5 ms·

Yeah? I don't see the problem. Why does it matter how a web page is constructed? If it is fast, secure, and does what the user needs, what is the problem?

by rpedela 11y ago

jacquesm 11y ago
It matters because (1) not everybody can see that web page, (2) the ability to inspect the pages is what caused the knowledge about how the web was made to spread and (3) it is a step backwards in terms of being an 'open' vehicle. That it's fast, secure and does what the user needs is not being disputed.
- metaphorm 11y ago
  I think you're possibly underestimating the cost and difficulty of developing apps using low level code (or whatever web assembly is, lower level than html+css anyway). its technically difficult enough that I think its main use case will be for somewhat large and well funded companies that have the budget and expertise to deliver a fairly complex client side app that has behavior and design that is not easily done in existing web technologies. for example, all the stuff that people attempt to do now on HTML canvases seems like a likely candidate to be replaced by web assembly apps. this could lead to an era of high performance streaming apps with pretty impressive graphics capabilities. basically just a huge upgrade to emscripten, right? I'm just not seeing this as being a real threat/competitor with traditional document based content on the web. I don't think that's going anywhere and I don't think web assembly interferes with that on any significant level.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    It might get distributed to the browser as low-level code, but it won't be for the developers - they'll just use compilers and toolkits. In fact, I'd bet an integrated tool for compiling the codebase of an Android app to WebAssembly won't take long to appear. It'll only be technically difficult in the first couple of years, if that.
wlesieutre 11y ago
Because people will take it and say "Hey, with WebAssembly I can rip out the entire DOM and roll my own layout and text rendering directly to a canvas like some sort of game engine! By avoiding standard webpage structures, we can make our ads harder to block!" And really, who cares about copy/paste, accessibility, fair use, user stylesheets, or any of that, when you could trade it for more resilient advertising? Not publishers, that's for sure. It's going to open the floodgates to a new generation of those crappy bundled-up Flash websites that gave you very limited ability to interact with their content. There are of course better things to do with it, but from my limited understanding of WebAssembly this is my biggest prediction for what it'll get used for.
- wilg 11y ago
  Couldn't you do that with JavaScript anyway?
  - drdaeman 11y ago
    Sure, it's just optimizing some bottlenecks at this point. WebAssembly is just what JavaScript was evolving/heading to - I think it was a clear that it'd end up somewhere there for almost a decade.
- rubber_duck 11y ago
  >Because people will take it and say "Hey, with WebAssembly I can rip out the entire DOM and roll my own layout and text rendering directly to a canvas like some sort of game engine! By avoiding standard webpage structures, we can make our ads harder to block!" You say that as if it was a bad thing. There is two kind of content (relevant to this diacussion at least) that get served trough the web - documents/media and apps. DOM/HTML is ok for the former it's a horrible hack in the latter and most of your objections to custom gui also apply to DOM gui frameworks + they are dog slow and annoying to use. There is room in the middle (webapps) but there is definately a class of apps out there that just don't fit in to the DOM/HTML and get zero benefits from it outside of delivery which is why they get done that way.
- m_fayer 11y ago
zeveb 11y ago
> Why does it matter how a web page is constructed? If it is fast, secure, and does what the user needs, what is the problem? Because by definition if it is constructed with JavaScript it is neither fast nor secure.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
Sanddancer 11y ago
Because it often doesn't do what a user needs. Try using a screen reader on a lot of "modern" websites some time. There are specifications to make this easy, but people ignore them because accessibility is "too expensive".
- rpedela 11y ago
  That has much more to do with the software developers themselves than the underlying technology. I don't buy the accessibility argument at all. WebAssembly and accessibility are not mutually exclusive.

Yeah? I don't see the problem. Why does it matter how a web page is constructed? If it is fast, secure, and does what the user needs, what is the problem?

by rpedela 11y ago

Yeah? I don't see the problem. Why does it matter how a web page is constructed? If it is fast, secure, and does what the user needs, what is the problem?

jacquesm 11y ago

It matters because (1) not everybody can see that web page, (2) the ability to inspect the pages is what caused the knowledge about how the web was made to spread and (3) it is a step backwards in terms of being an 'open' vehicle. That it's fast, secure and does what the user needs is not being disputed.

metaphorm 11y ago
I think you're possibly underestimating the cost and difficulty of developing apps using low level code (or whatever web assembly is, lower level than html+css anyway). its technically difficult enough that I think its main use case will be for somewhat large and well funded companies that have the budget and expertise to deliver a fairly complex client side app that has behavior and design that is not easily done in existing web technologies. for example, all the stuff that people attempt to do now on HTML canvases seems like a likely candidate to be replaced by web assembly apps. this could lead to an era of high performance streaming apps with pretty impressive graphics capabilities. basically just a huge upgrade to emscripten, right? I'm just not seeing this as being a real threat/competitor with traditional document based content on the web. I don't think that's going anywhere and I don't think web assembly interferes with that on any significant level.
- icebraining 11y ago
  It might get distributed to the browser as low-level code, but it won't be for the developers - they'll just use compilers and toolkits. In fact, I'd bet an integrated tool for compiling the codebase of an Android app to WebAssembly won't take long to appear. It'll only be technically difficult in the first couple of years, if that.

wlesieutre 11y ago

Because people will take it and say "Hey, with WebAssembly I can rip out the entire DOM and roll my own layout and text rendering directly to a canvas like some sort of game engine! By avoiding standard webpage structures, we can make our ads harder to block!" And really, who cares about copy/paste, accessibility, fair use, user stylesheets, or any of that, when you could trade it for more resilient advertising? Not publishers, that's for sure. It's going to open the floodgates to a new generation of those crappy bundled-up Flash websites that gave you very limited ability to interact with their content. There are of course better things to do with it, but from my limited understanding of WebAssembly this is my biggest prediction for what it'll get used for.

wilg 11y ago
Couldn't you do that with JavaScript anyway?
- drdaeman 11y ago
  Sure, it's just optimizing some bottlenecks at this point. WebAssembly is just what JavaScript was evolving/heading to - I think it was a clear that it'd end up somewhere there for almost a decade.
rubber_duck 11y ago
>Because people will take it and say "Hey, with WebAssembly I can rip out the entire DOM and roll my own layout and text rendering directly to a canvas like some sort of game engine! By avoiding standard webpage structures, we can make our ads harder to block!" You say that as if it was a bad thing. There is two kind of content (relevant to this diacussion at least) that get served trough the web - documents/media and apps. DOM/HTML is ok for the former it's a horrible hack in the latter and most of your objections to custom gui also apply to DOM gui frameworks + they are dog slow and annoying to use. There is room in the middle (webapps) but there is definately a class of apps out there that just don't fit in to the DOM/HTML and get zero benefits from it outside of delivery which is why they get done that way.
m_fayer 11y ago

zeveb 11y ago

> Why does it matter how a web page is constructed? If it is fast, secure, and does what the user needs, what is the problem? Because by definition if it is constructed with JavaScript it is neither fast nor secure.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

Sanddancer 11y ago

Because it often doesn't do what a user needs. Try using a screen reader on a lot of "modern" websites some time. There are specifications to make this easy, but people ignore them because accessibility is "too expensive".

rpedela 11y ago
That has much more to do with the software developers themselves than the underlying technology. I don't buy the accessibility argument at all. WebAssembly and accessibility are not mutually exclusive.