You are forgetting webRTC. (peer 2 peer data connections)
I think WebRTC is going to be more of a 2014 technology – it's still pretty raw as a technology, and even more so as implements, going into 2013.
APIs that will transform the Web in 2013
41–50 of 108 posts
Re: APIs that will transform the Web in 2013
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Write the code in ES6 and compile it to ES5, then use Modernizer or some equivalent to detect which runtime is supported by the client's browser and serve the appropriate script.
Or just ignore IE8 and assume the "revenue loss" from anyone running that browser not being able to navigate your site is worth the loss of headache. I always wonder why it is an assumption IE support is mandatory. As others in this thread have pointed out, Chrome / FF now have a combined 700 million and I'd assume between 50 - 70% of the browser marketshare. At some point, using backwards broken nonsense to support…
> I always wonder why it is an assumption IE support is mandatory.
Because for many, the use of IE is mandatory.
Depending on what service we're talking about, a lot of the IE traffic is going to come from people who work at companies that require the use of their approved/installed software. Every time there's a post about IE there are few people who come out of the woodwork to comment about how they only use Windows + IE at work, and then Firefox/Chrome at home, even on Hacker News of all places. It's easy to forget on here that Windows still has the dominant market share, and for many people who currently use IE (for even part of the day), switching or upgrading is out of the question.
If you don't support IE, you're not encouraging these people to switch - you're encouraging them not to use your service at all.
Re: APIs that will transform the Web in 2013
#43Once thing I still have hard time understanding is Chrome App Store and Google Chrome Apps. I'm guessing it's something akin to Adobe Air, but has there been any success stories with Air? Also, I feel like Chrome App Store goes against the idea of open web.
Besides Air, there was Mozilla's Prism/WebRunner/Chromeless, Fluid for OSX and several others. What advantage does Chrome Apps have other those previous failures?
Mozilla's Prism/WebRunner/Chromeless are all basically defunct, and Chrome Apps aren't really the same as those anyway. Chrome Apps and Firefox OS Apps are basically the same – and in both cases it's adding some extra APIs that web pages can't normally get access too, and an optional packaging format, and a little application-related metadata. Firefox Apps are a bit more cross-platform, as they look a bit more like native apps on normal desktop systems and on Android.
Re: APIs that will transform the Web in 2013
#44ES6 may well be the death of Javascript. They've managed to turn Javascript into Java, which means web programming is about to turn into a buggy nightmare.
It doesn't look anything like Java. There's a class statement, but it's not something dramatic, just some syntax around normal JS prototype patterns. The JS2 proposals years back started to look a lot more like Java, but those never went anywhere.
Re: APIs that will transform the Web in 2013
#45CSS filters are already in Chrome and Safari, and allow advanced styling as as blurring, warping and modifying the color intensities of elements. Isn't it funny that the first browser to implement these "filters" was IE 4.0 [1]. And at that time using any of these filters was a bit frowned upon and amateurish. Now suddenly everyone is gung-ho about it and calling it the API that will transform the web in 2013. [1] ht…
Except IE's filters were an unrelated proprietary technology with an ugly syntax:
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Blur(pixelradius=2);
filter: blur(2px);Re: APIs that will transform the Web in 2013
#46You are forgetting webRTC. (peer 2 peer data connections)
I think WebRTC is going to be more of a 2014 technology – it's still pretty raw as a technology, and even more so as implements, going into 2013.
why do you say that? several groups looking to replace flash with webrtc based video chat (opentok) and they already have some basic support.
Re: APIs that will transform the Web in 2013
#47ES6 may well be the death of Javascript. They've managed to turn Javascript into Java, which means web programming is about to turn into a buggy nightmare.
Seems to me that ES6 adds a lot of useful constructs.
Java is usually criticized for adding features too slowly and promoting bloated codebases due to an inflexible language. I don't see how this is anything like Javascript or promotes buggy programs.
Re: APIs that will transform the Web in 2013
#48No mention of Web Intent API?
This is cool. I didn't realize this was coming out of the Android camp and into general use.
I was ecstatic when I'd first heard of it! The main draw I have towards Android rather than iOS is the ease of use of the interaction between apps. If the web can have the same benefit that I see on mobile, then there could be some explosively innovative interactions possible.
Web-to-web interactions right now are mostly just copy-paste and saving things to your desktop to upload again. It would be incredibly innovative to share more complex data structures between sites, like events, contacts, videos, etc.
Re: APIs that will transform the Web in 2013
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or just ignore IE8 and assume the "revenue loss" from anyone running that browser not being able to navigate your site is worth the loss of headache. I always wonder why it is an assumption IE support is mandatory. As others in this thread have pointed out, Chrome / FF now have a combined 700 million and I'd assume between 50 - 70% of the browser marketshare. At some point, using backwards broken nonsense to support…
> I always wonder why it is an assumption IE support is mandatory. Because for many, the use of IE is mandatory. Depending on what service we're talking about, a lot of the IE traffic is going to come from people who work at companies that require the use of their approved/installed software. Every time there's a post about IE there are few people who come out of the woodwork to comment about how they only use Window…
Depending on the service, it may be that they shouldn't use it while at work in the first place. But that's an aside, there's a simple technical solution. Every time there's a post about IE, and every time someone thinks (or believes themselves to be an example that) there's a single person on the planet who has to live with IE >= 6 when they don't want to, someone in the thread mentions Chrome Frame.
Re: APIs that will transform the Web in 2013
#50Once thing I still have hard time understanding is Chrome App Store and Google Chrome Apps. I'm guessing it's something akin to Adobe Air, but has there been any success stories with Air? Also, I feel like Chrome App Store goes against the idea of open web.
I'm tempted to go make fake HN accounts just so I can come back and up vote this more. I can understand, if not personally endorse, the need for "apps" on smart phones where access to functionality like the accelerometer is not available through APIs used to create browser based apps, but Google's insistence on trying to push app stores in the browser will just lead to pointless balkanization of the open web.
I see it as Google's way to lock people in to the Chrome ecosystem. And they have quite a bit of pull and opportunity because of Drive and Android.
I do see the benefit of some apps (I love Pocket and Clearly). But in terms of usability, I have seen issues that haven't been sorted out yet, such as the interaction with Chrome Sign-In (on public computers, the app start pages start up every time you sign in). And I do think this focus on browser app development takes away some of the effort that should be done on the web itself.