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Web Starter Kit

developers.google.com

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Re: Web Starter Kit

#181

Post by cletusw »

malandrew wrote: post #55
sdegutis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who could fix it? What organization or individual could possibly create an architecture that all of the web could be ported to, that's better than our existing web? Especially considering we usually get pretty upset at companies for trying that.

No one needs to "fix it". What we need is more safe low level primitives from the user agents, that allow many individuals and companies to explore building alternatives in the browser. Then from two or more approaches, some standard will eventually shake out through the standardization process. Most features we have in the web started with a feature in one web browser, that others copied and eventually became a stan…

Sounds like the Extensible Web Manifesto [0]!

[0] http://extensiblewebmanifesto.org/

Re: Web Starter Kit

#182

Post by GrinningFool »

paul7986 wrote: post #133
ender7 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shocking, unprecedented, world-changing difference that the web brings is that on the web all you have to do is click a link and your computer downloads, "installs", and runs a program. No manual installation necessary, no upgrades, no installers or wizards. No delay. This process is safe -- the page is sandboxed and can't interfere with the rest of your machine. And these things can be instantly shared! All I ha…

Indeed and I don't understand why many other developers poo poo web applications vs native. For example we have a web app that syncs audio on any device running safari or chrome. When we demo/ turn a crowd and their devices into a stereo..we just ask them to go to X URL. They load it up in their device and the host hits play. The audience is not forced to download an app and do a few other steps. It's just load URL a…

Because the experience is not as good.

It's not as fast or as smooth or as fluid as a native experience.

It comes close, but there is a always a slight, yet perceptible lag.

In addition, each platform has specific strengths - and the LCD of web-enabled means that they can't be used.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#183

Post by webXL »

jh3 wrote: post #173
webXL wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The theory is fantastic, but the practice leaves much to be desired Ok... What is more fantastic for: - large audiences? - users who can't install/update software? - " " can't/don't back up data? - developers who don't have the resources to target multiple devices/platforms? - integrations with other applications?

What's fantastic is your use of " on the Internet. First time I've seen that.

You mean you saw something new today? Now that's fantastic!

Re: Web Starter Kit

#184

Post by georgemcbay »

jacquesm wrote: post #134
paul7986 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed and I don't understand why many other developers poo poo web applications vs native. For example we have a web app that syncs audio on any device running safari or chrome. When we demo/ turn a crowd and their devices into a stereo..we just ask them to go to X URL. They load it up in their device and the host hits play. The audience is not forced to download an app and do a few other steps. It's just load URL a…

> For example we have a web app that syncs audio on any device running safari or chrome. That's not a web-app thats a 'safari or chrome' app. This is more or less a perfect illustration of the the issue at hand here.

The other way this illustrates a massive problem is the idea that we are supposed to be impressed by this functionality.

I'm not speaking specifically of the functionality that the grandparent poster used in his example, but just the general idea, for example: "Look at this classic console emulator, running in a webpage! (At 80% of the speed it would have run on a circa-1990s 90 mhz Pentium if it were a a native app!)"

To be clear, it is impressive when people create such things given the constraints, but (even ignoring the fragile compatibility problem between different browsers) when the platform you are using makes doing something that was impressive almost 20 years ago impressive (again) today, I'm not sure that's something we should all be that proud of as an industry.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#185

Post by eli »

jacquesm wrote: post #158
ChuckMcM wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So understand I've got a bit of history here, back in the old days I was working on Java/HotJava and the whole applet thing. Netscape was doing their own thing with what would become known as Javascript. Our vision was "Gee everything that runs in Java can run anywhere, regardless of OS or device etc etc." its a great vision. In the nearly 20 years since since Java pushed out the door (March '95, best of times and wo…

I think that to some degree the lack of certification for browsers (and ditto for Java runtimes back in the days) is what is causing this. Write-once-run-anywhere became Write-once-debug-everywhere. Java seems to finally start to deliver on this promise though, the last few years have seen quite a bit of improvement. (Still far from perfect though, just the other day I was fighting some corporate website that insiste…

Didn't J2ME have a certification process? That was still a hot mess to develop for.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#186

Post by willnorris »

davb wrote: post #69
hobofan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always begin to think the same thing, but then they open source a new project that is hosted on Google Code.

