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TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

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Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#131

Post by rafram »

ryandrake wrote: post #99
osrec wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for saying this, as I know a lot of people on HN have very negative feelings towards this trend. Personally, I feel the browser is a great way to stop reinventing the wheel, and the APIs abstract away a lot of the heavy lifting. They pretty much get you 80% of the way there, and the last 20% is where you can really add the stamp of "uniqueness" to your implementation. The fact that the browser is also heavily…

It just feels like every time software developers can't (or won't) build things cross-platform, users end up with bigger and bloatier solutions and poorer experiences. First, it was cross-platform UI toolkits and OS abstractions like Qt (require users to use a big, "lowest common denominator compromise" library ) Then, it was web apps (require users to provide a browser) Then, it was Electron and friends (ship the wh…

> Ship an entire physical PC to the user pre-loaded with the application?

Maybe not that, but it’s becoming popular to run high-intensity programs on a remote server and stream video to the user’s machine, both for pretty sensible reasons (e.g. Stadia for games) and totally nonsensical ones (e.g. Mighty for Google Chrome). It’s mainframes all over again!

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#132

Post by shadowgovt »

amalcon wrote: post #96
johnfn wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, this seems like a good compromise to me. Some apps (calendar) would be absolutely crippled without them. For everything else, I've just never turned them on in the first place. > I wish there were a permission pop-up before playing sound at all The browser can't actually play sound unless 1) it's triggered as the result of a user action (such as a mouse click) or 2) if you've often listened to sound on…

My answer to this is that the calendar just does not need to be a web app. Weakening a primary advantage of everything else on the web just so that my calendar can be a web app seems like a poor trade-off. Re: sound, "Triggered as the result of a user action" is not a high enough bar.

Calendars are far more useful as web apps than other incarnations; you can open them anywhere and don't have to carry a specific artifact with you to do it.

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#133

Post by valenterry »

Waterluvian wrote: post #27

A lot of totally valid opinions out there about this, but I personally _love_ how the browser is becoming a very well-featured sandbox for shipping applications. For personal fun and learning, I'm making a complete 2D video game in ideally less than 1MB. It has 60fps graphics, full spatial audio, and gamepad support, all because the browser has a lot of these APIs that didn't exist when I was starting out my career.…

Yes!

And that's much better than Apps, where you are forced into an unfavorable ecosystem.

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#134

Post by choeger »

ryandrake wrote: post #99
osrec wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for saying this, as I know a lot of people on HN have very negative feelings towards this trend. Personally, I feel the browser is a great way to stop reinventing the wheel, and the APIs abstract away a lot of the heavy lifting. They pretty much get you 80% of the way there, and the last 20% is where you can really add the stamp of "uniqueness" to your implementation. The fact that the browser is also heavily…

It just feels like every time software developers can't (or won't) build things cross-platform, users end up with bigger and bloatier solutions and poorer experiences. First, it was cross-platform UI toolkits and OS abstractions like Qt (require users to use a big, "lowest common denominator compromise" library ) Then, it was web apps (require users to provide a browser) Then, it was Electron and friends (ship the wh…

You're absolutely correct. IMO, the reason is, to a large degree, ineptness of software engineers. It simply doesn't pay to hire or train high-quality SEs, if you're not google or Amazon (and even they probably only hire and pay the best to prevent competition).

Instead, the industry as a whole hands out more "productive" tools, i.e., the abstraction layers you mentioned, in order to build ever more trivial applications (that don't work properly in most of the cases anyways).

I think that we're in a downwards spiral at this point: Business doesn't make enough money per line of code to hire or train really good engineers. Tries to push out more software, resulting in more crap. Software quality sinks. Business makes even less money per line of code. Engineers throw the towel and are replaced by less experienced people. Rinse and repeat.

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#135

Post by mattl »

andyhedges wrote: post #51
shusaku wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any former geocities member us surely aware of the MIDI capability!

Couldn't you play a WAV too? But they were too massive at the time for most peoples bandwidth.

No post body was provided.

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#136

Post by psychoslave »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #112
osrec wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for saying this, as I know a lot of people on HN have very negative feelings towards this trend. Personally, I feel the browser is a great way to stop reinventing the wheel, and the APIs abstract away a lot of the heavy lifting. They pretty much get you 80% of the way there, and the last 20% is where you can really add the stamp of "uniqueness" to your implementation. The fact that the browser is also heavily…

If I understand you comment correctly, WebAssembly is on a path to give you that web based container that can be as powerful as your computer allows while still being sandboxed in the browser.

https://tomassetti.me/wasi-how-to-run-webassembly-code-outsi...

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#138

Post by MR4D »

arghwhat wrote: post #130
MR4D wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ship an entire physical PC to the user pre-loaded with the application? Ironically, that’s essentially what IBM did with mainframes. Another example of what’s old is new again.

Eh? Mainframes are and always were general purpose computers, and run stufd like Linux just fine. Nowadays they are mainly meant as machines with extreme reliability guarantees, from things like running multiple processors in lockstep to detect spontaneous processor errors, but they're still just computers. While their cost makes them hugely impractical for .øst usecases, mainframes do have some really cool tech, inc…

I never commented on the specificity, rather I pointed out this quote "Ship an entire physical PC to the user pre-loaded with the application." Replace "PC" with "Mainframe" and the sentence was true (at least back when mainframes were a thing.

The software came pre-loaded with the hardware, and IBM shipped it to you and set it up for you. You couldn't buy an app without paying for the hardware. Technically, you rented everything from IBM, and paid one lease price.

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#139

Post by noduerme »

ryandrake wrote: post #99
osrec wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for saying this, as I know a lot of people on HN have very negative feelings towards this trend. Personally, I feel the browser is a great way to stop reinventing the wheel, and the APIs abstract away a lot of the heavy lifting. They pretty much get you 80% of the way there, and the last 20% is where you can really add the stamp of "uniqueness" to your implementation. The fact that the browser is also heavily…

It just feels like every time software developers can't (or won't) build things cross-platform, users end up with bigger and bloatier solutions and poorer experiences. First, it was cross-platform UI toolkits and OS abstractions like Qt (require users to use a big, "lowest common denominator compromise" library ) Then, it was web apps (require users to provide a browser) Then, it was Electron and friends (ship the wh…

>> Ship an entire physical PC to the user pre-loaded with the application?

Believe it or not, I've done this, and I have to maintain a small fleet of them now. The software in question functions as a server/database for a mobile app that's only used by employees on a given job site. It was deployed before Docker was a thing.

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#140

Post by account-5 »

ryandrake wrote: post #99
osrec wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for saying this, as I know a lot of people on HN have very negative feelings towards this trend. Personally, I feel the browser is a great way to stop reinventing the wheel, and the APIs abstract away a lot of the heavy lifting. They pretty much get you 80% of the way there, and the last 20% is where you can really add the stamp of "uniqueness" to your implementation. The fact that the browser is also heavily…

It just feels like every time software developers can't (or won't) build things cross-platform, users end up with bigger and bloatier solutions and poorer experiences. First, it was cross-platform UI toolkits and OS abstractions like Qt (require users to use a big, "lowest common denominator compromise" library ) Then, it was web apps (require users to provide a browser) Then, it was Electron and friends (ship the wh…

I've being wondering about this myself for a personal project.

I don't want to have to code the project in multiple native languages, and likely wouldn't be able to without massive amounts of time learning each language.

Similarly I want access to native APIs, some of which browsers don't have. And I don't want to run a website to host my app.

I'm currently learning dart/flutter due to this. IMO it is the answer. You may disagree.

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