On Thursday, 18 June 2015 at 21:15:35 UTC, Wyatt wrote:
On Thursday, 18 June 2015 at 19:23:26 UTC, Joakim wrote:
On Thursday, 18 June 2015 at 18:30:24 UTC, Abdulhaq wrote:
Of course this is exactly true and it drives me mad too, but
you can't just jettison it in favour of a better architecture.
Why not? This is exactly what _should_ be done.
Same reason you can't just stick your head in the sand and
pretend the entire existing body of C and C++ code doesn't
exist.
It sucks, but them's the breaks.
The difference is that "existing body of C and C++ code" actually
does something and works. The existing web stuff is just GUI
markup, that as Bray notes never quite works, so it can easily be
ditched. It is _already_ being ditched, for native mobile UIs.
I know of major shopping websites in developing markets that have
shut down their mobile websites in favor of their mobile apps.
It's just too much of a pain to keep the web frontend going.
I think the reason these efforts have failed so far is because
NaCl was still stuck using the existing web stack for the GUI,
NaCl failed because it required a plugin, and did so in a way
that made it exclusive to one browser vendor. It's like Java
only worse. Or that thrice-be-damned Flash.
No, NaCl has been built into Chrome, one of the major browsers,
for a while. I believe it could be used to secure plugins, but
did not require you to install one. At least, I've certainly
used it without receiving a plugin prompt. And Java and Flash
were ubiquitous at one point in their histories.
But if you're just going to avoid the old web stack altogether
and try to deploy your canvas/WebGL/assembly native app
everywhere using the web browser as a trojan horse, presumably
just to get through security or evade sysadmins more easily,
you have to question what the point of making it a "web app"
even is.
The point is it runs in a browser. Do you need a more
compelling feature than the ability to run unchanged anywhere
there's a browser (basically everywhere)? I mean, I too think
Think about that. Once you're writing your app in WebGL/webasm,
what are you really gaining over just making it a mobile app for
iOS/Android, both of which support OpenGL/asm? ;)
most of this "web technology" is trash and really wish the
lingua fraca of the Internet wasn't awful-- I would love for
text to be foremost and for progressive enhancement to fall
back to a normal web site when I visit with elinks.
Those days are gone. The dynamic model of HTML5, where pages are
not even the organizing principle anymore, means they need to
rethink the entire model. But I see no evidence that anybody is
doing so, simply piling more stuff on top.
But realistically? This is a damn sight better than any of the
other attempts so far because it's just a new feature in the JS
VM. If it means we can lower code in a proper language to
something a browser can run at something resembling the speed
of an ordinary scripting language, it'll be a win already.
I agree that if webasm finally delivers on the promise of NaCl,
which I said I was hopeful for, it will be a worthwhile
improvement. If it means you can avoid writing javascript
entirely and get decent performance, it is definitely a big win.
And this new stuff isn't integrated, I believe canvas doesn't
even support hyperlinks. How is that not broken already?
Look, I don't fundamentally disagree that this all sucks but
dude, chill. Here, go play some Oregon Trail:
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_The_1990 ;)
Nah, time to break it.
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/paths.html
SVG has animation, input handling, and an audio API(!) and you
take issue with paths? Weeeeeak. :P
No, I take issue with the text format, especially XML. That was
a horrible idea, regardless of how many good features they built
in.
