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The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man

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Re: The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man

#11

Post by sorbits »

Qz wrote: post #6
sorbits wrote: post #5

> So launch a different browser. Not a big deal. > […] > As someone who has tried to do both cutting edge native and web iPhone apps, iPhone Safari is a joke compared to iPhone Cocoa What he is basically saying is developing natively instead of for the web can give a better result, and he would prefer to drop cross-browser compatibility and just have users launch whatever browser he developed the app for. The questio…

>The question is why develop for the web at all if your apps only run in a certain browser? This is a mental block. You're thinking about it from a developer's perspective. He's talking about how to make the web better for users.

I don’t follow — are you saying I don’t understand his critique because I only look at this from a developer’s point of view?

He is seeing “the web” as an easy way to deploy applications. The app store is exactly what he needs, easy way to deploy stuff to users and no cross-browser requirements.

He makes the argument that while the app store is great in that regard, it sucks because he is locked to one mobile phone (OS) — at the same time, he is making the argument that the Cocoa platform is so much better because individual browser vendors did not (and were not allowed to) innovate, he downplays the compatibility problems by saying that users can just launch another browser (and indirectly, buy a new computer / OS if the browser is not available on their platform).

Re: The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man

#12

Post by joe_fishfish »

sorbits wrote: post #11
Qz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The question is why develop for the web at all if your apps only run in a certain browser? This is a mental block. You're thinking about it from a developer's perspective. He's talking about how to make the web better for users.

I don’t follow — are you saying I don’t understand his critique because I only look at this from a developer’s point of view? He is seeing “the web” as an easy way to deploy applications. The app store is exactly what he needs, easy way to deploy stuff to users and no cross-browser requirements. He makes the argument that while the app store is great in that regard, it sucks because he is locked to one mobile phone (…

His point is that it's pretty trivial for a user to change their browser, these days. Changing their phone is more difficult and expensive. Hence, it would be better for users if developers developed their apps for a specific software platform (e.g. Firefox) as opposed to a specific hardware platform (e.g. iPhone).

Re: The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man

#13

Post by eplanit »

These people liked IE, the worst browser ever?!? They reject standardization?

If they really want a history lesson, then return to the pre-browser days -- yeah, you had to #ifdef and port your code over and over and over, always chasing the latest APIs (the time of origin of that horrible phrase, in fact).

Standardization fixed that.

Re: The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man

#14

Post by metachor »

DanielStraight wrote: post #8

I think the real solution is not to provide more advanced features in the browser, but to provide more primitives. Lots of programming languages over the years have, at least for a while, compiled to C. C is an almost universal primitive. The web doesn't have a universal primitive. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are high level languages. If you try to use a high level language without ever accessing lower level functions,…

Can you explain what some of those lower level functions are on the web that need a lower level language? As far as I can tell, the lowest level of the web is sending a static document to the requester via HTTP. Any lower than that and you are talking about TCP/IP sockets, etc.

In the domain of Operating Systems this makes more sense, because the OS or kernel is generally written in the low level language that is being asked about (i.e. C). Any higher-level language is generally implemented in terms of the low level language, making it available as a fall back for low level tasks (i.e. tasks on the OS/kernel level).

I'm just not sure how this concept of lower-level languages applies to the web.

Re: The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man

#15

Post by Terretta »

joe_fishfish wrote: post #12
sorbits wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t follow — are you saying I don’t understand his critique because I only look at this from a developer’s point of view? He is seeing “the web” as an easy way to deploy applications. The app store is exactly what he needs, easy way to deploy stuff to users and no cross-browser requirements. He makes the argument that while the app store is great in that regard, it sucks because he is locked to one mobile phone (…

His point is that it's pretty trivial for a user to change their browser, these days. Changing their phone is more difficult and expensive. Hence, it would be better for users if developers developed their apps for a specific software platform (e.g. Firefox) as opposed to a specific hardware platform (e.g. iPhone).

It is not trivial for "a user" to change their browser.

Watch this video:

http://uxmag.com/short-news/these-are-your-users-read-and-be...

