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Stop pushing the web forward

quirksmode.org

301–307 of 307 posts

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PPK is doing the equivalent of saying "let's stop and ask for directions [on our car journey]" and you're saying "no, let's just keep driving I'm sure we'll get to where we want to go". Just because one person is lost doesn't mean everyone else in the vehicle is. Those who know where they are going don't need to stop and ask for directions. Don't force them to.

You have a valid point, not everyone is lost but obviously everyone seems to be digging in the same ship just for the sake of it. If you try to understand more of what OP is trying to say, then you will know that there are more problems created than solution. It's getting more difficult for beginners to catch up or even were to start from (see lots of those questions on Quora), perhaps we need to reexamine things rat…

How did we go from Javascript to global warming?

Holding back technology so others can catch up is foolish. Where would we be if we followed that philosophy. We have long passed the ability of the human mind (at least unaugmented) to keep up with technology.

Sure, there are problems for some. But they are insignificant problems for others. I'm generally of the opinion that you should give people the freedom to choose rather than forcing things on them that are against their interest.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#302
post #282

If you can't keep up then don't. Some of us have ideas we've been wanting to implement and are just waiting until a browser feature becomes available and widespread enough that it is a possibility. I don't want to have to develop for the web and an Android app. I don't want to have to develop for the web and an iOS app. I don't want to have to develop for the web and a .NET app. I don't want to pay 30% to a company j…

I'm not sure how you square "If you can't keep up then don't" with what sounds (to me) a lot like "I have an idea that I want to implement, but only if I don't have to learn anything new" To try to be at least somewhat constructive: I took PPK's argument as: "Trying to cram everything and the kitchen sink into your browser so that you don't have to ever write native code may be appealing, but it risks collapsing unde…

It's not the learning or the hard work that concerns me. I'm all for that. It's proprietary walled gardens for the most part. I want to build apps that I already know Apple won't approve so that leaves me with a reduced ability to service my users until mobile web gets better.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#303
post #252
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there's almost no native-feeling cross-platform UI library for native apps at the moment wxWidgets is native and it has been working for decades now. May be some people disagree with its use of macros, but it certainly works, runs fast and it's native in Windows, OSX and Linux. I repeat it again. It's not only native-feeling. It uses the native controls in each platform it supports. It is fully native.

I'm curious about this. Does something like wxWidgets offer all widgets that are available in an OS? Does it offer the files listing widget the Mac has in that fourth mode, where flipping between files shows on top an extra area that feels like flipping between music CDs? I guess the point is, what do you do with widgets available in one OS that aren't available in another? Should UI libraries keep up?

It keeps up in some cases, as some dialog options are only available for one platform and ignored in the rest.

But it is updated slowly, i.e. the platform has a new widget and the corresponding wxWidgets update happens several months later.

You can check for example Audacity in your platform and evaluate if it feels native enough.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it should be, those who do the work get to make the decisions, that's how it works. People work for their own self interest, not for the benefit of the "general user population".

>People work for their own self interest // Altruism; not exclusively, not always, not all people work only for their own benefit. Many, I warrant, consider that something as game-changing and all pervading as the web (and internet in general) should be tailored as much as we're able to the greater good of all people. Others want to make it illegal to collect rain for drinking in drought zones so they can get a bette…

But the web and the Internet are not things themselves, those are merely abstract words that describe a collection of privately owned computers doing things their owners deem in their self interest. Anyone who talks about what the Web should be doesn't understand what the Web is nor what decentralized means. No one gets to say what it is, it simply is what those who build it make it.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It makes Emacs look like ed in comparison, yet without offering any actual improvement in functionality. Well, it does offer the functionality of being usable integrated environment, which I know a lot of the emacs/vi people dismiss, but it's a very real thing despite those dismissals. On the other hand, I don't really care much, since I've never had the emacs/vi user disease of insisting that everyone else acknowle…

> Well, it does offer the functionality of being usable integrated environment, which I know a lot of the emacs/vi people dismiss Maybe the vi people do, but I'm not sure about the Emacs people, seeing as SLIME is the modern day free integrated environment for Common Lisp programming. Regardless, my point was less about the superiority of Emacs and more that Emacs is the oft-cited textbook example of a "bloated" prog…

The "Emacs is bloated" meme stopped being relevant at least fifteen years ago. ;)

But seriously; some serious questions, seeing as how I've never really used Emacs:

How does Emacs compare to versions of Eclipse CDT or Visual Studio released in the past four years for C++ development? How well does Emacs's autocomplete [0] work for templated types of varying complexity? How about its ability to navigate to method definitions and implementations of non-obvious types? Does its autocomplete database update quickly and automatically, or must one trigger the update oneself?

[0] I figure that C++ development support isn't in mainline Emacs and is provided by extensions. For brevity's sake, I'll continue to improperly attribute this functionality.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#306
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is just fiddeling with the symptoms, not doing anything with the root of the problem. It is the same with webcomponents, they're building on such a shaky ground. I like the ideas around https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UTWAEJlhww instead.

Based on the video, is security the root problem? Sorry, but that is a problem in every programming environment. Security is hard regardless of using C++, JS, Linux, Windows, etc. Therefore it is not terribly relevant to the question: is JS capable of emulating native functionality and should it? For that question, the root problem was definitely JS itself historically but the language deficiencies have largely been…

I'm not quite sure if you watched the whole video, he says let's get rid of everything (HTTP, HTML, CSS) but JavaScript.

Re: Stop pushing the web forward

#307
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/android/installtoho...
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