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I agree with your sentiment. However, I also appreciate the web maturing and giving developers similar API abilities as a native app. The API may not have a use

by josho 10y ago

I agree with your sentiment. However, I also appreciate the web maturing and giving developers similar API abilities as a native app. The API may not have a use for you, but surely across the global audience of web apps there will be more than a few valid use cases.

zaroth 10y ago
This is a great point, and I too tend to think in terms of the Web API having parity with native can only be a Good Thing. The problem is the web is not a very nice place, and (like the ad networks mentioned by the OP) third parties beyond my control often get to run fully-scoped Javascript on my browser. OTOH, at least I get to choose which apps are installed on my home screen. So I wonder if instead of all the prompts we have today; Would you like to allow this page to see your location? Would you like to allow this page to use your microphone? Would you like to allow this page to use your camera? Would you like to allow this page to send notifications? Would you like to allow this page to view your battery status? We need something more holistic. I joked above about NoScript vs. LowScript. I was chuckling to myself imagining a 3-way toggle -- NoScript, LowScript, and YoScript. There certainly could be use cases for having a comprehensive Web API for charging status, battery capacity, remaining charge, and time till charged. Someone will find this useful. But simply adding it and having it on-by-default is not without tradeoffs... As Web API matures, there is a plethora of APIs which have privacy concerns, some slight, some grave. We need to communicate to users these trade-offs in some usable way, and give them some control over them. Some APIs definitely need their own unique Yes/No prompt, like turning on my camera/mic, but I wonder if there's a middle-ground of a group of APIs which should be restricted all behind a single setting, akin to favoriting or 'staring' the site gives just that first-party domain access to those APIs. Maybe we even call it "Native Mode", then we put choice back in the hands of the user and we can expose APIs with impunity.

by josho 10y ago

zaroth 10y ago

This is a great point, and I too tend to think in terms of the Web API having parity with native can only be a Good Thing. The problem is the web is not a very nice place, and (like the ad networks mentioned by the OP) third parties beyond my control often get to run fully-scoped Javascript on my browser. OTOH, at least I get to choose which apps are installed on my home screen. So I wonder if instead of all the prompts we have today; Would you like to allow this page to see your location? Would you like to allow this page to use your microphone? Would you like to allow this page to use your camera? Would you like to allow this page to send notifications? Would you like to allow this page to view your battery status? We need something more holistic. I joked above about NoScript vs. LowScript. I was chuckling to myself imagining a 3-way toggle -- NoScript, LowScript, and YoScript. There certainly could be use cases for having a comprehensive Web API for charging status, battery capacity, remaining charge, and time till charged. Someone will find this useful. But simply adding it and having it on-by-default is not without tradeoffs... As Web API matures, there is a plethora of APIs which have privacy concerns, some slight, some grave. We need to communicate to users these trade-offs in some usable way, and give them some control over them. Some APIs definitely need their own unique Yes/No prompt, like turning on my camera/mic, but I wonder if there's a middle-ground of a group of APIs which should be restricted all behind a single setting, akin to favoriting or 'staring' the site gives just that first-party domain access to those APIs. Maybe we even call it "Native Mode", then we put choice back in the hands of the user and we can expose APIs with impunity.