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We and Mozilla are working together to make the web awesome

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Re: We and Mozilla are working together to make the web awesome

#81

Post by zobzu »

nextparadigms wrote: post #61
kevingadd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android's browser isn't nearly as good as Chrome or Firefox and only gets updated with the OS (which means never, for most phones).

This is why I'm hoping they will finally switch to Chrome in Android 5.0 or whatever version is announced at Google I/O (Android/Chrome event). And then they update that Chrome browser every 6 weeks, too. It's not like they couldn't. They can already push all their core apps to automatically update for Android 2.2+.

i dont think the chrome multiprocess model works well on mobiles yet. it needs more memory specifically if you start having a few tabs.

Re: We and Mozilla are working together to make the web awesome

#82

Post by jlouis »

bzbarsky wrote: post #76
mvgoogler wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would NaCl lock the web into a particular hardware platform? NaCl run on x86-32, ARM and x86-64.

Yes. Which means it does NOT run on PPC, or MIPS, or IA-32, or Sparc. Note that there are modern-ish web browsers available for at least PPC, MIPS, and Sparc. More importantly, content using NaCl would not run on any new hardware platforms that might appear. So if the web were to use NaCl to an appreciable extent, new platforms would be unable to get any traction in any context that relied on the web. We'd be stuck w…

PPC, MIPS, and Sparc are dead platforms anyway. X86 and ARM is where its currently at, like it or not. So it does make sense to target these platforms first. I don't buy that this is a step backwards. Rather, it is a step in the right direction: So we can run other languages in the browsers, at full speed - untangling the web from Javascript. It is about time.

Re: We and Mozilla are working together to make the web awesome

#83

Post by azakai »

mvgoogler wrote: post #73
azakai wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native Client only works on x86 and x86_64. You can't run Native Client content on your ARM phone or your PowerPC game console. That is very bad for the web, the whole idea of which is that you can access it from anywhere, using anything. There is some work to try to make it portable, but it is unclear how it will end up (how portable, how fast, how secure, etc.). Partly because of this, NaCl is not standardized or e…

"Native Client only works on x86 and x86_64. You can't run Native Client content on your ARM phone" Not true: http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/reference/arm-overview

The point is that Native Client binaries are arch-specific. You only get the archs that you build for: If someone puts up a NaCl site with only x86, it won't work anywhere else. This is a horrible thing for the web.

Yes, you can build for more than one arch. But if you have x86 and x86_64, you are missing ARM. If you add ARM, you are missing PowerPC (consoles) and MIPS (some phones). If you add those, you are still missing new archs that will be invented later.

For this reason Google is working on PNaCl - but it has other issues.

Re: We and Mozilla are working together to make the web awesome

#84

Post by azakai »

jlouis wrote: post #82
bzbarsky wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Which means it does NOT run on PPC, or MIPS, or IA-32, or Sparc. Note that there are modern-ish web browsers available for at least PPC, MIPS, and Sparc. More importantly, content using NaCl would not run on any new hardware platforms that might appear. So if the web were to use NaCl to an appreciable extent, new platforms would be unable to get any traction in any context that relied on the web. We'd be stuck w…

PPC, MIPS, and Sparc are dead platforms anyway. X86 and ARM is where its currently at, like it or not. So it does make sense to target these platforms first. I don't buy that this is a step backwards. Rather, it is a step in the right direction: So we can run other languages in the browsers, at full speed - untangling the web from Javascript. It is about time.

> 86 and ARM is where its currently at, like it or not.

The important word is currently. As the GP said, 10 years ago "archs where its currently at" would not include ARM, and the ARM success on phones and tablets would have been impossible, because they wouldn't have been able to run the web, if the web used Native Client!

10 years from now, we could have entirely new architectures, and if we lock the web into the currently popular ones, we might miss out on those.

Re: We and Mozilla are working together to make the web awesome

#85

Post by bzbarsky »

jlouis wrote: post #82
bzbarsky wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Which means it does NOT run on PPC, or MIPS, or IA-32, or Sparc. Note that there are modern-ish web browsers available for at least PPC, MIPS, and Sparc. More importantly, content using NaCl would not run on any new hardware platforms that might appear. So if the web were to use NaCl to an appreciable extent, new platforms would be unable to get any traction in any context that relied on the web. We'd be stuck w…

PPC, MIPS, and Sparc are dead platforms anyway. X86 and ARM is where its currently at, like it or not. So it does make sense to target these platforms first. I don't buy that this is a step backwards. Rather, it is a step in the right direction: So we can run other languages in the browsers, at full speed - untangling the web from Javascript. It is about time.

> PPC, MIPS, and Sparc are dead platforms anyway

You say that because you're not the one actually using hardware built on those chips. And presumably you don't care whether people who _are_ can use the web. But some other people do care.