I wondered if Google's internal development infrastructure looks like or hooks into Google Code, making it easy to release code publicly on Google Code.

Not really... it's about the same amount of work whether it goes to Google Code or GitHub. The teams that have an easier time of it are those that are using Git+Gerrit internally, since a public release is as simple as `git remote add` and `git push`. A number of teams continue to use tools like https://code.google.com/p/make-open-easy/ with varying degrees of success.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#187

Post by oliyoung »

mythz wrote: post #177

Why does this need to depend on Ruby as well as node.js? As a starter kit shouldn't it aim for the least dependencies to get started? So for devs who want to use this with another web framework like Python, They need to have node, Ruby and Python installed? Node is extremely easy to deploy/install that's even self-hostable where you can even check in node.exe (e.g. on Windows) into the repo so no prior installation i…

Ruby is a dependency for SASS, that'd be the only reason

Re: Web Starter Kit

#188

Post by gress »

voltagex_ wrote: post #172
gress wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like browsersync is a Chrome only proprietary feature.

http://browsersync.io/ - at least the server side seems to be open.

Nope. This is a chrome feature that just happens to have the same name as that site. There is no connection.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#189

Post by coldtea »

paul7986 wrote: post #133
ender7 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shocking, unprecedented, world-changing difference that the web brings is that on the web all you have to do is click a link and your computer downloads, "installs", and runs a program. No manual installation necessary, no upgrades, no installers or wizards. No delay. This process is safe -- the page is sandboxed and can't interfere with the rest of your machine. And these things can be instantly shared! All I ha…

Indeed and I don't understand why many other developers poo poo web applications vs native. For example we have a web app that syncs audio on any device running safari or chrome. When we demo/ turn a crowd and their devices into a stereo..we just ask them to go to X URL. They load it up in their device and the host hits play. The audience is not forced to download an app and do a few other steps. It's just load URL a…

>The audience is not forced to download an app and do a few other steps. It's just load URL and bam everyone's devices become a stereo. Many other ideas in this space can occur.

The same thing could happen with any sandboxed platform that allows code download from an internet resource -- even Java did it more than a decade ago (WebStart I think it was called).

For some reason (traction I guess) we did it through piling up of more and more BS into the web model (meant for documents), and leading into the current mess.

I mean, instead of the big guys (W3C style) getting together and creating a cross-platform sandboxed platform for native style apps (e.g with actual rich GUI widgets instead of just text entry boxes and text-boxes).

The irony is that each of the big guys developed a kind of its own half-arsed version of that, e.g Microsoft and XAML, QT and it's XML/JS thing, Adobe and Flex, etc etc.

Re: Web Starter Kit

#190

Post by coldtea »

jacquesm wrote: post #122
malandrew wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. This all leads me to wonder if work can't be done to take the good web concepts and back port them to the operating system level, per the ideas I've briefly touched on in these two prior comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7917921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7891913 edit: the two drive-by downvoters are invited to elaborate on how this comment could be improved or what they disagree with…

That almost reads as a re-invention of the java applet.

So? If the Java applet was not proprietary, slow and crappy, and if Sun got GUIs and applications, it would be a good thing.

And none of the above are necessary elements of a reinvention.

In fact, it's the current web one-page-app mess that is a re-invention of the notion of the Java applet warts and all: it's slow, has crappy GUI support, and it's a mess to develop in (like Swing was over-engineered crap).

We could use an actual sandboxed, "runs code from internet resources" platform, that contains the whole stack rethought and simplified.

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