Stop pushing the web forward • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#141

Post by agentultra » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 5:42 PM UTC

romaniv wrote: post #138

agentultra wrote: post #44

The cool thing about many of these features is that I can push out some code that I can share with a hyperlink and other people can run it without installing anything other than a browser. The authoring experience is still terrible. And the user experience still requires hopping over the secret, invisible wall into developer-tools land... but the potential is there. If you're savvy enough to open your web console and…

The cool thing about many of these features is that I can push out some code that I can share with a hyperlink and other people can run it without installing anything other than a browser. What you describe is a hack for lacking isolation/security/permissions/package management in the operating system. Seriously, if there was a sensible way of isolating apps and handling dependencies, it would be perfectly sensible t…

What I was attempting to describe was a document format the freely mixes code, documentation, and interactive media. The present set of features in the browser allows for a very fluid mixing of these elements but the authoring tools and user experience are lacking in most browsers.

I can share similar documents via org-babel, iPython notebooks, or Matlab notebooks, etc... but each requires the user to be accustomed with those applications to install them, fetch my code from a URL, load it into their environment, etc. With the present browser ecosystem they can fetch everything as a single document and run the interactive examples and modify code on the fly... if they're willing to hop over the developer-tools wall.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#142

Post by andars » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 5:44 PM UTC

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #120

tedunangst wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 we…

Just in case you're not aware, you can already make web apps in iOS have a icon on the home screen. See https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/documentation/App...

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#143

Post by callum85 » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

bshimmin wrote: post #5

This was the first I'd heard of "Navigation Transitions" (perhaps I don't read the right mailing lists), and ppk's right - this seems like an absolutely crazy feature to add.

What about the idea turns you off immediately?

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#144

Post by apalmer » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

wging wrote: post #134

apalmer wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. However I think to build on his argument, we should push JavaScript forward in a targeted fashion, based on its intended purpose. Level 1: There are known huge missing chunks of JavaScript that should be resolved as they severely limit the power of javascript as a development platform which lives in a network application. For instance modules, promises, etc... Level 2: There are known huge missing functionali…

This is being done! Level 3 is being done, but level 2 is not being skipped. Modules: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe... Promises: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe... Data structures: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe... Obervable mechanism: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

Yes thats the point really... Observable are scheduled for ES2016, which satisfies a clear unamibigous and relatively not controversial 'need' is coming out in 2016.

Meanwhile arrow functions, let vs var, generators, etc etc etc are coming out in 2015. Why?

Its not skipped as in 'its not on the roadmap', its skipped like 'lets leave it for now and do something else'. Its skipped over to add a bunch of shiny bells and whistles and syntactic sugar. You shouldnt put in the leather seats before the steering wheel.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#145

Post by nostrademons » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

pikzen wrote: post #52

rtpg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but how would making browsers the operating system cause the incompatability problems to reappear? I think this is massively ignoring the realities: - there's almost no native-feeling cross-platform UI library for native apps at the moment - There's a standard for most things happening in a browser, which means that things look pixel-perfectly the same on a huge amount of browsers. Differences among current…

>there's almost no native-feeling cross-platform UI library for native apps at the moment Xamarin.Forms is the closest I can think of. Qt too, kind of. >The browser is basically what the JVM tried to be, a write once work anywhere solution that is pretty well sandboxed. It's miles better than pretty much every other cross-platform piece of tooling in existence. It's true, the browser succeeded as a working everywhere…

Chrome has been the standard Android browser since KitKat, and it auto-updates since Lollipop. Ditto the system webview.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#146

Post by altcognito » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

ATM, The two top articles (Why Docker isn't Successful in Production) and this one are both cries for the world to slow down. It's not going to and everyone ought to strap in. If change is called for, it will be adopted. If not, it won't. Some technologies were rejected simply because they came about at the wrong time. Some technologies that are adopted now will later be deprecated as better solutions are found. Change is constant.

The article is premised on a distinction between "apps" and "the web". No such real distinction exists. The distinction is in the form factor and physical interaction. The software distribution model that mobile apps utilize was rejected outright in the 90's by both users and software companies. I don't want to worry about what % of users have a particular version of an app, what particular version of an OS a user is running (Android is not alone here), have my apps approved and taxed by a third party, or whether that app is properly discoverable. This is even before we get to the fact that developing for multiple platforms in the mobile world involves completely different skillsets and tools and therefore additional costs.

Furthermore, "performance" is a secondary (albeit important) concern. There is no computing law that prevents the web from achieving reasonable parity with native apps. Funtionality and usability will almost always trump performance.

The browser is a great VM, may the best features win.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#147

Post by TeeWEE » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 6:02 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #99

rgbrenner wrote: post #21

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.…

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…

The fact that PPK did a lot of good work on web, doesnt mean this article is good. Any genius can create crapwork. So did albert einstein. I once saw a presentation from PPK where he proposed JSON over SMS....(http://quirksmode.org/presentations/Spring2012/bigm.pdf) IMHO that presentation was technically not very strong.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#148

Post by awalGarg » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 6:07 PM UTC

PPK raises very valid points. I further want to add that you do not need flying boxes, fading tool-tips and what not to make your app look cool or even beautiful. In-fact it is pretty silly to try to make websites look very beautiful and cool because you can never cater to the taste of every single user. Your flying boxes which look cool to one person might look ugly and distractive to another one. Do we not have enough flame wars on whether iOS looks prettier than Android or the other way round?

Google is popularizing a set of styles called "Material Design" and it's friends. Here is an example: http://www.google.com/design/spec/animation/responsive-inter.... Here is another example of something more classy: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com. Why the first one is any better than the second one, only Google knows.

We can have simple sites, like the present google home page, like the blog post you linked, like the second example I linked, etc. without emulating native, which do their work, and users use them with a lot of love.

P.S. The question "why do you need smooth transitions" applies to native apps as well, PPK ;)

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#149

Post by arkj » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 6:08 PM UTC

TeeWEE wrote: post #147

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #99

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…

The fact that PPK did a lot of good work on web, doesnt mean this article is good. Any genius can create crapwork. So did albert einstein. I once saw a presentation from PPK where he proposed JSON over SMS....( http://quirksmode.org/presentations/Spring2012/bigm.pdf ) IMHO that presentation was technically not very strong.

But the case that he is making in this post is strong.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#150

Post by kbenson » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 6:09 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #127

tedunangst wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What if I don't want corporations to own my experiences? An information-driven web with a document model is robust and can work with many different user agents. An experience-driven web with an application model is very fragile and will only be available to sighted, hearing, Mac-using people running a big 4 browser.

Who needs flash when we can have 15 competing application frameworks for the web that all just abuse the canvas as their medium, so we aren't even authoring HTML/CSS anymore?