121–130 of 264 posts
Having WebUSB and WebBle everywhere would allow me to ship my IoT application via web only. That would be a win for my productivity, no more messing about with app store shenanigans.
Just heard of this. Still wondering if my fantasy CCTV DVR can serve a web app to my phone and stream the feed. Hard to google, use "Web Bluetooth API" instead of webble
And Web Serial reached mainline Firefox last week. I hope Mozilla can eventually stop playing their silly role in the security theater of “but what if our users are dumb” and actually deliver those "power-user" features that would allow me to uninstall Chrome for good. Oh, and also, --app= flag please.
> their silly role in the security theater of “but what if our users are dumb” It's not security theater. If you go to Chromium settings -> Site settings -> permissions, and expand "additional permissions", you will see a total of 26 different permissions , each gated by the same generic "you want to use this" popup. Permission popup fatigue is quite real, and not a security theater. And that's on top of the usual qu…
Short of crippling capabilities to save dumb users, the best we can do is make the process scary enough that Grandma won't do it without calling her grandson first.
I was rather hostile towards WebUSB/Bluetooth for ideological reasons, until I came across some cool apps like a climbing board control app (Bluetooth) or a netMD (to transfer to minidisks, via USB), which I would have found overkill to install a "hard App" for. I'm glad that there's an option for Firefox at last.
Edit: Wait, no we didn't. Chrome added WebUSB support after all. Wtf I'm disabling that
I was rather hostile towards WebUSB/Bluetooth for ideological reasons, until I came across some cool apps like a climbing board control app (Bluetooth) or a netMD (to transfer to minidisks, via USB), which I would have found overkill to install a "hard App" for. I'm glad that there's an option for Firefox at last.
I was rather hostile towards WebUSB/Bluetooth for ideological reasons, until I came across some cool apps like a climbing board control app (Bluetooth) or a netMD (to transfer to minidisks, via USB), which I would have found overkill to install a "hard App" for. I'm glad that there's an option for Firefox at last.
It's fine as an extension, not so much as a default-enabled feature. We got the best outcome here. Edit: Wait, no we didn't. Chrome added WebUSB support after all. Wtf I'm disabling that
Well, this seems like a terrible idea. I really don't want websites to be able to access hardware. I am already uncomfortable with the webcam access.
Whether we like it or not, the distinction between an app and a web page has already eroded, and is, and only will be, eroding more. Even for local apps it's starting to become common to ship the app in an interpreted language where the interpreter is a browser instead of say python & qt.
People are starting to ship even local apps only in the form of some html & js that only works on Chrome because only Chrome has webusb. Whether we like the idea of the browser having access to usb or not, I at least like even less the idea of being forced to install and use Chrome for the same reasons as the bad old days of being forced to use IE.
I still want to reinvent the web with a hypertext document reader that doesn't include the kitchen sink. I suppose with LLMs these days this is actually an achievable prototype.
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When the alternative is downloading arbitrary executables I find the browser sandbox to be a reassurance.
Buddy if your "sandbox" lets code inside it replace your keyboard's firmware you don't have a sandbox.
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Let's please not (or at most, add a scary warning for non-tagged devices), as this would break the use case for at least all retrocomputing.
Aren't most retrocomputing USB devices running open source firmware? Adding a descriptor "WebUSB supported" is a few commits and a firmware update away.
As much as I understand the ease of deployment this brings people, it puts a massive amount of code between the device and the user. Will webusb software written today work in 5, 10, 15 years? Personally, I think webusb is a giant contraption.
In 5, 10, and 15 years LLMs will make maintaining the massive amount of code trivial.