Question for discussion: when have we reached the point where the Browser Feature-creep is too much and we say "okay, a browser probably doesn't need this"? Because after seeing WebUSB and WebGPU I think my personal limit has been reached.
Sure, but where do you draw the line really? For me, having WebUSB and WebMIDI for example is useful, I want to be able to interact with synths over MIDI in the browser, or be able to access other accessories. I also love the idea of GPU access, so my personal limit has not been reached.
Multiply this by every vendor, developer and user of every browser who contributes to the specifications, and you end up with probably 1000 different directions everyone wants to move in. How do you decide which is the right direction?
Right now, the choice you have is which browser you use. If you don't want WebUSB or WebGPU or anything else "new and fancy", choose a browser that doesn't implement those things.
Examples?
(Sure, it's Chrome-oriented ones. We've seen similar previously with IE, by the way.)
We have standards for the web. Real ones: the docs, which are discussed and approved in the industry. We have them for a long time!
So if some browser does not comply to the standards, it's really not the best strategy to adapt a site to the browser instead of the standards.
We are in the situation when (effectively) one company (Google/Alphabet) can lead anything to the whole market, step by step (even when changes contradict the web standards that are in place). The market is not the browsers market, of coyrse, but the internet ads through browsers control, which brings the most money to Google. By projecting its power to each and any aspect of it, Google ensures the uninterrupted market control for years ahead. So Google will continue to do. In the long run, we need to rely on standards instead of specific browsers. Otherwise it's just the monopoly of Google and web tech "market" is just their own backyard. That will bite us all hard.
It's not too good. It's just wealthiest. Because it holds ads market monopoly. Because it happens to be the popular search engine at the same time.
But it's not the best. Firefox is on par (I know they get some (most?) payments from Alphabet). And people were using Firefox/Netscape browser long before Google existed.
So it's not super frequent, but every few months there are important things I can't do in firefox.
If I used chrome daily perhaps I would see the opposite (broken on chrome, works on firefox).
I get the same feel from DuckDuckGo. I use it, till it doesn't work, then switch to google when it doesn't. Of course google would perform better, as I only use it for the cases where DDG fails.
It's a very clear trade-off in the hands of the user, which is correct.
I'm not sure I trust people who say something doesn't work in Firefox, unless they tried it in a fresh profile with default settings.
You'd need some tinkering to open a new browser window per monitor, couple of routes on 127.0.0.1 for config.
If it was something like a modern POSIX I don't think you'd have much complaining. But it's a lot heavier than that.
Help me understand why this is. Is it because there aren't native programs for the platform you're using? Is it to allow plug-ins or other abilities that wouldn't otherwise be available? Is it so that you can sync up with other musicians and play together in a way that wouldn't be possible without a browser?
choose a browser that doesn't implement those things.
The way feature creep have been going lately, in about six months that will mean Lynx.
Plus, plenty of languages have cross-platform runtimes and libraries, so not a big issue, not everything needs to be JavaScript.
Easier to create, easier to share and run. Mainly easier to create because the ones I'm sharing small MIDI sequencer experiments with are also web developers, so we just send each other links where we can run stuff direction from, and we can help each other out as we all use the same technology. Really easy to understand what the other is doing too, as you just open up the source of the page and that's it.
I've played around with other languages/runtimes for doing the same thing, but nothing is as fast to implement as with JavaScript, probably mostly due to familiarity.
It's like saying "if you don't like the laws(/taxes/whatever) where you live, go somewhere else" and acting as if I can just hop on over to Mars. I can't.
As we all spend most of our time inside of browser interfaces its not a surprise we see app, features and interfaces move to that process portal to. (Online IDEs, Cloud, Photo editing, etc.) Sure you can use your solution but in general, as always, its whats most efficient for the masses.
It seems clear to me that the main issue here is that a lot of programs aren't closely tied to the hardware or the OS. Building them to be so is an annoyance for both users and developers. As Scott McNealy said, you don't need to know how to operate a nuclear power plant to turn on the lights, and most users just want to get stuff done.
That we have three major operating systems still going relatively strong is evidence that there are differences that matters to people. But for a lot of applications those differences don't. The WebXYZ stuff thus increases usability a lot by simultaneously solving the cross-platform compatibility issues and distribution.
In my ESPHome example above literally opened the website, plugged in the USB cable to my device, clicked a button on the web page and the job was done.
