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WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

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Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#41

Post by ncruces »

csomar wrote: post #33
ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend a lot of time on the internet and try to avoid the socials, so I visit a healthy variety of websites of all kinds. But I never encountered a single "works better with chrome" message. Am I missing something?

It was a thing before Chrome/WebKit became the "only" browser. People mention Firefox but last time I checked its market share is in the single digit.

People complain about Google killing projects that have only a few hundred million users, but then claim Firefox is dead at single digit market share because that's… 150 million users.

Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#42

Post by kome »

The absolute lack of professionalism among most web developers—many of whom are essentially glorified framework developers, barely understanding what they’re doing—is what led us here. This, combined with a complete disregard for web standards and the W3C (dismissed as too consensual, too European, and too slow of an approach), created the perfect shit-storm.

Google insists on pushing its own "standards". And other browser vendors are criticized for being slow to conform to these non-standards. The result? A web cluttered with pointless animations, devoid of cross-browser compatibility, and drowning in superficial bells and whistles.

And the irony? It’s boring. Every website looks the same.

If you’re not testing across browsers and engines (including non-Chromium ones), you’re not building for the web. You’re shipping Chrome-specific extensions that happen to use HTTP. You are not a developer, you are a plumber, and an incompetent one. Good plumbers are so damn rare.

Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#43

Post by nmfisher »

JimDabell wrote: post #36

The web had this before briefly. Back in the 90s and 00s, some people just wanted to use Flash. They treated the web browser like it was just a way to run executables in a window. Nothing worked right. Bookmarks, search engines, command-line tools, user preferences for font size, user scripts, view source, right-click menus, ad blockers, auto-translations, user stylesheets, assistive tools, bookmarklets, deep links……

This is exactly how Flutter (now) works on web - the browser loads a JS/WASM blob, and your app renders everything to a canvas - and you're right, almost everything you mention is problematic.

There is a time and a place for that paradigm, but it's niche. The lack of SEO alone is usually enough to stop it in its tracks.

Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#44

Post by kreddor »

aredox wrote: post #12
skerit wrote: post #8

Funny to read this: > So there are only 2 web browser engines, and it seems likely there will soon only be 1, and making a whole new web browser from the ground up is effectively impossible because the browsers vendors have weaponized web standards complexity against any newcomers Ladybird seems to be thriving. Sure, they themselves only plan on releasing a beta version next year, but still. And it's even on the Hack…

What is ladybug's marketshare? Does it work flawlessly with "This webpage works better with Chrome" webpages? It is not even mentioned on https://caniuse.com/?search=web%20components

It's not really meant for end users currently. Your only option is to build from source. But it has made a lot of progress in a relatively short time.

Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#45

Post by codedokode »

neuroelectron wrote: post #22
jillesvangurp wrote: post #9

> So there are only 2 web browser engines, and it seems likely there will soon only be 1, and making a whole new web browser from the ground up is effectively impossible because the browsers vendors have weaponized web standards complexity against any newcomers. Maybe eventually someone will succeed and there will be 2 again. Best case. What a situation. The premise of this article seems completely wrong. Chromium, S…

The "weaponization of complexity" is real—modern web standards are an endless labyrinth of APIs, performance optimizations, and security requirements. Large players like Google have the resources to dictate how the web evolves, while any newcomer faces insurmountable hurdles in achieving compatibility, security, and speed. Even major tech companies have tried and failed (e.g., Microsoft ditching EdgeHTML for Chromium…

You put the blame on Google but isn't it your fault, people who get excited every time a new feature gets added to web standards, and developers who use it? Like CSS masonry, or WebRTC, or web components with shadow DOM? Features like this get lot of upvotes here.

Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#46

Post by onion2k »

lillecarl wrote: post #26
onion2k wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most effective ad blocker is choosing not to use websites that display ads. That won't ever change.

Insightful, which search engine do you use? Where do you buy things online? How do you keep in touch with relatives? If your answers are "Kagi, no online purchases (or reviews), phone calls" sure... But it's not the world we live in

In the context of a discussion about websites becoming binary blobs of WASM code that make it essentially impossible to block ads on, the choice will be to use a site and see adverts or not to use that site. I'm saying that we should make the choice not to use a site that displays ads. It will require some sacrifices (or, more likely in my opinion, spending some money for some subscriptions.)

Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#47

Post by Xophmeister »

Part of the beauty of the (current) WWW is that last W: the web. By design, everything is (or at least "can/should be") interlinked and scripting/computation is a layer on top of that. (See Fielding's thesis.[1]) Inverting to opaque WASM blobs as the information layer seems like throwing all that out.

Sure, WASM could still simulate interlinking -- because it's so general -- but that generality also imposes an implementation bar. Who's going to write an HTML renderer in WASM just so they can get links to work how they used to? If someone comes up with some simpler WASM-linking solution, how long will it be before there are 15 competing simpler solutions which are all mutually incompatible?

[1]: https://ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/fielding_dis...

Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#48

Post by jchw »

I'm personally hoping for Ladybird and Servo to eventually grow into usable browsers. Ladybird is making faster progress on actually delivering a browser to end users, but if Servo gains foothold in the embeddable use case it should help them gain more stakeholders with an interest in keeping development moving forward.

Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#50

Post by pjmlp »

JimDabell wrote: post #36

The web had this before briefly. Back in the 90s and 00s, some people just wanted to use Flash. They treated the web browser like it was just a way to run executables in a window. Nothing worked right. Bookmarks, search engines, command-line tools, user preferences for font size, user scripts, view source, right-click menus, ad blockers, auto-translations, user stylesheets, assistive tools, bookmarklets, deep links……

We have this back, thanks to WebGL/WebGPU/WebAssembly I can have all my beloved plugins back.

https://opensilver.net

https://cheerpj.com/

https://cheerpj.com/cheerpj-applet-runner/

https://leaningtech.com/cheerpx-for-flash/

And on top,

https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blaz...

https://flutter.dev/multi-platform/web

https://unity.com/solutions/web

https://playcanvas.com/

This is the only place where I am actually happy about WebAssembly's existence.

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