The Missing Native/Web App Link: Google Says Native Client Almost Ready To Go | Hacker News Reader

The Missing Native/Web App Link: Google Says Native Client Almost Ready To Go

techcrunch.com

23 pointspitdesi8 comments

Soon your browser will be synonymous with your computer. There is a bunch of projects that work towards that same goal

- Chrome OS + NaCl (another part of their framework is called pepper) - WebOS - Various JavaScript SDKs (specialized like Game Closure or heavyweight like Sproutcore or small like backbone)

I always found it inefficient to 'install' software in multiple locations. It gives you a lot of headaches wrt updates, piracy etc.. I'm excited to see where this goes!

Notably not participating in the development is Apple, but I have a feeling they may be working on something like this as well (remember how the iPhone initially launched with just a JS SDK)

I'm curious if anyone in the HN community has messed with this, or sees a ton of potential. My first take is "eww browser plugins v2.0" but I'm not certain that's an informed opinion.

My first take is "eww browser plugins v2.0" but I'm not certain that's an informed opinion.

Same here on both counts. But I'm apparently far less enthusiastic then the average HNer on the concept of the web being the One True Way for computing.

To me the appeal of native code is the ability to load custom drivers for, surprise, custom hardware. It doesn't seem like this can do that, for "security" reasons. Can it even talk to hardware APIs (aka open a device handle and go to town?)

last i checked, you couldn't talk to custom hardware with it. you could do a html5/webkit/nacl installer-based app with appcelerator titanium and then modify things to talk to hardware.

I think that's the way forward, but for stuff that pays money I have to ship so I'm still kinda going with qt/swing/wx for cross-platform or wpf.

Would it be possible to port something like auto cad to chrome with this?

Yes. I think that's the entire point. Things like games and autocad have enormous codebases that will never be ported to javascript.

It's still not clear how much an advantage that is though. You can already share assets via the network while still using a local native application.

Pretty sure this is part of their ChromeOS strategy. It would be impressive and a big differentiator for a tablet (presumably an x86 tablet will exist at some point) to be able to run srs bzn programs.

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