So while I don't really like that the same web browser is used to surf other web sites, given that these WebXYZ components present additional security risks and fingerprinting opportunities, I can't deny that they're useful.
Excited to try it out with some ESPHome projects too now.
It's nowadays also a cross-platform insta-deployment GUI application runtime environment with mostly bad native OS integration and performance characteristics (both ~improving, there's even native filesystem access now).
In any case it's Good Enough (C), so it sticks.
edit: wow, I had no idea and I've been a web dev for over a decade lol
Free yourself from the notion that a web browser should do anything more than browsing the web. native applications have existed for decades, no reason to bloat the scope of a browser.
You seem to demand that people ignore this reality, because you don't like it. This is not helpful.
I don't like this reality either, but despite that I find your statement also factually incorrect: "native applications have existed for decades, no reason to bloat the scope of a browser".
Of course there are reasons, otherwise people/companies won't do it, and users won't use bloated browser that give them no benefits.
I agree that downsides outweigh the upsides, but the upsides are obvious and immediate while the downsides are long-term and mostly subtle...
The reason is of course control. Things running in the browser gives Google control. That's why they push for everything running there. Want to compete with Google? Tough luck, no tracking for you while they give themselves IDs built into the browser. Do something Google doesn't like? Maybe your site isn't "safe" enough according to Google and won't be shown to users. Invested in your webapp but want to integrate something novel? Guess who gets to decide if you can?
Seeing a semi-technical acquaintance use in-browser software for daily productive work hurts my programmer's soul. It's alright for some light things, like vacation planning, but remote desktop or an IDE...
Then there's that other scourge of Electron-like apps with gigantic memory budgets and all. I have resigned to throwing more hardware at it when I can't guarantee a lighter replacement (i.e. in a work setting):
All my productive systems have 32GB RAM and 8+ threads now and with browser, Teams, Outlook, IDE and dev containers the air's getting thin again :/
I really dont want to see a repeat of phone apps for every company I interact with.
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=chrome
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=firefox
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=webkit
Those are the main reasons. And seeing how browsers are essentially designed to run other peoples code with minimal to no vetting processes, I consider this a serious issue.
How many times have _you_ as a developer, run arbitrary scripts from the internet? Blindly accepts packages that you have not vetted?
Remember Flash? ;)
Every new feature is more space for security issues to exist.
But browsers don't limit themselves to serving your needs only, and they are not in the business of promoting your approach to computing among their users. Why would they?
One example of many: Backspace no longer taking your to the previous page because that conflicts with usage in web apps.
Again, it did not happen without any reason, it happened for a reason. The purposes the modern browsers serve apparently are more important to their users than that original purpose!
Indeed, I believe there are obscure browsers that don't support any of this new stuff, and are only good for rendering plain old HTML. They remain obscure for the obvious reason: they cannot be used for what most people use the browsers most of the time.
Seems like a perfectly reasonable new feature to me. I'm actually looking forward to people using this to build some cool stuff. Why should that not be a thing?
Though ironically maybe given that the browser can do so much is the reason that Microsoft has to focus on ‘value add’ crap instead of just a rock solid OS. Which sets up a self reinforcing cycle. Microsoft should recognize that this was intentional move by Google and not take the bait.
I agree there have been some questionable 'advancements' in the web spec recently (web workers as a solution to multithreading, for example, were hilariously inadequate for quite a while), but as far as I can tell WGPU is a solid effort to unlock browsers as an actually interactive platform, instead of the fairly static image/text display devices they are today.
Maybe our visions of what browsers could or 'should' be are different
Eventually I'd like to see WebGL deprecated, and perhaps an extension released to reimplement it. Or it could be adapted to translate calls to WebGPU, rather than having a completely separate implementation.
Is that realistic? No, of course not. Browser vendors take backwards compatibility pretty seriously, and WebGL is used on a ton of websites. Still, that'd be my preferred solution for avoiding said feature creep.
https://github.com/atrosinenko/qemujs
https://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/ibmpc-games/
https://leaningtech.com/webvm-server-less-x86-virtual-machin...
and so on...
The OS runs on hardware, what do you think is below the OS you're running?
Even excluding VMs, there are a lot of OSes running in a modern computer. Some chips have their own. BIOSes and Secure Enclave, networking chips, and probably a dozen more.
Try not to be a condescending dickweed, if you can.