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Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering
341–350 of 953 posts
Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering
#342RIP web accessibility when everyone starts doing this to make ad blocking more difficult
When this becomes the norm, I'm sure someone will come up with a deep learning-based adblocker. It will be slow and make mistakes, but well...
Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ad blockers could still "scroll" through a website, run an AI model on it to discover the ad sections, and cut them out. Even a simple model that filters out visual animations and replaces them with a static would be useful as a large annoying component of online ads is the movement and blinking etc. that make it hard to focus on the content. Dark mode etc can, too, be implemented to work in terms of framebuffers onl…
It will be like cutting out the ads in a newspaper. Lots of holes, everywhere.
The difference from a physical newspaper is that on a computer we don't have to leave holes, we can replace them with beautiful artwork or our favorite cat pictures. That's still a hell of a lot better than ads.
Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly the reason I don't use an ad blocker. In the long run, it will make everything worse, and I still probably won't be able to block ads. I'm clearly on the losing side of this though.
"Ad blockers" need a new name. I don't consider uBlock Origin an "ad blocker". It's a proper user agent (like a browser is supposed to be) that gives the user control over what is allowed to happen on their machine. That just happens to have the side effect of not allowing most ads to render because the way they're typical delivered. It won't matter if everyone starts using canvas unless they also stop using my machi…
I like this take a lot. The problem is that most people that are using ad blockers actually seem to want ad blockers.
Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering
#345Maybe because I am out of loop with web development, but this sounds like a huge change to me. So instead of HTML elements, there will be just one big element, and everything will be rendered there? How will text selection work for example? Will Google Docs basically implement a GUI library like GTK, which renders everything itself, but for the web?
Yes, then you will need a unified approach to text editing, and another markup language inside.
Ah, ffs, you're right. It's just a matter of time: we will have markup rendered by a UI framework into a canvas that is in an HTML document.
I almost hesitate to write this, because someone will point us to where that has already happened, and then I'll feel a little sad.
Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
I for one would welcome the death of HTML and CSS. Unfortunately I suspect they will merely be re-used for this.
HTML and CSS are fantastic; when used what they were designed for. Document markup and display. I blame webapp developers for the scope creep and subsequent denigration of a perfectly reasonable set of standards.
I find it really hard to rationalise this thought with the thread...
- WebAssembly + Canvas rendering is bad because it turns the web into a bunch of opaque blobs and removes user freedoms and abilities
- The web should only be for documents, not applications
- So it follows that... all the applications which are currently "open" websites should be opaque native app executables where you can't have extensions or adblockers or anything?
To be clear, I agree with the first point. Websites moving to opaquely rendered canvases is terrible. They should remain "normal" DOM/HTML.
Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
A dystopia. You can't control-F in the page. Can't copy and paste a word you don't know into a translator or dictionary. Can't share text unofficially - like copy a sentence into a email, etc.
Also, you know, accessibility. This could be a real serious problem for people with disabilities.
I'm hoping for a revamped EU accessibility act https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1202 that also covers document and office applications, and with GDPR sized fines.
Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
HTML and CSS were never denigrated. There's not one superficial feature which doesn't make sense. Most of it is barebones. If I had to pick one feature the blows the scope out of proportion, it would be the `is` selector, but that's the only one I can think of
Denigrated ~= put down. And there's plenty of examples within the comments of this article where people - webapp developers - harp on how bad HTML and CSS are, because HTML and CSS weren't designed for webapps.
CSS is the worst layout language, except for all the others.
Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
(googler, opinions are my own, I know nothing about this project). I will bet that this will ship with accessibility support. If it doesn't, maybe they will launch with it being opt-in, as they flesh out a11y. But if I were to put money on it, it will ship with a11y functionality. The good thing here is that Google already has experience with accessibility on canvas UIs . Flutter, which uses canvas on web[0] and open…
Great, but will it ship with ad block support? Or will I be forced to look at ads, where high value individuals (most of HN) are selling their attention for pennies (being able to view a Youtube video or whatever)?
Does Google put ads on Google Docs?
Anyway, adblockers that work at the network level should still work. This will make things more difficult for cosmetic removals though.
Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a bad thing in terms of openness but a good thing in terms of performance and making web applications more like real desktop applications. A lot of DOM work is a nightmare, so I sort of welcome to the Canvas based approach.
We're just one more concession away from getting the performance we had 20 years ago with native applications. Edit: The path we're on just seems so obvious I kind of just want to skip ahead and get it over with. - Developers and content publishers love the ergonomics and control of just shipping WASM binaries that paint to a canvas and it becomes the de facto standard. - After 2-3 years of everyone's computer being…
Browsers still support arcane HMTL features from decades ago (and thus can display most web sites from decades ago). Other than things that were already decidedly not part of web standards (like Flash), I’m aware of very little if any backwards-incompatible changes made by popular browsers. So I'm having trouble seeing this slippery slope you’re describing.