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Web Starter Kit

developers.google.com

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Re: Web Starter Kit

#51

Post by malandrew »

fidotron wrote: post #13

The web is now hamstrung by the HTML/CSS layout model more than anything else. The hackery required to attempt to imitate native mobile apps is horrific. Google would be better off throwing efforts into a new layout engine leveraging raw JS and WebGL, but with a sane API, than these continuous attempts to push HTML into places where it doesn't work. If they don't lead it I can see someone else doing it in such a way…

I'm so happy that this comment is here and the top most voted comment. I keep making this point every time web apps come up. I still don't understand why the user agents still haven't started work on a retain-mode scene graph for the web that plays nicely with HTML when a document is needed.

I really want a graphics system in the browser that can do the types of things being done here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7896773

i.e. Wayland for the Web with documents

If we jump on this now, maybe we won't be left in the dust when native makes the jump from 2D to 3D and interface devices like the Oculus Rift go mainstream. This is probably 5+ years away, but now is the time to start considering how these capabilities will be possible at the lowest levels. None of this precludes the entire 2D web we're familiar with since 2D is simply an elevation view of 3D. Baking 3D in from the start leaves room for people to explore the possibilities people are exploring on native instead of being hamstrung by naïve technological choices.

We're trying to explore what is possible here at famo.us [0]. Hopefully between what we're doing and what others are exploring, we'll come up with some interesting approaches that eventually made their way somehow to becoming a standard.

The w3c spends too much time trying to expose APIs for the jQuery level developers instead of seeing the web as an operating system and exposing operating system primitives from day one. All they need to do differently from how previous operating systems worked is consider how the semantic web, accessibility, and URIs fit into this computing model.

relevant: http://acko.net/blog/shadow-dom/

[0] http://famo.us/

Re: Web Starter Kit

#52

Post by agumonkey »

Jonovono wrote: post #36
fidotron wrote: post #13

The web is now hamstrung by the HTML/CSS layout model more than anything else. The hackery required to attempt to imitate native mobile apps is horrific. Google would be better off throwing efforts into a new layout engine leveraging raw JS and WebGL, but with a sane API, than these continuous attempts to push HTML into places where it doesn't work. If they don't lead it I can see someone else doing it in such a way…

Been following this project for awhile: http://www.nidium.com/ . Hopefully they launch soon cause I am curious to try it out.

I'm affraid they'll turn into vaporware.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#53

Post by hobofan »

ceejayoz wrote: post #42
wldcordeiro wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Code has been languishing. You guys could really do some things with it to make it a competitor with Github and Bitbucket.

I see Google Code being in the same spot as Google Reader on Google's roadmap.

I always begin to think the same thing, but then they open source a new project that is hosted on Google Code.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#54

Post by DanBC »

sdegutis wrote: post #41
pjmlp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web was never meant for applications. Other hypertext models like Hypercard and Xerox PARC experiments had better support. I really hope that we can sort out this mess some day. I personally like apps are making the network more relevant than the Web. What matters are communication protocols.

Who could fix it? What organization or individual could possibly create an architecture that all of the web could be ported to, that's better than our existing web? Especially considering we usually get pretty upset at companies for trying that.

You don't port "all of the web".

You have apps that the Internet. You also have the WWW. People developing apps can chose whether to also develop for the WWW. Hopefully this would stop people doing stupid horrible things on WWW (forcing fonts; preventing zoom; etc) because all that hateful stuff can be done in their app and doesn't belong on WWW.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#55

Post by malandrew »

sdegutis wrote: post #41
pjmlp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web was never meant for applications. Other hypertext models like Hypercard and Xerox PARC experiments had better support. I really hope that we can sort out this mess some day. I personally like apps are making the network more relevant than the Web. What matters are communication protocols.

Who could fix it? What organization or individual could possibly create an architecture that all of the web could be ported to, that's better than our existing web? Especially considering we usually get pretty upset at companies for trying that.

