Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#121

Post by azakai » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 9:16 PM UTC

saidajigumi wrote: post #107

bad_user wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebSQL is SQLLite and making that a standard is very hard without including SQLite's bugs and non-standard behavior. Mozilla had really good reasons for shooting it down. Calling them out on it is meaningless without specifying why you think they've been wrong. You can say anything about IndexedDB, but at least it has a spec.

> SQLite's bugs and non-standard behavior. "Bugs" I get, but what do you mean by "non-standard behavior" mean here? My perspective, having had some experience with some pretty sophisticated DB adapter layers in the past: SQLlite and other nominally-SQL DBs all have only a very superficial level of SQL-level compatibility. Aside from closely related DBs (e.g. forks) it's not like there's any actual ability to exchange…

SQLite is kind of different from other DBs, in various ways. For example, data types,

http://www.sqlite.org/datatype3.html

It should be compatible with most DBs, but SQLite has more dynamic types, and supports more things, in ways that are "odd" for almost all other DBs. As you correctly said, in general, no two DBs are easily interchangeable, and SQLite is no exception, perhaps it is even more of an outlier in fact.

That means that to implement SQLite, not using SQLite code, means you need to carefully reproduce that behavior, and all aspects of it - in practice, including bugs - to be a compatible web browser. For a web standard, that's just unacceptable.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#122

Post by azakai » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 9:18 PM UTC

EdSharkey wrote: post #118

cwyers wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kindest thing you can say about IE is that they seem to be well aware of the problems with their release cycle, and are taking steps to remediate this -- they refactored out large amounts of compatibility code from Trident to make EdgeHTML, and I think they plan to up the release cadence of updates to EdgeHTML significantly once they release Spartan. Apple doesn't seem to be doing much of anything to keep up with…

I thought Mozilla said they were going to land some form of Firefox on IOS. Yep, here's the press release: https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/12/designing-a-firefox-e... The actual work is going on here, but it sounds like it's only at the experimental stage: https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios/ I'm kindof curious to build it and see if it works. I read that the only issue with getting competing browsers onto iOS…

It is "Firefox", but it's still using the Safari rendering and JavaScript engine under the hood (like Chrome for iOS does), because there isn't an option to do otherwise.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#123

Post by azakai » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 9:23 PM UTC

millstone wrote: post #94

richtr wrote: post #55

What is difficult to argue against, and I'm surprised isn't mentioned in this article, is that Apple have completely eliminated market competition from happening around web standards on the iOS platform. It is impossible to ship e.g. Chromium on iOS right now. We just collectively buy the arguments put forward by Apple to support that position without appreciating the ramifications of not allowing market forces to dr…

To be fair, it's also impossible to ship Firefox on ChromeOS.

Preventing other browsers for technical reasons is very different than doing so for policy reasons. iOS prevents other browsers in both ways. ChromeOS (and FirefoxOS, and others) might limit you technically, but do not limit you by policy.

When the limitations are just technical, you can try to work around them, but when they are a flat policy, like Apple does, there is nothing you can do.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#124

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 9:24 PM UTC

frik wrote: post #106

bad_user wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebSQL is SQLLite and making that a standard is very hard without including SQLite's bugs and non-standard behavior. Mozilla had really good reasons for shooting it down. Calling them out on it is meaningless without specifying why you think they've been wrong. You can say anything about IndexedDB, but at least it has a spec.

* The argument that WebSQL was tailored to a specific SQLite version is nonsense. SQLite supports the official SQL92 standard, as do several other SQL embedded engines like the SQL engines from MS Access, MS Outlook, MS SQL Embedded and many others. Also Firefox already ships with SQLite for its "awesome bar" and bookmark feature. SQLite is in public domain, so every company can use it (even Microsoft products alread…

> The argument that WebSQL was tailored to a specific SQLite version is nonsense.

No, the idea that WebSQLDB was not tailored to a specific SQLite version is nonsense. See Section 5 of the last version of the WebSQLDB spec [0]:

User agents must implement the SQL dialect supported by Sqlite 3.6.19.

