixels? Are you truly doing it for the users?

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#99

Post by pdkl95 » Wed, May 12, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

Ever since WebAssembly was first introduced, I thought it was obvious[1][2] that the end game for those that want to control the web is sending opaque binary blobs of code that only use the browser for the canvas tag's framebuffer. Font rendering and layout can all easily be accomplished by embedding libraries like freetype. This breaks all forms of user control - like ad blockers - and turns the web back into cable TV.

I didn't expect the first move towards canvas-only rendering to be traditional wordprocessors. As usual, this is merely the first step. Once the tech has been normalized by developers, transitioning regular webpages will be a fait accompli.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10294187

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26351771

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#100

Post by throwaway894345 » Wed, May 12, 2021, 2:36 PM UTC

silicon2401 wrote: post #64

hctaw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Word, Pages and Open Office don't seem to be bottlenecked by rendering performance like Google Docs. Perhaps the browser is the wrong platform for document editing.

I believe this 100%. After using google office for years (just because it's free and cloud-based), I recently tried MS Word and Excel recently at work. The different was mind-blowing. I forgot just how functional and straightforward MS Office is compared to the clunky, barebones google options. If I wanted a desktop-first, cloud-backed solution, what would be the most future-proof and durable? Can I use Open Office a…

I also prefer desktop-first, cloud-backed solutions, but I have quite the opposite experience. Working with MS Office has been a pain and I've been a happy Google Docs user for about 10 years. My wife who isn't an especially technical person also finds Google Docs quite a lot more intuitive and laments when she has to use MS Office products for work (she is a consultant for Microsoft including their 365 line of business and her whole firm makes pitch decks in Google Slides before converting them to MS Office to present at Microsoft meetings--IIRC for the Azure and other b2b lines of business they don't even bother with MS Office). Note that my wife and I (like most of our age group) grew up on MS office, so it's not a question of familiarity.

Google Docs just built a better product and MS Office still hasn't caught up. I wonder if this is because or in spite of the browser target?