Re: The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man

#16

Post by mclin »

Terretta wrote: post #15
joe_fishfish wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point is that it's pretty trivial for a user to change their browser, these days. Changing their phone is more difficult and expensive. Hence, it would be better for users if developers developed their apps for a specific software platform (e.g. Firefox) as opposed to a specific hardware platform (e.g. iPhone).

It is not trivial for "a user" to change their browser. Watch this video: http://uxmag.com/short-news/these-are-your-users-read-and-be...

Maybe it just needs simplification. How about a system to save sites as 'Apps' that open in the appropriate browser.

Re: The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man

#17

Post by joe_fishfish »

Terretta wrote: post #15
joe_fishfish wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point is that it's pretty trivial for a user to change their browser, these days. Changing their phone is more difficult and expensive. Hence, it would be better for users if developers developed their apps for a specific software platform (e.g. Firefox) as opposed to a specific hardware platform (e.g. iPhone).

It is not trivial for "a user" to change their browser. Watch this video: http://uxmag.com/short-news/these-are-your-users-read-and-be...

Trivial was probably the wrong choice of word. Regardless of most users' lack of knowledge on the subject, it is a much easier (and cheaper) task to change your browser than to upgrade your phone in mid-contract.

I think the real driving force behind web UI improvements, that isn't being picked up on the article, is the open, shared standard. If there was a cool new piece of functionality in, say, Opera, that allowed users to instantly buy whatever it was they were vaguely thinking of or something genuinely revolutionary, it wouldn't make much of a difference to the web unless it was backed by an open standard. This is largely due to the reason shown by your video - most users wouldn't know how to go about installing a new browser to take advantage of the functionality.

However if the standard behind the new super-fun-happy-wow web technology is shared, then it can spread across a majority of the web-using population comparatively quickly, because other browser makers will include an implementation of it within their browsers. If a browser is open-sourced under a BSD-type licence, this technology spread can happen even faster.

Re: The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man

#18

Post by jon_dahl »

eplanit wrote: post #13

These people liked IE, the worst browser ever?!? They reject standardization? If they really want a history lesson, then return to the pre-browser days -- yeah, you had to #ifdef and port your code over and over and over, always chasing the latest APIs (the time of origin of that horrible phrase, in fact). Standardization fixed that.

These people liked IE, the worst browser ever?!? They reject standardization?

Apparently you weren't doing web development back in the Netscape 4.7 days. :)

IE 5.5 and 6 were actually big steps forward for web standards back in 2000-2001. They were actually decent browsers then. Not perfect, but no one was. The problem isn't IE6 - it's that Microsoft stopped with IE6 for such a long time.

Re: The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man

#19

Post by anigbrowl »

eplanit wrote: post #13

These people liked IE, the worst browser ever?!? They reject standardization? If they really want a history lesson, then return to the pre-browser days -- yeah, you had to #ifdef and port your code over and over and over, always chasing the latest APIs (the time of origin of that horrible phrase, in fact). Standardization fixed that.

Good point - but I thought IE6 was pretty spiffy at the time too. I like the reliability of current browsers, but agree with the guy that all development feels performance related, and there's not much in the way of new functionality.

Tabs were the last thing that struck me as innovative. I was hoping Google's sidebar idea would take off but it doesn't seem terribly popular. I wish the social internet (not so much facebook, but discussion forums like this or persistent comment communities) were decoupled from content, such that commentary was not siloed on the same page as the content.

Re: The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man

#20

Post by btilly »

tumult wrote: post #9
gojomo wrote: post #3

A great rant by a practitioner who wants progress to go faster, ideologies and committees be-damned. But, a little revisionist about why browser innovation slowed. It wasn't Microsoft yielding to standards demands that slowed their pace; it was Microsoft's de facto victory in (for a time) neutralizing the business possibilities of competitive browser development. It took a while for alternate models that could sustai…

My impression of IE is that Microsoft stopped developing it right at the point when they realized "Oh shit! If this gets any better, it could replace Office!"

And ironically they stopped after it was just good enough to do so. With the critical piece being XMLHttpRequest. Which they added so that they could implement Outlook on the browser.
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