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I hate to break it to you, but we're already there. People have been using the web to deliver desktop-like applications for the past decade. Over that period of

I hate to break it to you, but we're already there. People have been using the web to deliver desktop-like applications for the past decade. Over that period of time, the number of people connected to the Internet has more than doubled [1] and will continue to increase. Whether or not an application is delivered through a browser or natively is inconsequential to most of these users. If we look at the list of the most popular websites [2] we see mostly content-delivery platforms (Google, Bing, Wikipedia etc.) with some popular web apps which resemble desktop software in complexity (Facebook, YouTube, Windows Live etc.) So we have two paths forward. One, we could try to influence the habits of billions of Internet users who use desktop-like web applications in an attempt to restore the document-based nature of the web; or two, we could provide an alternative to the artifice of modern JavaScript development which allows for better applications to be written and distributed to users that use and rely on them. The latter initiative is the more realistic and productive one, in my opinion. WebAssembly will not lead to the end-of-times of the Internet as a content delivery vehicle. It is a net positive for the parts of the web that do not fulfill that purpose. If you're worried about the free and open web as a publishing platform, look more to governments and corporations around the world that collude to limit our freedom of expression (Facebook, we're all looking at you [3]). [1] http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/ http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites [3] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/facebook-and-the-new-colonialism/462393/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/facebo...

teej 11y ago
We have been doing this for -decades- with Shockwave, Java applets, and Active X controls.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- CaptSpify 11y ago
  But they always end up abused. Everyone hates all of those, and that's good, because it causes people to steer away from them. Instead of throwing our hands up, and giving up, we should continue to try to keep those out.
  - bobajeff 11y ago
    The main thing I didn't like about those was that they were proprietary single vendor blobs that stagnated and ran poorly.
    - CaptSpify 11y ago
      I guess I fail to see how the end result of this will end up any different
      - bobajeff 11y ago
        Considering WebAssembly is a feature that going to be standardised and supported in all JavaScript engines while those other things were either proprietary runtimes or browser specific API's I'd say you have no reason to think this will end up like them.
        CaptSpify 11y ago
        so, IMO, I don't think any of them failed because they were > standardised and supported in all JavaScript engines while those other things were either proprietary runtimes or browser specific API's I think they failed because they were closed off, and nobody could read the shitty code, so people wrote shitty code. If we have things open, it gives people an incentive to make it look/work nice. Sure, not everyone will, but it makes it easier to shame those that dont.
        bobajeff 11y ago
        You can't read the code of most C++ programs yet if operating systems dropped support for C++ there would be a reckoning.
- niutech 11y ago
  But this time we do it fully open source, working everywhere unlike ActiveX, and much faster than Java applets.
tkinom 11y ago
I wonder if we will see ios/android apk app running in browser soon. We already got DOS, Linux kernel, Window 95 running in the browser as very cool demo projects. Maybe Angry bird Apk running unmodified inside browser at close to device speed would be next?
- drdaeman 11y ago
  They (APKs) already do in Chrome. Except for, security constraints, currently require that APKs are packaged as Chrome extensions, and can't be served from web directly.
- vmorgulis 11y ago
  > I wonder if we will see ios/android apk app running in browser soon. or apt-get, yum or pacman...
- yarou 11y ago
  You can already do this with App Runtime for Chrome.
wwweston 11y ago
> Whether or not an application is delivered through a browser or natively is inconsequential to most of these users. This is probably the most true statement in your entire comment. Running with the assumption that of course we should ignore the users who aren't "most" users (not a safe one).... I'd go farther, though. Whether or not these users are getting access to the utility they're looking for through: (1) a web page with some layer of interactivity on top of more-or-less legible document semantics or (2) whether they get it through a giant-blob-of-code SPA is also irrelevant, right? Except to some minority of power users who can actually get more utility when someone uses a more basic semantic-document resource-oriented approach. So it isn't the users who are driving the "let's use the web as a VM for desktop apps!" trend. It's the developers. And it isn't the billions of Internet users whose habits would need to change. I'd guess the most ready response to this would be something like "How would you have the current Facebook/YouTube/WebMail Experience without this Desktop-Experience-Focus?" But as far as I can tell, the essentially utility involved here -- and to a large extent, the best things about the experience -- haven't really changed since a FB page was actually a legible document (a milestone we left down the road a looooong time ago). The document-centered approach does have its limits. There are some applications it will not support. First-person shooters.... sure, deploy a black-box binary to a runtime. Facebook, YouTube, and web mail are not really in that category at this point, and developer choices are the primary thing driving the march away from documents here.
- hackuser 11y ago
  It's only a small minority of users who are affected, but historically how much innovation happened due to the web's openness and that small minority's tinkering.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    The majority of web "innovation" already existed at Xerox PARC hypermedia applications. The web is just a worse experience of what Xerox already had.
    - jacquesm 11y ago