> SQLite supports the official SQL92 standard

SQLite version 3.6.19 does not support all of, or only, the SQL92 standard. WebSQLDB did not mandate support for the SQL92 standard, or any other standard version of SQL, it specified the dialect supported by SQLite 3.6.19.

[0] http://www.w3.org/TR/webdatabase/#databases

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#125

Post by datashovel » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 9:36 PM UTC

Just thinking out loud here:

What if we had a "meta app" which encapsulated individual browsers and created a specification allowing developers to define which browser type to use when opening their web page?

Not saying this can't be done today, but where the transition was seamless. I'm unaware of anything that allows us to do this today. I do recall a project that allowed one to do something similar (IE tabs in Chrome), but I think it wasn't the same in terms of seamless transition, and there was no way for the developer to control the transition.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#126

Post by frik » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 9:40 PM UTC

thristian wrote: post #117

frik wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* The argument that WebSQL was tailored to a specific SQLite version is nonsense. SQLite supports the official SQL92 standard, as do several other SQL embedded engines like the SQL engines from MS Access, MS Outlook, MS SQL Embedded and many others. Also Firefox already ships with SQLite for its "awesome bar" and bookmark feature. SQLite is in public domain, so every company can use it (even Microsoft products alread…

> The argument that WebSQL was tailored to a specific SQLite version is nonsense. SQLite supports the official SQL92 standard, as do several other SQL embedded engines like the SQL engines from MS Access, MS Outlook, MS SQL Embedded and many others. Nobody ever said WebSQL was intended to require a specific version of SQLite. But nearly every browser would have used SQLite, and experience has shown that when you expo…

* There is a common misconception about SQLite3 dynamic type system. It can be done using SQL statements: http://stackoverflow.com/a/2762020, http://www.sqlite.org/datatype3.html . The browser vendors could enable static typing by default by adding a few lines of code or just a flag afaik. Beside that there are other SQL db engines. SQL-92 was the third revision of the SQL database query language. It's the common dialect that every SQL engine supports: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL-92

* Beside that even if Microsoft would use JetRed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Jet_Database_Engine) or JetBlue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_JET_Blue) database engine and use a slightly different SQL dialect, everyone else would use SQLite anyway (and even Microsoft products like several Xbox games and Tools use SQLite). It's the same like supporting different XHR/AJAX API versions (like the ActiveX API calls of Without WebSQL support one has to compile SQLite via emscripten to asm.js -> 3 MB big JS file.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#127

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 9:56 PM UTC

frik wrote: post #126

thristian wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The argument that WebSQL was tailored to a specific SQLite version is nonsense. SQLite supports the official SQL92 standard, as do several other SQL embedded engines like the SQL engines from MS Access, MS Outlook, MS SQL Embedded and many others. Nobody ever said WebSQL was intended to require a specific version of SQLite. But nearly every browser would have used SQLite, and experience has shown that when you expo…

* There is a common misconception about SQLite3 dynamic type system. It can be done using SQL statements: http://stackoverflow.com/a/2762020 , http://www.sqlite.org/datatype3.html . The browser vendors could enable static typing by default by adding a few lines of code or just a flag afaik. Beside that there are other SQL db engines. SQL-92 was the third revision of the SQL database query language. It's the common di…

> SQL-92 was the third revision of the SQL database query language.

