5 ms·

Upvote for webapps, the sooner we come back to the web, the better we will be.

notheguyouthink 10y ago
Strange, i'm trying to get further from the web. As it stands, everything i do is web related in one way or another. From storage to home assistants to note taking and blah blah blah, they're all on the web hosted by someone else. I know there are a few alternatives, but none of it really makes me happy. Currently, i'm trying to make my own home cloud, with a focus on simplicity.. but i doubt i'll succeed. I just know that nothing seems simple. I'm talking like, single binary "can't fuck it up" simple. Because it has to be stupidly easy to be used by my grandma, even if that means less features.
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  JS/HTML can be run on your own machine without needing any cloud or other external service. You could distribute the application as a single .zip file or something, like binary executables often are. I've seen people sell games this way.
  - dingdingdang 10y ago
    Yep, this is not a bad idea but unfortunately browsers do not allow you access to local storage since they do not treat the local filesystem as designated domain paths.. which is completely super annoying & makes offline webapps a very temporal thing since they NEED a domain name cached before you can use them. Note: based on my experience when hacking around with local app 2 years ago on Chrome and FF so things may have changed?
    - weaksauce 10y ago
      You can use node if you want those kinds of permissions. Or any other general purpose language with runtime.
      - Godel_unicode 10y ago
        Node is not exactly "can't fuck it up" simple.
      - dingdingdang 10y ago
        The whole point of running and using browser apps is that they are guaranteed to be sandboxed - Node.js breaks this sandboxing 100% which makes it more powerful but also inherently a mess security wise. This mess can to a certain extend be accommodated on the server side but certainly not on the client side where code from 1000s of devs will eventually be run without vetting.
IshKebab 10y ago
Better in some ways, but certainly not performance!
- yberreby 10y ago
  WebAssembly might be a big step towards improving that.
  - CryZe 10y ago
    It absolutely will. I've compiled like 30 projects to the web now and across the board I'm seeing 10x to 40x improvements in speed compared to idiomatic JavaScript. Here's one of the Benchmarks I ran: Native: 57.26 ms wasm Firefox: 143.35 ms asm.js Firefox: 162.43 ms asm.js Edge: 199.70 ms wasm Chrome: 223.80 ms asm.js Chrome: 268.60 ms JS Chrome: 2898.20 ms JS Edge: 3240.00 ms JS Firefox: 5558.88 ms
    - mrec 10y ago
      When you say "speed" are you talking about startup (getting the page to a usable state) or crunchy ongoing work?
      - CryZe 10y ago
        Nah, I'm talking about running an algorithm.
nilved 10y ago
Good lord no. The Web is a terrible place. It should stay where it is and we should not try to take its terrible principles elsewhere.

Strange, i'm trying to get further from the web. As it stands, everything i do is web related in one way or another. From storage to home assistants to note taking and blah blah blah, they're all on the web hosted by someone else. I know there are a few alternatives, but none of it really makes me happy. Currently, i'm trying to make my own home cloud, with a focus on simplicity.. but i doubt i'll succeed. I just know that nothing seems simple. I'm talking like, single binary "can't fuck it up" simple. Because it has to be stupidly easy to be used by my grandma, even if that means less features.

MichaelBurge 10y ago
JS/HTML can be run on your own machine without needing any cloud or other external service. You could distribute the application as a single .zip file or something, like binary executables often are. I've seen people sell games this way.
- dingdingdang 10y ago
  Yep, this is not a bad idea but unfortunately browsers do not allow you access to local storage since they do not treat the local filesystem as designated domain paths.. which is completely super annoying & makes offline webapps a very temporal thing since they NEED a domain name cached before you can use them. Note: based on my experience when hacking around with local app 2 years ago on Chrome and FF so things may have changed?
  - weaksauce 10y ago
    You can use node if you want those kinds of permissions. Or any other general purpose language with runtime.
    - Godel_unicode 10y ago
      Node is not exactly "can't fuck it up" simple.
    - dingdingdang 10y ago
      The whole point of running and using browser apps is that they are guaranteed to be sandboxed - Node.js breaks this sandboxing 100% which makes it more powerful but also inherently a mess security wise. This mess can to a certain extend be accommodated on the server side but certainly not on the client side where code from 1000s of devs will eventually be run without vetting.

IshKebab 10y ago

Better in some ways, but certainly not performance!

yberreby 10y ago
WebAssembly might be a big step towards improving that.
- CryZe 10y ago
  It absolutely will. I've compiled like 30 projects to the web now and across the board I'm seeing 10x to 40x improvements in speed compared to idiomatic JavaScript. Here's one of the Benchmarks I ran: Native: 57.26 ms wasm Firefox: 143.35 ms asm.js Firefox: 162.43 ms asm.js Edge: 199.70 ms wasm Chrome: 223.80 ms asm.js Chrome: 268.60 ms JS Chrome: 2898.20 ms JS Edge: 3240.00 ms JS Firefox: 5558.88 ms
  - mrec 10y ago
    When you say "speed" are you talking about startup (getting the page to a usable state) or crunchy ongoing work?
    - CryZe 10y ago
      Nah, I'm talking about running an algorithm.

nilved 10y ago

Good lord no. The Web is a terrible place. It should stay where it is and we should not try to take its terrible principles elsewhere.