Google discontinues support for IE7 in Google Apps • Hacker News Board

Re: Google discontinues support for IE7 in Google Apps

#141

Post by keks » Tue, Jun 21, 2011, 2:29 PM UTC

cypherpunks wrote: post #123

rimantas wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 years ago the thing we call "web application" hardly existed. If web page "has nothing except JavaScript" (e.g. GMail) is probably is web app and indexing it makes little sense anyway. If someone misuses JS on content site, that's another story. And your comment about innovation makes no sense at all. Capabilities of modern browsers (Canvas, geolocation, local storage, offline apps, etc.) offer more opportunities…

I am aware of the current opportunities. I think you (and most people here) underestimate what the "old web" could imagine, though. We had all sort of ideas for agents that would go out and grab and analyze data for us in all sorts of clever and interesting ways. Search engines got built, as did one or two other things, and then the web just got too complex. Hell, even I had a simple app that went out and grabbed all…

You mean ad filtered RSS/Atom? I assume such a program would be much faster to write these days: have a set of newsfeeds, map() them with a filter function and merge the results.

While the web gets more complex, the tools at hand get better. Much better.

Re: Google discontinues support for IE7 in Google Apps

#142

Post by prodigal_erik » Tue, Jun 21, 2011, 5:13 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #131

prodigal_erik wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More and more content is being taken entirely off the open web and siloed behind a server that talks an unstable proprietary protocol, with exactly one blob of javascript in existence that knows how to tunnel requests over HTTP to access shreds of that content and cram them into an utterly non-semantic DOM. We are hurtling backwards into the client-server hell the web had saved us from.

Yeah, I don't see that. I see more and more accessible APIs[1] and pages having more and more an incentive to being semantic due to search engines now reading that data (hRecipe, for example). Service architecture have also been moving from stuff like SOAP to REST, which is definitively more open and accessible. And even Ajax-ladden webpages are still just a Firebug Network tab away since they all run over HTTP, and…

A JSON (or SOAP) backend is only usable by third parties if its API is kept stable. There are far too many devs who redesign their backend request and response formats at the drop of a hat because they think their js client is the only one that matters (a self-fulfilling prophesy) and they can replace it simultaneously. And their responses tend to look like "here's some more markup to stuff into an arbitrary location in the DOM we're using today", not semantically structured (e.g., Rails now has this built into JavaScriptGenerator). A given site can be reverse-engineered, but anything built on that is going to be fragile and short-lived, much more so than when the typical visual rendering desired for a page determined its structure.

Re: Google discontinues support for IE7 in Google Apps

#143

Post by maratd » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 9:09 AM UTC

danssig wrote: post #135

eropple wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unspoken assumption: that competing with desktop alternatives is good or desired. Personally, I can't think of a single desktop application that I use that is better done in a browser with the possible exception of Google Maps, and I say "possible" because I haven't seen a desktop contender. I use GMail's web interface solely because I can't stand any of the Mac clients (at work) and Outlook isn't available on Linux…

I share you views. Making a web app is easier for the developer: just one platform to support, no restrictions on implementation, etc. But a desktop app is nicer for the users (the ones we're supposed to care about, right?). In the very best case a web app would be able to function as good as a desktop app. The best case is usually not achieved. Imagine if a person at your job said they had just made a new client app…

Time = $$$. Universal constant. While your desktop app may be shinier, it takes much more time to create and maintain. This means fewer apps are published and fewer features are added.

Less choices and fewer features translate to a negative for the user.

On top of that, native desktop apps are compiled ... the web is open, with html/css/javascript/etc. and this creates an open environment that encourages free software.

Free is always good for the user.

Anyway, re-arguing this sort of thing is pointless. The desktop is in a death spiral. All this stuff has already been set in stone. It's a question of when, not if.

Re: Google discontinues support for IE7 in Google Apps

#144

Post by icebraining » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 9:36 AM UTC

prodigal_erik wrote: post #142

icebraining wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't see that. I see more and more accessible APIs[1] and pages having more and more an incentive to being semantic due to search engines now reading that data (hRecipe, for example). Service architecture have also been moving from stuff like SOAP to REST, which is definitively more open and accessible. And even Ajax-ladden webpages are still just a Firebug Network tab away since they all run over HTTP, and…

A JSON (or SOAP) backend is only usable by third parties if its API is kept stable. There are far too many devs who redesign their backend request and response formats at the drop of a hat because they think their js client is the only one that matters (a self-fulfilling prophesy) and they can replace it simultaneously. And their responses tend to look like "here's some more markup to stuff into an arbitrary location…

I don't see how that's worse than unstable, non semantically structured HTML markup of yore. In the worst cases, we're not really worse, and we have much more semantic content nowadays.