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Stop pushing the web forward

quirksmode.org

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Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#171

Post by digi_owl »

zhte415 wrote: post #85
digi_owl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back before the PC, didn't IBM and some other mainframe companies try to lease out terminals? This in that you could get a terminal on your home desk, that either via dedicated line or basic dialup would connect to a mainframe where you paid minute or something? In a sense the web browser, and SaaS, has become a reinvention of that...

Still do, big business. Any data dependent system. Reuters / Bloomberg / Datastream. Rented out terminals of a centralized system.

Ah yes, Bloomberg. Recently heard about those terminals in relation to someone using their service as something of a luxury Craigslist...

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#172

Post by sanderjd »

kbenson wrote: post #150
nitrogen wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Honest question: is abusing canvas really becoming prevalent? The only web app I've seen doing this is flipboard.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#173

Post by bztzt »

scholia wrote: post #106
ForHackernews wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a silly distinction to make. Native applications (meaning software running on a computer, outside a browser sandbox) have always offered a smoother, more comprehensive user experience. That doesn't mean users get no value from the web, or that they're so spoiled by fast transitions in Microsoft Word that they won't want to use a website.

I agree, but that's not the point. The point is that some -- perhaps many -- people want to distinguish between smartphone apps and traditional programs, and that's one way to do it. It would be nice if there was a better way, but I don't know of one. Incidentally, it's a distinction that people also make between "universal apps" (written for Windows Runtime) and desktop programs (written to the Win32 API) even when…

The meaningful difference is whether there are isolation and distribution/update mechanisms so that users can install and maintain apps with less risk and hassle. This doesn't have much to do with (in-app) UI per se, though.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#174

Post by mschuster91 »

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.…

> The tools that it turns out were a bad idea will die. And those that are good will thrive.

We saw that happen with WebSQL vs IndexedDB. A well-designed API (with a syntax every decent webdev knows) vs a bullshit spec (ohai callback hell FOR DOING A SIMPLE FUCKING SORT AND GROUP), and the bullshit won.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#175

Post by davesque »

I can't disagree more with his critique of navigation transitions. Transitions are the best way people can create a great user flow without needing to structure their web app around the single-page, stateful, AJAX (or WebSockets) paradigm. If you think transitions are a bad idea, I hope you think single-page apps are a good idea. And if you think that the web just wasn't meant for that level of native-app-like functionality, I think you're not going to win that argument against the real demand for those kinds of offerings on the web.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#176

Post by amyjess »

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…

> Let's not get started on the fact that HTML is a terrible language for UIs

This is why I'm hoping that future web front-end frameworks will output UI elements to a instead of the DOM.

If a DOM-like scene graph is needed, it should be managed entirely by the framework and simply be an intermediate layer between the application code and the .

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#177

Post by macu »

I constantly get the sense that I am missing whole swaths of the configuration options available in mobile and web development. The fact is, a dedicated team with experience will know how to tweak variables for an excellent product. New possibilities are continually arising but not everyone will use them. A lone developer is likely to produce something more retro. Experience and dedication pay off as you develop finer control.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#178

Post by coldtea »

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.…

>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. And those that are good will thrive.

Yeah, only hasn't ever happened. We still suffer from BS tools and ideas from late nineties, and we're only mostly piling stuff on top of it (some good and loads of crap).

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#179

Post by coldtea »

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.

>I once saw a presentation from PPK where he proposed JSON over SMS.

And that's bad because? Given some use cases it could be a very handy and pragmatic re-use of available resources and protocols.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#180

Post by bcg1 »

kuschku wrote: post #113
bcg1 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

You're missing my point. The world won't stop just because you decide to reflect on the situation and have small groups of people unilaterally decide what will someday maybe be standardized in some browsers. In the meantime the new features will get developed as non-standard features and you'll have even more proliferation of cruft, "polyfills" and whatever else PPK is complaining about.
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