> X86 and ARM is where its currently at

Key word being "currently". That's fine, but we don't want to make the web _require_ this.

> So it does make sense to target these platforms first.

Sure, but with NaCl you _can't_ target other ones later. You'd have to recompile the code server-side to add any other platforms. This isn't the case with JavaScript, say, where all a new platform would have to do is write a jit for itself and existing content would just work.

PNaCl, if they ever get it working, might not have this particular problem, by the way. If that ever gets off the ground, I'd be happy to revisit this discussion.

> So we can run other languages in the browsers, at full > speed

And forever lock all computing in the world into the ARM and x86 architectures. No thanks.

Or are you talking about software that you only want to run this month and will never want to run again?

Re: We and Mozilla are working together to make the web awesome

#86

Post by hub_ »

jQueryIsAwesome wrote: post #70
hub_ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uh? I type something in the address bar, and Firefox JFGIFM. It is called the awesome bar. I think you are confusing with Safari.

No, i just had an outdated version of Firefox.

very outdated then. It has been doing that for a very long time.

Re: We and Mozilla are working together to make the web awesome

#87

Post by quizmaster »

zobzu wrote: post #80
ippisl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actions speak louder than words. Brendan Eich, Mozilla's CTO , which has some authority around issues concerning the open web , think Native client and Dart are bad for the open web[1]. Also one small way to improve the search experience, is easy search in multiple search engines. Firefox's search box is one way of doing so, But it has been removed in chrome. Does it really improve the web ? Does limiting the power o…

about the google sites speed its mostly all SPDY. It's hack but it's a good one. Thus it's in Firefox Aurora. Enable with about:config look for stuff called spdy, til its on by default

I heard a rumor that Facebook will support SPDY, but Google supposedly paid Facebook to only support SPDY for Chrome users. I guess we'll find out now that Firefox will soon support SPDY.

Re: We and Mozilla are working together to make the web awesome

#88

Post by ippisl »

zobzu wrote: post #80
ippisl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actions speak louder than words. Brendan Eich, Mozilla's CTO , which has some authority around issues concerning the open web , think Native client and Dart are bad for the open web[1]. Also one small way to improve the search experience, is easy search in multiple search engines. Firefox's search box is one way of doing so, But it has been removed in chrome. Does it really improve the web ? Does limiting the power o…

about the google sites speed its mostly all SPDY. It's hack but it's a good one. Thus it's in Firefox Aurora. Enable with about:config look for stuff called spdy, til its on by default

Does SPDY also improve video playback ? because that's what i heard was better for youtube on chrome.

Re: We and Mozilla are working together to make the web awesome

#89

Post by wwweston »

jlouis wrote: post #82
bzbarsky wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Which means it does NOT run on PPC, or MIPS, or IA-32, or Sparc. Note that there are modern-ish web browsers available for at least PPC, MIPS, and Sparc. More importantly, content using NaCl would not run on any new hardware platforms that might appear. So if the web were to use NaCl to an appreciable extent, new platforms would be unable to get any traction in any context that relied on the web. We'd be stuck w…

PPC, MIPS, and Sparc are dead platforms anyway. X86 and ARM is where its currently at, like it or not. So it does make sense to target these platforms first. I don't buy that this is a step backwards. Rather, it is a step in the right direction: So we can run other languages in the browsers, at full speed - untangling the web from Javascript. It is about time.

"I don't buy that this is a step backwards."

Moving from a hardware independent web to one where a full experience would be limited to a few "where its currently at" hardware platforms isn't a step backwards? Heck, while you're at it, why don't we just specify an iOS, Android, and Windows web only?

You're also, by the way, talking about the decline if not the death of a view-source web, a semantic web, and a hypermedia focused web, and probably some other things I'm missing.

By all means, feel free to write native client-server apps for any reason that pleases you, whether it's that you don't like JavaScript as a language or are working on something that truly demands native speed. Just don't advocate destroying the features that have made the web successful.

Re: We and Mozilla are working together to make the web awesome

#90

Post by Aissen »

zobzu wrote: post #81
nextparadigms wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I'm hoping they will finally switch to Chrome in Android 5.0 or whatever version is announced at Google I/O (Android/Chrome event). And then they update that Chrome browser every 6 weeks, too. It's not like they couldn't. They can already push all their core apps to automatically update for Android 2.2+.

i dont think the chrome multiprocess model works well on mobiles yet. it needs more memory specifically if you start having a few tabs.

it needs more memory specifically if you start having a few tabs

- have you seen the specs of the latest high-end phones and tablets? 1GiB of RAM is the norm now

- the number of concurrent open tabs can be limited. It has already been done on Android and iOS (and might still be the case).

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