5 ms·

I never understood why people want to use browser technologies for the internet of things.

Already__Taken 11y ago
Have you seen this talk it might lend some persepctive - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy062kp-LM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy062kp-LM4
userbinator 11y ago
I think it's just unfamiliarity with anything else, and unawareness of the staggering complexity this introduces. Also, this is Mozilla who have a large concentration of people familiar with browser technologies. On the other hand, I think IoTs with web interfaces aren't a bad idea.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > I think IoTs with web interfaces aren't a bad idea. I think it is. The internet-of-things does not need to suffer from massive power consumption and hard to implement on the micro-controller scale protocols. It needs something much more along the lines of encrypted UDP than that it needs to use 'web technologies'. Imagining a stack made on 'web technologies' running off power harvested over a relatively long period of time is painful.
  - userbinator 11y ago
    I had in mind more things like routers, home automation management consoles, etc. which have had web interfaces for a very long time, but it doesn't take all that much power to do it[1], unless you want to run a full Linux kernel and JS and all that other bloat which tiny IoTs don't need. [1] http://www-ccs.cs.umass.edu/shri/iPic.html http://www-ccs.cs.umass.edu/shri/iPic.html (images also mirrored at http://cc2.savs.hcc.edu.tw/~chuavv/smallest/iPic/ipic.html http://cc2.savs.hcc.edu.tw/~chuavv/smallest/iPic/ipic.html )
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Indeed. Basic web technologies - client-side HTML, CSS and JavaScript (and I mean writing them directly, not via absurdly wasteful layers of JS frameworks) - are a great tools for adding UIs to connected devices. You don't need that much resources for a HTTP server if you already have TCP/IP connectivity, and you also don't need much resources to output some rudimentary HTML or to process POST requests. It's also a pretty cool tool for adding UIs to software you code locally. Embedding a HTTP server is simple in most languages, and for some cases, a web interface will be much simpler than building an equivalent from "native" UI components. -- Incidentally, one of the best demonstrations I saw of that was in the book Land of Lisp. The book teaches you Common Lisp by guiding you through writing a few games. At some point, you end up embedding in your game a very simple HTTP server - and suddenly, you get to have interactive graphics (via SVG) without the author having to teach you lots of stuff about some random UI library.
  - IshKebab 11y ago
    I think a good option is CoAP.
- raffomania 11y ago
  That's a good point. And running node.js on an IoT device still makes sense to me, but emulating a browser just seems unnecessary.
  - gdamjan1 11y ago
    Then-again, chromecast does the same
- espadrine 11y ago
  > this is Mozilla who have a large concentration of people familiar with browser technologies. It does, but this is not the reason. Browsers have grown to contain a stellar collection of networking APIs (compared to the rest), and IoT devices depend on talking to each other. Indeed, the people at Mozilla working on this stuff know more about the nitty-gritty of the low-level than about standard Web development. The API is for the users.
jokoon 11y ago
Browsers allowed developers to bring new things to customers quickly, because it was the only decent way of developing application that could work with Windows. It was the only way good open source software could "breach" how microsoft was doing business and putting barriers to the internet. The problem is that now, we should move on, and use something else than a browser. Maybe it involves inventing an alternative to html, or making all application networking p2p. Not talking only about bitcoin. Also, html is so much focused on TCP, and not on real time networking. I'm not dismissing the web, but to me it seems that it's the only decent standard to do things, and there's really nothing else.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > It was the only way good open source software could "breach" how microsoft was doing business and putting barriers to the internet. Maybe I'm missing out on a big chapter of the history of computing, but I don't recall Open Source done via webapps until very recently. Most of the things browsers did were things that mattered only to businesses - like easier software updates, and much more control over the customers and their data. And the latter reasons are why web technologies are popular today.
shawn-butler 11y ago
When your only tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail.
jlgaddis 11y ago
They're still trying to find a problem for FirefoxOS to solve.

Have you seen this talk it might lend some persepctive - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy062kp-LM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy062kp-LM4

userbinator 11y ago

I think it's just unfamiliarity with anything else, and unawareness of the staggering complexity this introduces. Also, this is Mozilla who have a large concentration of people familiar with browser technologies. On the other hand, I think IoTs with web interfaces aren't a bad idea.

jacquesm 11y ago
> I think IoTs with web interfaces aren't a bad idea. I think it is. The internet-of-things does not need to suffer from massive power consumption and hard to implement on the micro-controller scale protocols. It needs something much more along the lines of encrypted UDP than that it needs to use 'web technologies'. Imagining a stack made on 'web technologies' running off power harvested over a relatively long period of time is painful.
- userbinator 11y ago
  I had in mind more things like routers, home automation management consoles, etc. which have had web interfaces for a very long time, but it doesn't take all that much power to do it[1], unless you want to run a full Linux kernel and JS and all that other bloat which tiny IoTs don't need. [1] http://www-ccs.cs.umass.edu/shri/iPic.html http://www-ccs.cs.umass.edu/shri/iPic.html (images also mirrored at http://cc2.savs.hcc.edu.tw/~chuavv/smallest/iPic/ipic.html http://cc2.savs.hcc.edu.tw/~chuavv/smallest/iPic/ipic.html )
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Indeed. Basic web technologies - client-side HTML, CSS and JavaScript (and I mean writing them directly, not via absurdly wasteful layers of JS frameworks) - are a great tools for adding UIs to connected devices. You don't need that much resources for a HTTP server if you already have TCP/IP connectivity, and you also don't need much resources to output some rudimentary HTML or to process POST requests. It's also a pretty cool tool for adding UIs to software you code locally. Embedding a HTTP server is simple in most languages, and for some cases, a web interface will be much simpler than building an equivalent from "native" UI components. -- Incidentally, one of the best demonstrations I saw of that was in the book Land of Lisp. The book teaches you Common Lisp by guiding you through writing a few games. At some point, you end up embedding in your game a very simple HTTP server - and suddenly, you get to have interactive graphics (via SVG) without the author having to teach you lots of stuff about some random UI library.
- IshKebab 11y ago
  I think a good option is CoAP.
raffomania 11y ago
That's a good point. And running node.js on an IoT device still makes sense to me, but emulating a browser just seems unnecessary.
- gdamjan1 11y ago
  Then-again, chromecast does the same
espadrine 11y ago
> this is Mozilla who have a large concentration of people familiar with browser technologies. It does, but this is not the reason. Browsers have grown to contain a stellar collection of networking APIs (compared to the rest), and IoT devices depend on talking to each other. Indeed, the people at Mozilla working on this stuff know more about the nitty-gritty of the low-level than about standard Web development. The API is for the users.

jokoon 11y ago

Browsers allowed developers to bring new things to customers quickly, because it was the only decent way of developing application that could work with Windows. It was the only way good open source software could "breach" how microsoft was doing business and putting barriers to the internet. The problem is that now, we should move on, and use something else than a browser. Maybe it involves inventing an alternative to html, or making all application networking p2p. Not talking only about bitcoin. Also, html is so much focused on TCP, and not on real time networking. I'm not dismissing the web, but to me it seems that it's the only decent standard to do things, and there's really nothing else.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
> It was the only way good open source software could "breach" how microsoft was doing business and putting barriers to the internet. Maybe I'm missing out on a big chapter of the history of computing, but I don't recall Open Source done via webapps until very recently. Most of the things browsers did were things that mattered only to businesses - like easier software updates, and much more control over the customers and their data. And the latter reasons are why web technologies are popular today.

shawn-butler 11y ago

When your only tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail.

jlgaddis 11y ago

They're still trying to find a problem for FirefoxOS to solve.