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Stop pushing the web forward

quirksmode.org

111–120 of 307 posts

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#111

> Instead, we should focus on the web’s strengths: simplicity, URLs and reach. How does new browser feature X prevent a developer from doing any of these things? > Being forced to work around IE6’s issues required quite a bit of creativity, and although not every solution stood the test of time (most libraries and frameworks from that era, for instance), it still made the creative juices flow. 'Tools' are bad except…

Both of your points are right, but I'd like to point out that regarding:

How does new browser feature X prevent a developer from doing any of these things?

A moratorium on new features probably wouldn't help, but the reality is that web developers are focusing on new shiny browser features that allow for deeper native integration, rather than on the core elements of the web that work and carry greater usability gains, like offline support.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#112
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where your coming from, and agree with a lot of what you say. BUT, Fundamentally... >The web as an application delivery medium is a failed experiment, patched up on all sides and held together with 40MB of polyfills on every page. Is just not a true statement. Or rather, the web sucks, but it is the only cross platform UI experiment that has 'worked' on any significant level.

Well, Java has succeeded, too. Look at Minecraft.

Minecraft has no meaningful UI; the entire window is just an OpenGL canvas.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#113
post #60
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've spent the last two years doing "full stack" [yeah, those words, sorry . . . but going from bare metal to C++ to PHP/JavaScript to frobbing routers all on the same day probably qualifies], coming from a background of C/C++ driver and native code development for 30 years. What I see is an immature community that cannot make up its mind. I see fads, I see awful tools, and even more awful tools that try to fix the a…

This is the problem with what PPK is suggesting. The Firefox and Chrome developers are mostly certainly professional developers who are well qualified to create a standardized cross browser feature set that will obviate the need for the cruft. Only recently have we started to emerge from the Silverlight-Flash-JavaApplet-ActiveX-webish ghetto that we were mired in for years as Microsoft refused to add new standard fea…

No.

His suggestion is to stop, and wait.

Spend a year on standardizing, fixing bugs (like the bug with chrome where it sometimes just "forgets" float-css rules), a year spent on improving issues and making everything behave consistently between browsers.

A year spent so that we won’t have to use jQuery afterwards anymore. Or underscore.js.

A year spent on fixing all the little bugs, and making a consistent roadmap where we actually want to go. Thinking about stuff like the Virtual-DOM of Angular or React and finding a better solution than that.

This is what we need to focus on. Making stuff behave consistently. And with one year, we can make sure that afterwards most of the market will actually use our new version. We can finally get rid of all the polyfills.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#114
post #47

We need a break. We need an opportunity to learn to the features we already have responsibly — without tools! Also, we need the time for a fundamental conversation about where we want to push the web forward to. How about this.. YOU take a break. Stop trying to keep up with every little new thing that comes out. Wait a while. And you'll get exactly what you want. The tools that it turns out were a bad idea will die.…

This is the part that feels the most misguided to me: > a fundamental conversation about where we want to push the web forward to. There's no such thing as a "conversation" between the billions of people with a stake in this. Or even the few million people building websites and web apps. Or even the few thousand people building web browsers. Attempting to have that conversation just means open-ended delay. There will…

But people are conversing about it in browser dev groups and in standards meetings (WAI, WHATWG and whatever) and such; they're just doing it with a focus to their own ends rather than the ends of the more general user population of the web.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#115
post #48
post #9

I've seen this sentiment a few times: "don't try to replicate native apps in the browser." Which makes sense from the standpoint that the browser is just getting ridiculous, like a mini-OS unto itself. However, web apps also allow organizations to write once for many platforms in a much more seamless way than most cross-platform native toolkits I've seen. It's the same reason that desktop Java was in vogue for a litt…

The cross platform experience will never match the native experience. Think about on the desktop. The only cross platform apps that behave natively on Mac, Windows, GNOME (and derivatives) and KDE are apps tha have completely separate front-ends for every platform. Firefox is an ok example of this, although it in a way forms its own platform rather than integrating with its host, still it pulls it off better than oth…

Facebook.com and Hacker News are cross platform apps, and they work amazingly well.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#116
post #104