No one needs to "fix it". What we need is more safe low level primitives from the user agents, that allow many individuals and companies to explore building alternatives in the browser. Then from two or more approaches, some standard will eventually shake out through the standardization process. Most features we have in the web started with a feature in one web browser, that others copied and eventually became a standard. If the browsers exposed more low level features, more people could contribute ideas on how to "fix" the problem.

Browsers should be written to expose APIs needed by the same people that write native applications today, but do so using a more appropriate trust and sandboxing model than what operating systems do. The browsers should act as "user agents" advocating on behalf of the users while exposing as low level and powerful APIs as possible and then standardizing those ideas that are well baked.

edit: regarding low level primitives, this comment [0] in this thread by addyo (Addy Osmani) is relevant. This low-level work is crucial.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7917493

Re: Web Starter Kit

#56

Post by ggamecrazy »

adamnemecek wrote: post #44
marknutter wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That being?

I mean with Xib, you can e.g. specify how the window should behave when you are resizing it since you are specifying layout constraints as opposed to having to hardcode the layout. With CSS, your only recourse is media queries but those are a lot less fine-grained. Look into http://gridstylesheets.org (and more specifically http://gridstylesheets.org/guides/ccss/ ) which is kinda the love child of CSS and Xib (or the…

Are you talking about Auto Layout? You can write the same thing programmatically, in fact it's quite nice, though not as obvious as modifying frames.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#57

Post by kinlan »

brbcoding wrote: post #38
kinlan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a fair comparison. Right now we are not providing components like the ones you get in Zurb and Bootstrap. EDIT: clarified.

It seems like this is more of a workflow than just a framework. Zurb and bootstrap don't come with build tools as far as I know, whereas this includes a gulpfile and a bunch of other stuff that's very common in my workflow. This feels more yeoman-esque + generator to me. Edit: Totally posted this before I read 'Web Starter Kit is inspired by Mobile HTML5 Boilerplate and Yeoman's generator-gulp-webapp, having taken in…

Yeah. that is a very good summary. If you want build process and tooling to help then we have that based on the tools that we think are the best, however we don't force workflow on people if they don't want it.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#59

Post by malandrew »

protonfish wrote: post #49
fidotron wrote: post #13

The web is now hamstrung by the HTML/CSS layout model more than anything else. The hackery required to attempt to imitate native mobile apps is horrific. Google would be better off throwing efforts into a new layout engine leveraging raw JS and WebGL, but with a sane API, than these continuous attempts to push HTML into places where it doesn't work. If they don't lead it I can see someone else doing it in such a way…

This is the same complaining I always hear from people who don't want to learn how to use HTML and CSS. Yes, it is different than what you are used to. Yes, it will take some time to learn and some of that will be uncomfortable. But that does not mean that that HTML and CSS are bad. I know this because I successfully build mobile sites that look and function fine and I assure you it works. You say "hackery is require…

If you're not using HTML/CSS for documents then yes it is bad. It's fundamentally the wrong abstraction. I began my career with HTML and CSS and after seeing alternatives, there is no doubt in my mind that trying to build apps on HTML/CSS is fundamentally wrong.

I'm not saying that there aren't a lot of good ideas introduced by the web (documents, hyperlinks, semantic metadata, responsive layouts, accessibility, URIs, etc.). What I'm saying is that there are good parts and there are bad parts, just like with native. What we need is a marriage of the good parts of the web with the good parts of native.

We can do better. Much much much better.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#60

Post by marknutter »

adamnemecek wrote: post #44
marknutter wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That being?

I mean with Xib, you can e.g. specify how the window should behave when you are resizing it since you are specifying layout constraints as opposed to having to hardcode the layout. With CSS, your only recourse is media queries but those are a lot less fine-grained. Look into http://gridstylesheets.org (and more specifically http://gridstylesheets.org/guides/ccss/ ) which is kinda the love child of CSS and Xib (or the…

I still don't understand why the issue is more complex for native mobile apps than it is for web mobile apps? Don't they all have to accommodate for the same screen sizes?
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