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WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

joeyh.name

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Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#161

Post by skulk »

taikahessu wrote: post #121
noduerme wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't SEO been dead for like 10 years? It's not as if there's a search engine you can get to the first page on without paying, so why waste ad dollars on stuffing SEO garbage in your page and chasing the algorithm when you can just buy ads, if that's what you need? And does anyone find anything anymore by doing generic web searches anyway?

It sucks if you are non-profit working on subjects like drug abuse. Or anything that is considered "difficult" for our ad-overlords and thus all the relevant keywords are against ToS.

Not sure what nonprofits you're referring to, but most drug searches are SEO spammed with godawful websites that contain tons of misinformation while reputable sources that actually promote harm reduction like erowid are pushed down.

Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#162

Post by wat10000 »

Rohansi wrote: post #159
wat10000 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a bug, not a feature. Apps should match the OS they’re running on.

It's 2025 and most apps do not match the OS they run on. What would you even want apps to match on Windows? There are different styles depending on what you build with (Win32/Forms, WPF, UWP, etc).

I'm painfully aware. Modern apps are mostly terrible.

I don't know or care what apps would match on Windows. I don't use Windows. On the systems I do use, I want apps to look like they fit in.

Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#163

Post by wffurr »

floating-io wrote: post #55

Every day we get closer to reinventing the Java applet. Again.

WebAssembly is explicitly a new native plugin like API but cross browser, standardized , and with lessons learned for complexity and security.

You can see it skimming the WebAssembly high level design goals: https://webassembly.org/docs/high-level-goals/. Many of them directly address limitations of past web content plugin systems.

Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#166

Post by johnecheck »

johnisgood wrote: post #150
johnecheck wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just not the default. As the developer, it's trivial to make text selectable.

I meant it as an user.

Fair. If that's the deciding factor on whether you use a computer program, that's your prerogative. I assume, then, that every app on your phone allows you to select every bit of text in it?

Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#167

Post by hnuser123456 »

neuroelectron wrote: post #22
jillesvangurp wrote: post #9

> So there are only 2 web browser engines, and it seems likely there will soon only be 1, and making a whole new web browser from the ground up is effectively impossible because the browsers vendors have weaponized web standards complexity against any newcomers. Maybe eventually someone will succeed and there will be 2 again. Best case. What a situation. The premise of this article seems completely wrong. Chromium, S…

The "weaponization of complexity" is real—modern web standards are an endless labyrinth of APIs, performance optimizations, and security requirements. Large players like Google have the resources to dictate how the web evolves, while any newcomer faces insurmountable hurdles in achieving compatibility, security, and speed. Even major tech companies have tried and failed (e.g., Microsoft ditching EdgeHTML for Chromium…

How much of Edge switching to Chromium was a way for MS to shoot themselves in the foot and focus monopoly discussions on Google instead of themselves?

Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#168

Post by pjmlp »

zfg wrote: post #153
pjmlp wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, Flash was in the process of doing exactly that. https://adobe-flash.github.io/crossbridge/ Before asm2js was even an idea, Unreal compiled to Flash via CrossBridge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzyCTt5KLKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmZS7B1pLWg To this day, with exception of maybe PlayCanvas, there are hardly any tools that can match the same developer experience for WebGL, almost 15 years later.

> Wrong, Flash was in the process of doing exactly that. Except it didn't succeed at it. And Flash is long dead now. WebAssembly is here today and supports more languages than Flash ever did.

Because of Steve Jobs, followed by Chrome NaCL, superseded by PNaCL, that Mozzilla refused to adopt pushing asmjs instead, and having everyone to agree with WebAssembly, still a shadow of Flash developer tooling experience today.

And for what, now that Firefox is mostly irrelevant and is Google for all practical purposes calling the shots on the Web and related standards.

Don't mistake technical capabilities with political games.

Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#169

Post by floating-io »

wffurr wrote: post #163
floating-io wrote: post #55

Every day we get closer to reinventing the Java applet. Again.

WebAssembly is explicitly a new native plugin like API but cross browser, standardized , and with lessons learned for complexity and security. You can see it skimming the WebAssembly high level design goals: https://webassembly.org/docs/high-level-goals/ . Many of them directly address limitations of past web content plugin systems.

Last time I looked, you still can't touch the DOM without a JavaScript shim. You can't use it to write "normal" client-side web applications without hacks and workarounds.

IOW, it's a VM-style environment that pretty much lives on its own and completely ignores the elephant in the room: that it's running inside a browser that deals predominantly in HTML and CSS.

Just like Java Applets, Flash, ...

Re: WASM Wayland Web (WWW)

#170

Post by jfoster »

berkes wrote: post #95
jfoster wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the way that AI is unfolding right now, this might be an outdated problem fairly soon. In 2026 if you can just tell your AI to build a new full-featured browser before you go to sleep, you might have something in the morning.

AI might be heading towards a situation where you can "tell it to build a full featured browser". But this narrative is naive at best, and frankly, getting annoying too. Especially because it gets repeated by people who know even less about "programming" than those who start this idea in the first place. That AI cannot maintain this browser. It cannot monitor and fix performance issues. It won't be able to refactor s…

What is the fundamental limitation that prevents AI from ever doing the maintenance tasks that you mentioned?

Current AI cannot, of course, but the trajectory seems to be that it will be able to do such things better & faster than any human can.

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