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Blink won’t implement pointer events

code.google.com

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Re: Blink won’t implement pointer events

#2
If it becomes a standard I guess they will reconsider their choice.

We are in a weird era where HTML5/web apis kind of succeeded ,making plugins almost obsolete, yet i'm still not sure 5/10 years from now,vendors will still be on that same line.The temptation of implementing proprietary APIs is still huge.

Touch events for instance are a still proprietary API.

Re: Blink won’t implement pointer events

#3
This is interesting, because I'm pretty sure Microsoft is going to go full steam ahead with pointer events. Indeed, they're the only major vendor of a device that supports both mouse and touch (finger AND stylus) events – it's going to be super important to handle those events well.

I'm not totally convinced by the Blink argument – the fact that "touch events are here to stay" is irrelevant, given the unifying nature of pointer events; "fast by default" is a noble goal, but must be a trade-off with functionality; and the whole event-handling-scrolling mess doesn't seem like enough of a deal breaker to preclude tweaks to the spec to fix it.

That said, I'm sure they've had extensive discussions about it and made this decision for a good reason - I hope they now push ahead hard with an alternative solution to these problems.

Re: Blink won’t implement pointer events

#4
People used to complain about mobile device fragmentation, but the web is now looking more fragmented than at any point since IE3 vs Netscape, and whoever else decided to chuck together an excuse for a browser and release it.

The approach where all the vendors are ignoring each other as much as possible while pursuing their own improvements has created a giant mess. What is strangling the situation is there is no consistent vision of what they're actually trying to achieve, so the resulting platform is incoherent, and thus absolutely joyless to work with.

Re: Blink won’t implement pointer events

#5
post #2

If it becomes a standard I guess they will reconsider their choice. We are in a weird era where HTML5/web apis kind of succeeded ,making plugins almost obsolete, yet i'm still not sure 5/10 years from now,vendors will still be on that same line.The temptation of implementing proprietary APIs is still huge. Touch events for instance are a still proprietary API.

Touch events for instance are a still proprietary API.

It's a W3C recommendation http://www.w3.org/TR/touch-events/

Re: Blink won’t implement pointer events

#6
post #4

People used to complain about mobile device fragmentation, but the web is now looking more fragmented than at any point since IE3 vs Netscape, and whoever else decided to chuck together an excuse for a browser and release it. The approach where all the vendors are ignoring each other as much as possible while pursuing their own improvements has created a giant mess. What is strangling the situation is there is no con…

I'd flip it around and say the opposite, myself!

Browser vendors generally seem to be working pretty closely to build a consistent platform. While they've all got their own priorities, as ever, there's lots of collaboration in many areas. We've got cross-platform graphics, WebGL is almost useable, CSS support is good… and so on.

Compared to a few years ago, when we had to build sites that scaled from IE6 all the way to the iPhone, the web is much more uniform and pleasant to work with.

Re: Blink won’t implement pointer events

#7
post #2

If it becomes a standard I guess they will reconsider their choice. We are in a weird era where HTML5/web apis kind of succeeded ,making plugins almost obsolete, yet i'm still not sure 5/10 years from now,vendors will still be on that same line.The temptation of implementing proprietary APIs is still huge. Touch events for instance are a still proprietary API.

Touch events for instance are a still proprietary API. It's a W3C recommendation http://www.w3.org/TR/touch-events/

AFAIK there was a issue with Apple holding some copyrights on the api,might have changed.

Re: Blink won’t implement pointer events

#8
post #4

People used to complain about mobile device fragmentation, but the web is now looking more fragmented than at any point since IE3 vs Netscape, and whoever else decided to chuck together an excuse for a browser and release it. The approach where all the vendors are ignoring each other as much as possible while pursuing their own improvements has created a giant mess. What is strangling the situation is there is no con…

> but the web is now looking more fragmented than at any point since IE3 vs Netscape

Is there really need to engage in hyperbole? The situation is bad enough without having to resort to exaggerations for effect.

The IE6 lack of support for transparent pngs and a host of other incompatibilities also fragmented the web and in effect the situation is much better now because most sites just work in IE 11 even though developers only tested in Chrome and or Firefox. This is true unless you're using features that haven't made it through the standardization process yet like webrtc. That sites "just work" in the latest version of IE without testing wasn't the case 5 years ago, or even 3 years ago.

Re: Blink won’t implement pointer events

#9
One thing which makes me sad is the lack of structure of the Javascript API. Everything is now built using Javascript and the JS VM is not following any UNIX principles in its implementation. I would really like to have a UNIX-like JS API.

A small example: let's say that you want to redirect the error output to the standard output.

Since everything is a file descriptor on UNIX, you can just call dup2(2) and this won't have any repercussion on other parts of the program. You can also redirect any error to a file just by using this on a file descriptor you got from open (2).

But in Javascript, everything is different, you have to redeclare console.error and hope that this won't break anything if some library is doing exactly the same thing as you somewhere. This is also the same problem with XMLHttpRequest and various javascript APIs. (including the File and Blob API to read files on the browser).

Re: Blink won’t implement pointer events

#10
post #4

People used to complain about mobile device fragmentation, but the web is now looking more fragmented than at any point since IE3 vs Netscape, and whoever else decided to chuck together an excuse for a browser and release it. The approach where all the vendors are ignoring each other as much as possible while pursuing their own improvements has created a giant mess. What is strangling the situation is there is no con…

I think you've reached a slightly perverse conclusion.

From the source:

>Pointer events would likely never supplant touch events on the web (especially without support from Safari). Since touch events are here to stay, supporting another largely redundant input model has a high long-term complexity cost on the web platform.

Sounds to me like the Blink time is trying to use their say to reduce fragmentation and they've taken the side of practicality. Rough consensus and running code indeed.

The other points seem equally sensible to me (at least at first glance) - and a long way from "ignoring each other as much as possible while pursuing their own improvements"

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