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Stop pushing the web forward

quirksmode.org

261–270 of 307 posts

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#261
I didn't see this discussed below, but I think when PPK says

    web’s strengths: simplicity, URLs and reach.
I think he misses an important feature for me, as a user: Security.

I just don't trust native apps. Even a non-malicious app can undermine your systems performance and behave badly.

I've spent too many hours trying to "clean" windows systems, there is just no way I want to be installing native apps on them any more. My windows machines have the OS and its bundled apps, MS Office and that's it.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness Visual Studio (and most IDEs) are pretty bloated and slow. As to the grandparent, that is what asm.js was for, was a subset of JS that could be heavily optimized and JITed... I also really prefer .Net method of native invocation over JNI stubs.

After several years of working with VS, Eclipse, and a couple of other developers' IDEs, I can say -with a straight face- that developers' IDEs are slow primarily because they do a lot of work.

Absolutely.. and if you're using one on a system without an SSD, it's outright painful. There's a lot that goes on with IDEs, effectively on-demand compilation, file watching, and there's a lot to that.

Of course, sometimes I find I'm actually more effected when I can just work on a small module in a plain text editor, and keep things organized so its' relatively easy to follow.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All because Microsoft wouldn't break down and embed SQLite into their browser like everyone else did for WebSQL. It's actually really disappointing. IndexedDB could be built on top of WebSQL as a shim... you can't really do the reverse so easily. It's really disappointing... WebSQL/SQLite with a template string builder interface would be amazing. (I know it's an ES6 thing). I will say, that I do want what's on deck f…

Because Microsoft and Mozilla wouldn't break down - and Mozilla already shipped SQLite.

Sorry, I had thought Mozilla had WebSQL with SQLite... I know chrome/safari supported it at least.. I thought MS was the main holdout there. It looks like there's a Firefox plugin for it though.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#264
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

+1 thanks for that!

Does anyone have a link for something similar for Android phones?

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#265
Part of the beauty of new innovation and new features is that you don't know what people are going to do with it.

Many of the best things about the web are features that we didn't originally plan for but created using javascript and such, then we folded it back in to the specs.

When you add something new, most likely someone somewhere will do something very cool with it in ways we could not have envisioned.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#266

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 seems like just a bunch of excuses to keep breaking the web.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way, one of the best websites I know, c2.com (I don't know anything about this consulting company, but these pages constantly come up in search results and offer best advice possible), manages to deliver the best content with HTMLs that mostly can be read in Mosaic and Lynx.

That's the original Wiki, by Ward Cunningham. He invented it. Currently read only, unfortunately, due to a hack last year. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiWeb

Yeah, and now Ward's killing it in favour of some Web 2.0 thing I can't even begin to understand how to use.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#268

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.

I really don't want them to "own the experience." I want their brochures to stay nicely sandboxed in a browser where they don't invade my computer and try to tell me what I can do with it.

Brochures are documents, nobody has a problem with putting documents on the web. Also, mobile apps are sandboxed already on all major platforms.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#269
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.

That was a fluke, and even Notch knows it.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#270
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 .

As a blind user and developer I am absolutely terrified by such a prospect. We've just started to get decent accessibility for the plethora of new web features with ARIA and similar. But if you render everything to graphics output directly to a canvas you lose any capability of ever talking to my screen reader. Text is awesome for both people and machines, let's not throw it out.

Hey, at least we'll get a bunch more mostly-pointless JavaScript features to support accessibility on canvases!
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