And is completely irrelevant to WebSQLDB, which specifies "the SQL dialect supported by SQLite 3.6.19" -- not SQL-92 -- as what implementations must support. The SQL dialect supported by SQLite 3.6.19 does not include all of SQL-92, and includes extensions to SQL-92, so supporting SQL-92 would be neither necessary nor sufficient, from a supported SQL standpoint, to conform to the WebSQLDB spec.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#128

Post by frik » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 9:57 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #124

frik wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* The argument that WebSQL was tailored to a specific SQLite version is nonsense. SQLite supports the official SQL92 standard, as do several other SQL embedded engines like the SQL engines from MS Access, MS Outlook, MS SQL Embedded and many others. Also Firefox already ships with SQLite for its "awesome bar" and bookmark feature. SQLite is in public domain, so every company can use it (even Microsoft products alread…

> The argument that WebSQL was tailored to a specific SQLite version is nonsense. No, the idea that WebSQLDB was not tailored to a specific SQLite version is nonsense. See Section 5 of the last version of the WebSQLDB spec [0]: User agents must implement the SQL dialect supported by Sqlite 3.6.19. > SQLite supports the official SQL92 standard SQLite version 3.6.19 does not support all of, or only, the SQL92 standard.…

Everyone knows the "Web SQL Database W3C recommendation" document should be re-evaluated, better formulated and improved. Richard Hipp, the creator of SQLite, stated that the dialect won't change (removing syntax) in SQLite v3 during the WebSQL W3C standardization in the mailing list.

About 95% of all mobile devices already support WebSQL (iOS & Android & WindowsPhone (via official Microsoft sponsored extension)). And all desktop Chrome, Safari, Opera support WebSQL too. The only missing browsers are IE 11 and Firefox/FirefoxOS.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#129

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 10:00 PM UTC

frik wrote: post #128

dragonwriter wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The argument that WebSQL was tailored to a specific SQLite version is nonsense. No, the idea that WebSQLDB was not tailored to a specific SQLite version is nonsense. See Section 5 of the last version of the WebSQLDB spec [0]: User agents must implement the SQL dialect supported by Sqlite 3.6.19. > SQLite supports the official SQL92 standard SQLite version 3.6.19 does not support all of, or only, the SQL92 standard.…

Everyone knows the "Web SQL Database W3C recommendation" document should be re-evaluated, better formulated and improved. Richard Hipp, the creator of SQLite, stated that the dialect won't change (removing syntax) in SQLite v3 during the WebSQL W3C standardization in the mailing list. About 95% of all mobile devices already support WebSQL (iOS & Android & WindowsPhone (via official Microsoft sponsored extension)). An…

> Everyone knows the "Web SQL Database W3C recommendation" document should be re-evaluated, better formulated and improved.

Everyone does not know this. Some people believe this, other people believe it should die in a fire. But whatever one things about the current state of the abandoned WebSQLDB spec, that is what WebSQLDB is, and you can't talk about -- honestly, at least -- it and pretend that it specifies SQL-92 as the required SQL dialect when, in fact, it specifies "the SQL dialect supported by SQLite 3.6.19".

You are essentially arguing that WebSQLDB should not have been abandoned based on the content of an imaginary WebSQLDB spec that never existed. If WebSQLDB had specified a (explicit, well-defined, use-case appropriate, single-user subset of) SQL-92 that would be different than what it actually specified, and the discussion would be different.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#130

Post by CHY872 » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 10:01 PM UTC

EdSharkey wrote: post #118

cwyers wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kindest thing you can say about IE is that they seem to be well aware of the problems with their release cycle, and are taking steps to remediate this -- they refactored out large amounts of compatibility code from Trident to make EdgeHTML, and I think they plan to up the release cadence of updates to EdgeHTML significantly once they release Spartan. Apple doesn't seem to be doing much of anything to keep up with…

I thought Mozilla said they were going to land some form of Firefox on IOS. Yep, here's the press release: https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/12/designing-a-firefox-e... The actual work is going on here, but it sounds like it's only at the experimental stage: https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios/ I'm kindof curious to build it and see if it works. I read that the only issue with getting competing browsers onto iOS…

There are two problems.

The first problem is political - firstly Apple make it so that you have to use the Webkit rendering engine for any third party browser. The second problem is more technical - iOS has memory protection that means you can't take a writeable page and make it executable. This means that you can't (for example) JIT compile Javascript (or any other language). Their built in exception to this is Safari. This is why Safari is faster than webviews.