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Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

woob.tech

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Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#91

Post by paxys »

fallat wrote: post #78
anderspitman wrote: post #60

Something I've been thinking about lately is how browsers have essentially become a dependency for any sort of auth on the internet. Pretty much everything uses OAuth2, which requires you to be able to render HTML and CSS, and in many implementations JavaScript. That's ~20M (Firefox) to ~30M (Chromium) lines of code as a dependency for your application, just for auth. This applies even if you have a slick CLI app lik…

You don't need browsers for OAuth2. IIRC the 9front guys even have support for OAuth-based systems.

The OAuth2 standard doesn't require a browser, but basically every provider who implements it does.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#92

Post by anderspitman »

jolux wrote: post #86
anderspitman wrote: post #60

Something I've been thinking about lately is how browsers have essentially become a dependency for any sort of auth on the internet. Pretty much everything uses OAuth2, which requires you to be able to render HTML and CSS, and in many implementations JavaScript. That's ~20M (Firefox) to ~30M (Chromium) lines of code as a dependency for your application, just for auth. This applies even if you have a slick CLI app lik…

What part of OAuth2 requires browsers? You need to be able to handle JSON, but I'm pretty sure you don't need to be able to render anything.

Are you aware of any major services that don't require a browser?

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#94

Post by _alex_ »

andrewfromx wrote: post #28
clone1018 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had two ideas related to this in the past that I've always wanted to prototype: - A social media website without a frontend. We just provide a fully exposed API and Oauth, and devs can create their own client to interact with the social network. This would give devs the freedom to create their own experiences without locking users into one specific way of using the social network. - "Cloud" content hosting as a…

this sounds perfect for https://www.deso.org/ social network code

Isn’t this the company that did “log in with seed phrase”?

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#95

Post by jolux »

anderspitman wrote: post #92
jolux wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of OAuth2 requires browsers? You need to be able to handle JSON, but I'm pretty sure you don't need to be able to render anything.

Are you aware of any major services that don't require a browser?

That's…not the same question. But yes, I am. We have systems at work built on AWS Cognito and OpenID Connect, which is based on OAuth2. No browser is required, except to interface with the user. It's all HTTP and JSON underneath.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#96

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

Been using web outside of browser for last 10+ years. I am addicted to it, having written many scripts and programs to fetch and process HTML and other filetypes outside the browser. I can retrieve and extract data/information much faster and more efficiently using simpler programs that are small and work together. For viewing HTML, I prefer my text-only browser. HTML looks much better, less variable, more uniform, than in a graphical browser. The only reason these methods are appealing to me is because the alternatives are so unappealing. I avoid having to deal with the downsides of using "modern" web browsers and the annoyances of trying to view the web through those browsers.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#97

Post by beermonster »

Eons ago there used to be a type of service on the web that allowed you to send a URL to a mail server. It would fetch the content at that URL and email the article to you.

I can't for the life of me remember what that type of service was. It was back in the era of anonymous remailers.. any ideas?

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#98

Post by anderspitman »

jolux wrote: post #95
anderspitman wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware of any major services that don't require a browser?

That's…not the same question. But yes, I am. We have systems at work built on AWS Cognito and OpenID Connect, which is based on OAuth2. No browser is required, except to interface with the user. It's all HTTP and JSON underneath.

> No browser is required, except to interface with the user.

That seems like it's always required then. I think maybe I'm not understanding what you mean. Can you describe the flow in a bit more detail? I would be very interesting in doing OAuth2 without a web browser.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#99

Post by redsparrow »

0x445442 wrote: post #32

Believe it or not, around the turn of the century there were many thick client apps. But back then it was a challenge to ship and update these applications. This pain, along with the continued rollout of broadband led many to advocate for creating applications that would run in a web browser while being controlled on centralized servers. In practice, turning the platform that was designed to render markup text into a…

This is an interesting observation. I hadn't noticed this dynamic before; thanks for sharing.

The current differences in attitudes between mobile and non-mobile apps is pretty interesting.

If you visit Reddit or Twitter from a browser that's running on a mobile OS then they make it extremely clear that they would prefer that you use a dedicated app. When visiting from a non-mobile OS not only do you not see such messages, but a dedicated app doesn't even exist.

In one place the browser is good enough to be the only option, in the other it's so inferior that they will bully and harass you until you stop using it.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#100

Post by Mandatum »

dylan-m wrote: post #31

I like the idea of this. There's so much information on the web, but we still need a way to bring that information to other applications, without being tied to a particular source. That was really the dream of the semantic web, after all. This kind of idea would be really nicely paired with good Microformats[1] support, which continues to be a very good idea. That way we can find, say, a recipe or an address on a web…

I love RSS and MQTT for this as a "good enough" method. There's a few QL choices for CRUD operations too. We're getting there, albeit slowly..
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