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But what makes the web stack special if someone owns it? Why is it worth saving? Let's face it, if you actually bought The Web(tm) from a vendor, you'd ask for your money back.
"Let's face facts: the Web will never be the dominant platform." Hewitt's post hinges on that statement, presented without supporting evidence. But actually the Web is already dominant among the platforms Hewitt mentions (Web, Windows, iOS, and Android). Relevant stats: Web - 1.7 billion users as of July, given that 880 million people go to the single busiest website publicly measured by Google, and this site has a "…
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Linux doesn't own the OS market - far from it. Python doesn't own the language sector. jQuery doesn't own the JS library sector. They are all independent projects, and it's _good_ for them to have a BDFL. Asking for one for the entire web is not a good plan because it would exclude competition. That's where the flaw in the argument is. And while it'd be nice if browser vendors could just go off and improve along (fro…
My point wasn't that Linux or Python or jQuery own their sectors. I responding to your claim that a single owner promotes stagnation. It's important to distinguish the Internet from the collection of web technologies. The Internet is the thing that needs to remain open and uncontrolled.
The only other way to read that is that you're advocating splintering web technology into HTML-Moz, HTML-IE, HTML-Cr and so on. While that might make for a better developer experience for somebody who develops apps for _one_ of those platforms, it's a disaster in terms of interoperability. Which is kind of one of the key points of "The Web".
We were heading down that path for a while with browser-specific extensions, and it lead to large problems. For users, because they needed to have "just the right browser". And for many backend services, because actually extracting data from web pages required understanding all competing standards.
I care mostly about the users. The web of yore, with "best viewed with" stickers was a debacle in terms of UX.
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You're conflating hyperlinked documents and applications. The web is clearly the dominant document platform, but is the web the dominant application platform? The answer is in market success of the emerging mobile (and possibly desktop) application platforms, and the kinds of applications being produced there.
In user-hours of application use the web is UNQUESTIONABLY the dominant application platform.
People spend 8 hours a day using desktop apps -- word, excel, outlook, GIS software, development tools, whatever.
They read their email and twitter and consume content throughout the day on their mobile devices.
At home they play video games, read books, comics, videos -- all using 'apps' on their TVs, mobile devices, and playstations.
Color me unconvinced -- I just took a break from 3 hours reading in iBooks to write this.
(It won't be standards bodies that lead the way — they never do. At best they can codify consensus after the fact, and lightly shame laggards. Instead a rotating selection of innovators, in different categories, will drive change.)
I am a fan of Joe Hewitt but this is crazy talk, especially coming from one of the heroes of the Mozilla revolution. It's as if he doesn't remember those dark days long ago when he was working on Firefox in what seemed like a lost cause, Microsoft was the defacto standard setter and single-handedly drove innovation in the web, it was awful. We must never go back to those days. I know Joe imagines some benevolent dict…
Exactly the kind of arrogance I cited. You don't want to risk a bad owner so you'll let the whole thing die from neglect by committee. I would rather have Microsoft be the only browser vendor than have the web shrink dramatically.
The Web doesn't have an owner, it has several. Competing against it other. That's why it is thriving. It had no owner and it suffered when MS had 95% of the Web's market share, cause MS's platform is Windows, not the Web. Controlling it was MS's way of keeping Windows relevant.
In your mind, who are the owners?
You could add Facebook to the pack but, though it has changed how people use the Web, it didn't contribute much to improving the platform.
And in a sense, although it may sound idealistically foolish, all of us. A long time ago, I helped fixing a bug that prevented Webkit and Gecko from connecting to my bank's crappy site, making me launch VirtualPC just about everyday. A few years later, I wrapped a perl script in a GUI that spared the users of a broadband provider from having to manually login in on the carrier's “portal” just to use the Web. A lot of people used it and they eventually changed that annoying behavior. There's nothing stopping you from trying to have an influence.
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The one part of his article that I somewhat agree with is that under the guidance of several entities (and lots and lots of people) the web may not have quite the same coherence as, say, Cocoa. I'm not sure that will be a problem. It's already a problem. In fact, it is the problem. The web application 'platform' is poor, incoherent, and its proponents highly resistant to the sweeping changes that would be necessary t…
"It's already a problem. In fact, it is the problem. The web application 'platform' is poor, incoherent, and its proponents highly resistant to the sweeping changes that would be necessary to compete with a native, proprietary platform like iOS." Which "sweeping changes" are those? Changes like the ability to draw pixel-by-pixel? Vectors? 3D? (Canvas/svg/webgl) Changes like higher level form controls? Got some in HTM…
What about files? Yeah, there are file APIs. Databases? localStorage is a simple key/value store. There's also WebSQL DB and IndexedDB which will hopefully be resolved in one way or another soon.
In native-land, we've had SQLite for over a decade. If I want "WebSQL DB" today, I simply link sqlite into my project and move on.
Before SQLite, we had bdb. When the next new thing I want to use comes along, I'll simply use it, and I won't have to wait around for standardization, and the for browser makers to wrap it up in a JavaScript API.
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Compare that to the progress of native development. Apple comes out with new cool things on iOS every year, whereas on the web it takes 5 years to get something new that is 10 years behind the native counterparts.
The difference is that the iOS stuff only runs on $500 devices. The web stuff runs on just about everything. No one ever said standards were easy.
Joe's point he made a year ago is still true today, but it hasn't happened. "Browser makers need to go nuts with non-standard APIs and let the W3C standardize later"
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"It's already a problem. In fact, it is the problem. The web application 'platform' is poor, incoherent, and its proponents highly resistant to the sweeping changes that would be necessary to compete with a native, proprietary platform like iOS." Which "sweeping changes" are those? Changes like the ability to draw pixel-by-pixel? Vectors? 3D? (Canvas/svg/webgl) Changes like higher level form controls? Got some in HTM…
It's not enough to list the things that web does well. There are many areas in which web hasn't caught with capabilities available for a decade in Windows or Mac Just one example that is particularly painful for me: it's still impossible to build a high quality code editing component on web platform. There are many valiant attempts but none that approaches the speed, quality and convenience of the best desktop editor…