I was really hoping "Delete key friendly" meant that they weren't forcing Chrome to bind delete to the back function any longer.
Web Starter Kit
101–110 of 218 posts
Re: Web Starter Kit
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
"precursor of html" please elaborate. HTML is based on XML, a language with two primitives, strings and children. Why would you ever use that as an interface if you want something to ever be performant? What we need is a retain-mode scene graph, where some of the nodes on the scene graph can be HTML documents (with URIs). Developers don't want a one-to-one relationship between the window object and documents. They in…
What I meant, was initially people were pixel-painting fixed screens and 2D/3D graphic programming evolved as one branch, and GUI app frameworks evolved as another (MacApp anyone?). If you look at earlier Mac/Windows/X app frameworks and iOS/Android app frameworks, you'll see that the latter is a more naive and easy solution to the same problem without the burden of multiple docs, windows and massive multitasking. I'…
Developers that enjoyed access to Xerox PARC systems, RAD tooling, and environments like NeXTStep already had access to much better hypertext systems with layout support.
Re: Web Starter Kit
#103This somehow reminds me of Inception. We have a perfectly functional computer, then we run a browser on it, we download a bunch of HTML, which in turn will download a whole slew of JavaScript in order to create the illusion of an application running natively that offers a subset of what the computer could offer. The only difference is that this web application supposedly runs on 'all devices' except that every web application is quite brittle once you try to actually run it on all devices. And forget about device access (though that is slowly getting a bit better).
The only plus I see in all this is that in the end we are now free of the API lock-in that OS vendors traditionally required, that we tend to take 'client-server' applications more or less for granted and that because it is server centric you don't have to bug your users to download the latest version every time you improve things (though as was pointed out in another thread, this is also a disadvantage, as a user you lose control and if the company goes out of business you could lose it all).
The web also roams much easier.
If we keep going like this for a little while then we're back where we started, with the graphics terminals from the 80's, (canvas is pretty close actually) only this time across the WAN instead of a lan and with the ability to hyperlink between applications.
Re: Web Starter Kit
#104The 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…
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Re: Web Starter Kit
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good thing browsers run JS, eh?
Programming is all about abstraction management. Doing layouts with JS is using the wrong abstractions. CSS was originally conceived for doing document layouts but it's less suitable for web-application layout. We can leave the discussion here, if the article I posted didn't convince you, nothing probably will.
Well, I'm somewhat still arguing in the context of the OP's assertion that "the hackery required to attempt to imitate native mobile apps is horrific". I not only disagree that it's horrific, but actually think it's pretty darn good. I agree with you that it's not perfect, but perfect is the enemy of good.
Re: Web Starter Kit
#106The 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…
When having these Native vs Other discussions, is it possible you could use something more specific than the word native? It means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For example is declaring layouts in an XML file in an Android app considered native in this case? I've heard others say that Android apps that run on the Dalvik JVM should not be considered native. Maybe you are talking more about Co…
Native is whatever the operating system uses for user space applications.
Android uses Java, C and C++ for user space applications, hence native Android means all three languages using Android APIs.
Re: Web Starter Kit
#107The 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…
A partial bit of progress toward a better layout model: http://gridstylesheets.org/
If you make that page really narrow there is an ugly purple bar that comes into view from the left that overlaps a part of the content.
Re: Web Starter Kit
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> After a little practice, it can even get easy. Just googling for "vertical align text css" should be enough to tell you that different layout is needed. Why shouldn't there be a layout model that makes it easy to do the things people are trying to do? The idea that we shouldn't even attempt to create a better one is silly.
CSS3's flex attribute solves that. It's the holy grail for modern web-interface-development.
Vertical center text:
.vertical-text { display: flex; flex-direction: column; justify-content: center; }
(add ´align-items: center´for horizontal center)
Re: Web Starter Kit
#109This somehow reminds me of Inception. We have a perfectly functional computer, then we run a browser on it, we download a bunch of HTML, which in turn will download a whole slew of JavaScript in order to create the illusion of an application running natively that offers a subset of what the computer could offer. The only difference is that this web application supposedly runs on 'all devices' except that every web ap…
You trade browser lock-in for OS lock-in. The original Internet Explorer strategy. Fundamentally it is a rent seeking strategy. When I noticed that Google was up to paying a billion dollars a quarter for traffic I realized that in some ways the gold leaf was falling off the piazza and revealing the the ugly plaster behind it. My guess is that the rent seeking here is in the form of directing search traffic in some way.
Re: Web Starter Kit
#110I wonder what browsers versions they are going to support at launch.
We cover this in our browser support section: https://github.com/google/web-starter-kit#browser-support
I'll be that guy: this seems nice, I'd love to use it, I'll take another look some time around 2018 when I can start to consider pitching dropping IE9 support. IE10+ is simply ridiculously prohibitive for something like this.