teej 11y ago

We have been doing this for -decades- with Shockwave, Java applets, and Active X controls.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
CaptSpify 11y ago
But they always end up abused. Everyone hates all of those, and that's good, because it causes people to steer away from them. Instead of throwing our hands up, and giving up, we should continue to try to keep those out.
- bobajeff 11y ago
  The main thing I didn't like about those was that they were proprietary single vendor blobs that stagnated and ran poorly.
  - CaptSpify 11y ago
    I guess I fail to see how the end result of this will end up any different
    - bobajeff 11y ago
      Considering WebAssembly is a feature that going to be standardised and supported in all JavaScript engines while those other things were either proprietary runtimes or browser specific API's I'd say you have no reason to think this will end up like them.
      - CaptSpify 11y ago
        so, IMO, I don't think any of them failed because they were > standardised and supported in all JavaScript engines while those other things were either proprietary runtimes or browser specific API's I think they failed because they were closed off, and nobody could read the shitty code, so people wrote shitty code. If we have things open, it gives people an incentive to make it look/work nice. Sure, not everyone will, but it makes it easier to shame those that dont.
        bobajeff 11y ago
        You can't read the code of most C++ programs yet if operating systems dropped support for C++ there would be a reckoning.
niutech 11y ago
But this time we do it fully open source, working everywhere unlike ActiveX, and much faster than Java applets.

tkinom 11y ago

I wonder if we will see ios/android apk app running in browser soon. We already got DOS, Linux kernel, Window 95 running in the browser as very cool demo projects. Maybe Angry bird Apk running unmodified inside browser at close to device speed would be next?

drdaeman 11y ago
They (APKs) already do in Chrome. Except for, security constraints, currently require that APKs are packaged as Chrome extensions, and can't be served from web directly.
vmorgulis 11y ago
> I wonder if we will see ios/android apk app running in browser soon. or apt-get, yum or pacman...
yarou 11y ago
You can already do this with App Runtime for Chrome.

wwweston 11y ago

> Whether or not an application is delivered through a browser or natively is inconsequential to most of these users. This is probably the most true statement in your entire comment. Running with the assumption that of course we should ignore the users who aren't "most" users (not a safe one).... I'd go farther, though. Whether or not these users are getting access to the utility they're looking for through: (1) a web page with some layer of interactivity on top of more-or-less legible document semantics or (2) whether they get it through a giant-blob-of-code SPA is also irrelevant, right? Except to some minority of power users who can actually get more utility when someone uses a more basic semantic-document resource-oriented approach. So it isn't the users who are driving the "let's use the web as a VM for desktop apps!" trend. It's the developers. And it isn't the billions of Internet users whose habits would need to change. I'd guess the most ready response to this would be something like "How would you have the current Facebook/YouTube/WebMail Experience without this Desktop-Experience-Focus?" But as far as I can tell, the essentially utility involved here -- and to a large extent, the best things about the experience -- haven't really changed since a FB page was actually a legible document (a milestone we left down the road a looooong time ago). The document-centered approach does have its limits. There are some applications it will not support. First-person shooters.... sure, deploy a black-box binary to a runtime. Facebook, YouTube, and web mail are not really in that category at this point, and developer choices are the primary thing driving the march away from documents here.

hackuser 11y ago
It's only a small minority of users who are affected, but historically how much innovation happened due to the web's openness and that small minority's tinkering.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  The majority of web "innovation" already existed at Xerox PARC hypermedia applications. The web is just a worse experience of what Xerox already had.
  - jacquesm 11y ago