Web Technologies Need an Owner • Hacker News Board

Re: Web Technologies Need an Owner

#11

Post by joehewitt » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 2:01 AM UTC

mapgrep wrote: post #10

"Let's face facts: the Web will never be the dominant platform." Hewitt's post hinges on that statement, presented without supporting evidence. But actually the Web is already dominant among the platforms Hewitt mentions (Web, Windows, iOS, and Android). Relevant stats: Web - 1.7 billion users as of July, given that 880 million people go to the single busiest website publicly measured by Google, and this site has a "…

Sorry if I didn't make it clear I meant the web will never be the dominant platform in the future once the current trends play out. I am aware of current market share proportions.

Re: Web Technologies Need an Owner

#12

Post by joehewitt » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 2:04 AM UTC

guelo wrote: post #8

I am a fan of Joe Hewitt but this is crazy talk, especially coming from one of the heroes of the Mozilla revolution. It's as if he doesn't remember those dark days long ago when he was working on Firefox in what seemed like a lost cause, Microsoft was the defacto standard setter and single-handedly drove innovation in the web, it was awful. We must never go back to those days. I know Joe imagines some benevolent dict…

Exactly the kind of arrogance I cited. You don't want to risk a bad owner so you'll let the whole thing die from neglect by committee. I would rather have Microsoft be the only browser vendor than have the web shrink dramatically.

Re: Web Technologies Need an Owner

#13

Post by olliesaunders » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 2:05 AM UTC

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #9

olliesaunders wrote: post #2

What’s the W3C then?

Irrelevant, if you consider their decision to promote XHTML2 while the rest of the world committed to HTML5 - incidentally, a development that puts to rest the fear that the web can't evolve and stay relevant without a single BDFL.

They may be crappy but they are still the organization in charge of the development and standardization of web technologies, which he is arguing doesn’t exist. It does. It just isn’t as good as we’d like.

Re: Web Technologies Need an Owner

#14

Post by joehewitt » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 2:07 AM UTC

olliesaunders wrote: post #2

What’s the W3C then?

The W3C writes specs, not code. They do not own the actual rubber that hits the road, and so they are only indirectly responsible for what happens on the real web. I want to remove the separation of architecture from implementation and have one entity control both.

Re: Web Technologies Need an Owner

#15

Post by freemarketteddy » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 2:14 AM UTC

Truth hurts doesnt it!

I think Joe is spot on.The web is already miles behind native mobile platforms.Personally I can vouch for iOS.The kind of stuff you can do on iOS now just in terms of UI is just impossibly hard to do with HTML5 or any other web platform.

But then if you think about it.Its not surprising at all.Of course you will have a much more power on a native platform than a web platform which is built on top of a native platform.

In my opinion in the future you will have a browser and type in a url but a native app will open in the browser window.These native apps will be built for different platforms.The web app will be shown by default if a native app hasnt been developed for that platform.

Re: Web Technologies Need an Owner

#16

Post by etherael » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 2:19 AM UTC

Isn't this a little bit like asking for the days when IE6 was the ultimate in web technology back again? Look how that turned out.

Re: Web Technologies Need an Owner

#17

Post by mapgrep » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 2:19 AM UTC

joehewitt wrote: post #11

mapgrep wrote: post #10

"Let's face facts: the Web will never be the dominant platform." Hewitt's post hinges on that statement, presented without supporting evidence. But actually the Web is already dominant among the platforms Hewitt mentions (Web, Windows, iOS, and Android). Relevant stats: Web - 1.7 billion users as of July, given that 880 million people go to the single busiest website publicly measured by Google, and this site has a "…

Sorry if I didn't make it clear I meant the web will never be the dominant platform in the future once the current trends play out. I am aware of current market share proportions.

Using the word "never" saves you from having to state when the web ceases to be the dominant platform. When do you think this will be?