I think this is the key: > The moratorium would hit Chrome much harder than it would the other browsers, since it’s Google that is proposing most of the new features nowadays. That may not be entirely fair, but it’s an unavoidable consequence of Chrome’s current position as the top browser — not only in market share, but also in supported features. Also, the fact that Google’s documentation ranges from lousy to non-e…

I wouldn't categorize Google as the leader anymore. Mozilla and Microsoft have caught up and are as much leading the charge as Google is. Four years ago I would have agreed but four years ago we needed Google to push the browser forward.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#117
post #90
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is shortsighted. In 5-10 years browsers will be more Virtual Machine than Web Browser. You can almost argue that they already are. As browsers and phones get more and more performant, the idea of emulating native apps in the browser won't have the performance stigma attached to it. This same thing played out with Java et. al. It was dismissed for being non-performant when compared to C/C++(aka native cod…

But the only languages available are HTML, CSS and JavaScript which are just more than bad for application development because of so many reasons. I would rather see something like Ubuntu Touch tries where they write the frontend with QML and you can have backends in C++ for speed.

> But the only languages available are HTML, CSS and JavaScript...

Eh, there is the canvas, and WebAsm. They make for a full blown VM if you don't mind shipping a several MB large interpreter with your page.

Next step should be installing the interpreter on the browser, for everybody to use... Then we can create Flash all over again.

(Now, if somebody gets a way to do that full VM thing in a way that is compatible with the DOM, then we'll have some improvement.)

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#118
post #111

> Instead, we should focus on the web’s strengths: simplicity, URLs and reach. How does new browser feature X prevent a developer from doing any of these things? > Being forced to work around IE6’s issues required quite a bit of creativity, and although not every solution stood the test of time (most libraries and frameworks from that era, for instance), it still made the creative juices flow. 'Tools' are bad except…

Both of your points are right, but I'd like to point out that regarding: How does new browser feature X prevent a developer from doing any of these things? A moratorium on new features probably wouldn't help, but the reality is that web developers are focusing on new shiny browser features that allow for deeper native integration, rather than on the core elements of the web that work and carry greater usability gains…

That's a good point. I can see a progression like: developer finds new feature X that solves problem Y, developer finds that feature X is only supported by 20% of customer browsers, developer adds polyfill in XXX kB, buggy javascript library with other performance-related side-effects.

Maybe the issue is just educating web developers about what's available, and the non-obvious side-effects using feature X.

Here's what I'd like to see: organize a site like caniuse not by feature, but by tiers of support in the entire population of installed browsers. Something like:

Supported by 99.99% of user-agents: image tags, ... Supported by 95% of user-agents: XHR, ...

(I'm making those numbers up).

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Java has succeeded, too. Look at Minecraft.

Minecraft has no meaningful UI; the entire window is just an OpenGL canvas.

The web has no meaningful UI. The entire window is just styled elements.

UI is not always about respecting the OS's guidelines/theme. Firefox, for example pretty much ignores everything since their Australis UI update and it is fine.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know PPK and his work? He's been at the cutting edge of web-standards and implementations for at least 12 years if my memory serves me correctly. >And you'll get exactly what you want. // If he wants to avoid the web being badly negatively effected by short term views of current browser companies and standards bodies then he won't get what he wants by sticking his head in the sand and ignoring the direction he…

> I find it funny that web pages are trying to be native apps and many mobile apps are shipping when they're ostensibly just web pages. Which provides some insight into what's missing from the web. It's almost good enough for most companies. They just need a little something extra so that they can "own the experience." But soon the browsers will catch up and then websites will be able to own your experience, too.

Perhaps the choice lies outside of the actual functionality of the web itself but instead in the OS and browsers.

Consider someone who ships their iOS app that is basically just a web page instead of using a web page. For doing this, they get two benefits that are not really related to the web. One, they get an icon to tab from the home screen to launch their app, instead of going to Safari and then going to their webpage. Two, they get to avoid having to go through Safari, which one could speculate is something Apple was already wanting them to avoid as it allows Apple to create a better walled garden (not to say Apple is the only one who does this, I'm only pointing them out because I used iOS in my example).

How would a change/upgrade in web standards allow for the web app to compete with the iOS app housing a web app on these two fronts?

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