Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

workspaceupdates.googleblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 953 posts

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#421

Post by throwawayboise »

larodi wrote: post #77
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.

It was indeed a very strong marketing move for... decades to convince people, like smart people, that document editing can be a web-based thing. Actually, now that the browser is so ubiquitous that GUIs sit on top of it (think Electron), then is time to ask the very obvious question - since everyone seems to agree that universal GUI is needed (proof: the browser) then is the browser the right universal GUI? Not being…

The killer feature of Google Docs is the real-time collaboration. People willingly gave up a lot of editing and layout functionality to get that. It was so much better than sending drafts of documents back and forth in email.

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#423

Post by FlyingSnake »

ape4 wrote: post #257
stefan_ wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what Flutter on the web is, by the way. You can try it out here: https://gallery.flutter.dev/#/ and marvel at the impossible to select text, one of the many affordances violently excised here. If it wasn't still incredibly slow even on a cutting-edge Zen3, Nvidia 3070 system they might almost be on to something here.

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.

Add to that, a11y as a 2nd class citizen.

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#424

Post by ______- »

kroltan wrote: post #127
jerry1979 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> [...] rendering to canvas allows programmers to have pixel perfect control over the look of their applications across all devices. Canvas-based fingerprinting due to rendering differences is a thing, so using the canvas is not pixel-perfect either. Creating an UI library atop of that is a lot of work, though to be fair certainly manageable by Google. Remember, a UI library is not just about putting things on the sc…

> Canvas-based fingerprinting due to rendering differences is a thing, so using the canvas is not pixel-perfect either

Luckily Firefox asks you if you want to use the HTML5 canvas API. You can specifically whitelist some pages to use the canvas API and stop it from running by default on all your other browsing. Also: you may want a dedicated browser just for Google's whole ecosystem so they can't track you across the web. I have a Chromebook just for that, which has its own unique canvas fingerprint completely separated from my main workstation PC's fingerprint.

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#425

Post by intpx »

burlesona wrote: post #321
pdkl95 wrote: post #99

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…

Just for what it’s worth, “word processors” are a logical starting point specifically because the APIs for text manipulation in the DOM are abysmal, and every in-browser WYSIWYG text editor is a steaming pile of hacks. Some of them work well despite this, but, it’s a horrible set of code to maintain and very, very hard to make a good user experience. One of the very hardest things to do well in the browser, actually.…

teach markdown in schools. who needs word processors anyway? need something fancier than headings, lists, block-quotes etc? learn LaTeX. Text rendering can be fantastic in the browser. I'm half joking, but I think the world would be a better place if folks had fewer, more precise ways of making words look the way they want

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#426

Post by eitland »

Here's one thing Google hasn't yet realized it seems:

They are neither the coolest kid in the class anymore nor the teachers favorite; they can't just do whatever they want anymore.

This is a good thing but I wonder how long it will be before Google get the message.

Seing how long Microsoft pushed Silverlight I'm afraid well have to live with this for years to come.

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#427

Post by selfhoster11 »

iandanforth wrote: post #165
pdkl95 wrote: post #99

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…

And all the problems solved by HTML and CSS will be new again, there will be many new incompatible frameworks for handling layout and styling, a blinking cursor will again take 200x the CPU it should to implement. Ugh.

Let's not forget DRM. Now that framebuffer can be delivered via an encrypted EME module, thereby killing the open web permanently for the purposes of scraping.

Thanks a bunch, W3C!

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#428

Post by dcchambers »

stefan_ wrote: post #237
pdkl95 wrote: post #99

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…

This is what Flutter on the web is, by the way. You can try it out here: https://gallery.flutter.dev/#/ and marvel at the impossible to select text, one of the many affordances violently excised here. If it wasn't still incredibly slow even on a cutting-edge Zen3, Nvidia 3070 system they might almost be on to something here.

Yikes. How does the inability to select or search text pass even the most basic of UI/UX and accessibility guidelines?

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#429

Post by pmontra »

kmeisthax wrote: post #377
burlesona wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for what it’s worth, “word processors” are a logical starting point specifically because the APIs for text manipulation in the DOM are abysmal, and every in-browser WYSIWYG text editor is a steaming pile of hacks. Some of them work well despite this, but, it’s a horrible set of code to maintain and very, very hard to make a good user experience. One of the very hardest things to do well in the browser, actually.…

Furthermore, actually implementing your own text renderer and input engine in WASM is a different horrible nightmare, because you've now forfitted any chance of supporting IMEs (e.g. touch keyboards, pinyin/romaji/kanji input, iPadOS Scribble), you need to implement your own text selection inputs, your text won't show up in the accessibility tree, and you can't copy-paste without additional, browser-specific tweaks.…

> you can't copy-paste without additional, browser-specific tweaks

Expect an AI-based OCR browser extension to copy text to the system clipboard. Possibly by sending screenshots to some centralized service ;-)

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#430

Post by riho »

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…

In this case, I think the switch is most likely entirely based on technical merits, rather than some way of asserting more control.

So with that in mind, the fact that the team behind one of Google's most interactive pieces of software has to throw up their hands and say "DOM is too slow, we gotta roll our own" should be a wakeup call for everyone working on Chrome and other browsers, but mostly for Google itself.

When you escape the DOM, you're going to be doing pretty much everything yourself. And for someone like Google, that might be worth the absolutely insane amount of effort, but what about everyone else? You're Google, Chrome has 60%+ market share. Why isn't the plan here to systematically start improving DOM performance, or create APIs to more directly modify how elements are laid out and created? Why do all of this work to benefit only Google Docs?

We've had years (decades!) of articles and talk about how the DOM is slow (including a bunch from Google), so why not improve it? Why give up and waste all this time on a custom solution? Why not create something that is *actually* capable of handling the complexity of modern, highly interactive applications, including Google's own products?

You can say it's Flutter, but that's yet another effort to escape the DOM, rather than actually improve it.

Maybe this has been the plan behind the Google Docs team, to push people on the browser side and other Google teams to start seriously looking at what to do with the DOM, if so, I hope this actually has the intended effect. We all deserve a better, more performant web.

Post reply on HN