Something like "the web will never be the dominant platform, except for the past 10 years and the next 10 years" does lack a certain punch, but at least it would be specific :-)

(And I appreciate your taking the time to write your blog post, and don't want to be a jerk, but the definition of never is "at no time in the past or future; on no occasion; not ever," so maybe you could rephrase to something like "the web cannot continue indefinitely being the dominant platform," which at least acknowledges its current strength.)

Re: Web Technologies Need an Owner

#18

Post by wf » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 2:21 AM UTC

joehewitt wrote: post #12

guelo wrote: post #8

I am a fan of Joe Hewitt but this is crazy talk, especially coming from one of the heroes of the Mozilla revolution. It's as if he doesn't remember those dark days long ago when he was working on Firefox in what seemed like a lost cause, Microsoft was the defacto standard setter and single-handedly drove innovation in the web, it was awful. We must never go back to those days. I know Joe imagines some benevolent dict…

Exactly the kind of arrogance I cited. You don't want to risk a bad owner so you'll let the whole thing die from neglect by committee. I would rather have Microsoft be the only browser vendor than have the web shrink dramatically.

I have very little real-world development experience so know these questions are relatively innocent: If there is one browser vendor do they not also control what is the cutting edge of technology? Wouldn't you be completely limited by them? Specifically, could you really imagine Microsoft setting the standards for the experience you have day to day on the web?

Re: Web Technologies Need an Owner

#19

Post by dangoor » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 2:21 AM UTC

While there are a couple of minor bits I agree with, overall I think Joe's off on this one.

The web has five organizations pushing really hard on it at this point (Mozilla [my employer], Google, Apple, Microsoft and Opera). The web almost had HP. We'll see what happens with WebOS.

The one part of his article that I somewhat agree with is that under the guidance of several entities (and lots and lots of people) the web may not have quite the same coherence as, say, Cocoa. I'm not sure that will be a problem.

"The Web has no one who can ensure that the platform acquires cutting edge capabilities in a timely manner (camera access, anyone?)."

Five years ago, even two years ago, would anyone even be questioning adding camera access to the web? I think there's been a huge shift in terms of how people view web technology.

gmail was the original "holy crap" app that started us building information apps with better user experiences. It proceeded from there to add things like canvas and svg and, more recently, webgl and audio, making apps well beyond "information apps" possible.

The "Boot to Gecko" (B2G) project which Mozilla kicked off a couple of months back is going to push quite firmly on adding all of the APIs needed for a modern mobile device. And, I might add, in conjunction with others in the standards bodies who are interested in such things.

And what about the Metro announcement from last week? Sure, Microsoft's ideal scenario is to build on the web and lock people into APIs that are tied to their platform... but, seriously, wouldn't people just write shims? Wouldn't Microsoft ultimately have to follow the standard because they are not quite the monopoly they were before?

The end of his post is telling:

"The closest thing we have to that today is Chromium, but they have no foothold in mobile and are likely years away from having one. And so I end on a sad note"

So, the crux of it would seem to be that Joe sees the world going mobile. I certainly agree. I got my start on a TRS-80 model III, and the stuff happening in mobile is the most exciting stuff I've seen in my entire career.

I've been working with the web for 16 years. There has never been a time in the past when so much effort was being put into pushing the web-as-a-platform forward. It's huge and I, for one, think the best is yet to come.

Re: Web Technologies Need an Owner

#20

Post by dave1619 » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 2:22 AM UTC

joehewitt wrote: post #11

mapgrep wrote: post #10

"Let's face facts: the Web will never be the dominant platform." Hewitt's post hinges on that statement, presented without supporting evidence. But actually the Web is already dominant among the platforms Hewitt mentions (Web, Windows, iOS, and Android). Relevant stats: Web - 1.7 billion users as of July, given that 880 million people go to the single busiest website publicly measured by Google, and this site has a "…

Sorry if I didn't make it clear I meant the web will never be the dominant platform in the future once the current trends play out. I am aware of current market share proportions.

I have to agree. iOS and others are innovating so quickly compared to the web, and the usage of native apps especially on mobile devices is just skyrocketing. The trends are pretty clear.