Hi all- CEO of StackBlitz/author of this blog post here. Happy to answer any questions! (Also, thanks for posting this bpierre!)
Hi, Can you share how it is working under the hood ?
WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser
191–200 of 238 posts
Re: WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many of the more "advanced APIs" are unlikely to be shipped in either Firefox or Safari because of security and privacy concerns. For example, Chrome released File System Access by defaul tin Chrome 86, on October 6, 2020. And yet, as late as August 2020 they were saying that they'd just got the spec in shape: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/154#is... . And there are still unresolved issues arou…
> 13 issues These are mostly a to-do list...which makes sense at this stage? I'm not sure what you're getting at. Do you think that Apple or Mozilla can stop webapps from taking their rightful place?
> These are mostly a to-do list...which makes sense at this stage
Which stage is it? Chrome is already shipping this, enabled by default.
And the "todo list" covers important issues around permissions, restricting file system access we etc.
> Do you think that Apple or Mozilla can stop webapps from taking their rightful place?
I think that Chrome plays fast and loose with web standards, and has essentially replaced web standards with Chrome-designed and Chrome-specific APIs, while fully ignoring any concerns from other browsers.
Re: WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
If business PCs are running Microsoft Teams + Outlook PWAs on Edge (Chromium based), personal PCs as a majority are running Chrome/Chromium...I can't see why Apple wouldn't come to a compromise to treat PWAs with respect. It's not just about privacy of web APIs...it's about Apple's chokehold on iPhone users.
> It's not just about privacy of web APIs...it's about Apple's chokehold on iPhone users. Funny how you fully ignore Firefox's position
They're unable to keep anything close to security parity with Chromium — even with hundreds of millions of dollars.
You're right — frankly, I don't look to Mozilla as the leader or voice of web development anymore.
Re: WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser
#194This makes me want to quit webdev and never look back. Why the fuck are we recreating operating systems in the browser? We already have operating systems. We already have containers. We already have native code execution.
Re: WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me too and I was surprised to find that Chrome lists this as "ready" or "released" (I don't recall the exact term). I tried the example web based editor and found that the file system access API worked in Firefox too. I'm working on a note taking project right now that I think would be great as a web app, but I'd like to store the result in a flat text file and the file system access API looks like it will let me do…
> ..found that the file system access API worked in Firefox too For now, File System Access API seems to be available only in desktop Chromium browsers: Edge, Chrome, Opera. I believe Firefox has not implemented it yet. https://caniuse.com/native-filesystem-api --- Mozilla's current position on the specs: > The ability to read and write from the filesystem is potentially very dangerous. We will need to carefully cons…
They said it worked in Firefox...
Re: WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser
#196This makes me want to quit webdev and never look back. Why the fuck are we recreating operating systems in the browser? We already have operating systems. We already have containers. We already have native code execution.
Why is this a problem? Why can't they try out new things?!
Re: WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 13 issues These are mostly a to-do list...which makes sense at this stage? I'm not sure what you're getting at. Do you think that Apple or Mozilla can stop webapps from taking their rightful place?
> These are mostly a to-do list...which makes sense at this stage Which stage is it? Chrome is already shipping this, enabled by default. And the "todo list" covers important issues around permissions, restricting file system access we etc. > Do you think that Apple or Mozilla can stop webapps from taking their rightful place? I think that Chrome plays fast and loose with web standards, and has essentially replaced w…
> Which stage is it?
The stage where a majority of professional web devs (y'know, the people who aren't here!) still haven't even heard, or fully assimilated, the term "PWA" yet.
> the "todo list" covers important issues around permissions, restricting file system access we etc.
They've proven very capable of managing this in AOSP.
> I think that Chrome plays fast and loose with web standards, and has essentially replaced web standards with Chrome-designed and Chrome-specific APIs, while fully ignoring any concerns from other browsers.
"Chrome-specific" implies DRM etc which I don't find fair here, as a very regular Google critic.
If the concerns are always "We can't keep up", I don't blame Chromium team for pushing on ahead, and letting other browsers catch up.
Frankly: Mozilla isn't leading the way on web standards anymore. (And they're not doing as good a job with security+privacy, really, either, compared to properly configured Chromium.)
Re: WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser
#198Everyone thought WASM would enable developers to write code in any language they wanted (with type checking and higher performance) and deploy it on the web. JS Developers come in: so we can compile node.js to WASM and run that in the browser?! Yay!! Now we can have backend JS running in the browser alongside browser JS! Jokes aside: this is actually quite interesting, the demo is very impressive (except for the "onl…
> Everyone thought WASM would enable developers to write code in any language they wanted (with type checking and higher performance) and deploy it on the web. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebAssembly/Concept... > WebAssembly is a different language from JavaScript, but it is not intended as a replacement. Instead, it is designed to complement and work alongside JavaScript, allowing web developers to take…
That was the idea, the world decided otherwise based on the Flash and Silverlight experience versus clunky Web.
Re: WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could add some kind of security manager to sand box it and have little apps running in the browser. Maybe call them "applets".
That sounds amazing! What if they came with some kind of built-in canvas?
Re: WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a really good point. What we wanted all along was the JVM with a DOM API. We started with Java. It didn't gain any traction for browser scripting. They took "Java" out and called it JavaScript. Now we take the "script" out and call it WebAssembly. If someone in 1995 made Java a DOM-editing thing instead of an applet thing, we could have saved 25 years of running around in circles :) (Going back even further, w…
What I’ve always wanted is scheme in the browser.