3 ms·

Apologies ahead of time if this is a stupid question. I am pretty much the walking stereotype of a web developer with very little experience with anything below

by mercer 10y ago

Apologies ahead of time if this is a stupid question. I am pretty much the walking stereotype of a web developer with very little experience with anything below javascript/ruby/python/php. Considering that Glimmer goes quite far in optimizing stuff, at which point would it perhaps make more sense to just emulate HTML elements on a pixel-level? Or am I vastly underestimating how complex the standard UI elements really are? Or overestimating how much effort went into Glimmer? And if so, as perhaps a more constructive question: are there any areas of 'web' where someone feels a shortcut should be taken? (On the latter, I'm inclined to feel that WYSIWYG textareas and CSS above class-scope are ripe for 'shortcuts', but perhaps that's opening some cans of whole other worms...)

JoshTriplett 10y ago
> Considering that Glimmer goes quite far in optimizing stuff, at which point would it perhaps make more sense to just emulate HTML elements on a pixel-level? Even if this could be done with reasonable performance (and people have tried this), you shouldn't do this in any browser environment. You can't possibly emulate the behavior of every browser in a satisfactory way; you'll end up behaving gratuitously differently, with subtle breakage of platform conventions, browser conventions, user expectations (including potential extensions), hardware requirements, scaling, rendering, and accessibility.
LocalPCGuy 10y ago
In addition to what others have said, this would have a significant impact in accessibility and break a lot of the tools used for those with some sort of disability or accessibility issue. You are basically talking about what Flash used to do, and that's not a road we want to revisit.
okket 10y ago
Whole websites were done in Flash, not long ago. It was not a good idea.
- dbbk 10y ago
  It feels like a bad dream now, but yeah this really did happen. It was awful.
floatboth 10y ago
> Or am I vastly underestimating how complex the standard UI elements really are? Or overestimating how much effort went into Glimmer? Both, especially the first one.
sixdimensional 10y ago
Actually, I'd challenge us to ask ourselves, what do we think emulating HTML elements on a pixel-level actually is exactly? A client-side application rendering layer like X, or Wayland, etc.? Think of VNC or remote desktop. This is basically an interactive moving image representation of server-side state and logic, which takes inputs from the user in the form of clicks, mouse movements, keyboard input etc. and pipes it to a server which is doing all the rendering and feeding images back to the client. Now, if you are simply rendering images in the browser that are as good as HTML elements, the only difference between that and VNC really is the presence of client side state, client side event management and response, and somewhat increased interactivity of the client side with the local machine. Otherwise, you are simply collecting user inputs and producing outputs as a function of client/server state interactions and behaviors. Personally, I see an interesting trend. For example, React seems to be about custom components that have client side local state and event handling, whereas things like Redux seem to be about gracefully handling the interactions between client/server state and behaviors. This same pattern appears in some way in Angular, Vue, etc. - two-way databinding, injection of services representing server-side objects, etc. Also, consider things like WebAssembly, which will essentially provide an optimized VM in the browser closely linked to Javascript. What do we get when we cross improved client/server side state and behavior interactions plus optimized run-time environment in the client? I think it's basically like the UI of the application runs in the client (whereas VNC was just an image of the application running), the client handles some of the processing logic and the server handles the rest, often manipulating the view of the user and coordinating that with the user's input. All this, and it only takes a server, server application, server protocol, client application, client VM, client app/scripting language and client styling. Looking into the future, this architecture seems to be presented as something that is the future - for example, look at Electron apps or WPF - they actually have a lot in common in some ways. Electron - node, Chrome, HTML, CSS, JS. WPF - UI host/application main loop, XAML, styling, C#... I also think isomorphic Javascript concepts (write in one language, this code runs in the client, this code runs on the server) are going to make a massive leap forward when WebAssembly hits (shortly!!!) [1]. Exciting times in my opinion. [1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webassembly/2017Feb/0002.html https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webassembly/2017...

by mercer 10y ago

JoshTriplett 10y ago

> Considering that Glimmer goes quite far in optimizing stuff, at which point would it perhaps make more sense to just emulate HTML elements on a pixel-level? Even if this could be done with reasonable performance (and people have tried this), you shouldn't do this in any browser environment. You can't possibly emulate the behavior of every browser in a satisfactory way; you'll end up behaving gratuitously differently, with subtle breakage of platform conventions, browser conventions, user expectations (including potential extensions), hardware requirements, scaling, rendering, and accessibility.

LocalPCGuy 10y ago

In addition to what others have said, this would have a significant impact in accessibility and break a lot of the tools used for those with some sort of disability or accessibility issue. You are basically talking about what Flash used to do, and that's not a road we want to revisit.

okket 10y ago

Whole websites were done in Flash, not long ago. It was not a good idea.

dbbk 10y ago
It feels like a bad dream now, but yeah this really did happen. It was awful.

floatboth 10y ago

> Or am I vastly underestimating how complex the standard UI elements really are? Or overestimating how much effort went into Glimmer? Both, especially the first one.

sixdimensional 10y ago

Actually, I'd challenge us to ask ourselves, what do we think emulating HTML elements on a pixel-level actually is exactly? A client-side application rendering layer like X, or Wayland, etc.? Think of VNC or remote desktop. This is basically an interactive moving image representation of server-side state and logic, which takes inputs from the user in the form of clicks, mouse movements, keyboard input etc. and pipes it to a server which is doing all the rendering and feeding images back to the client. Now, if you are simply rendering images in the browser that are as good as HTML elements, the only difference between that and VNC really is the presence of client side state, client side event management and response, and somewhat increased interactivity of the client side with the local machine. Otherwise, you are simply collecting user inputs and producing outputs as a function of client/server state interactions and behaviors. Personally, I see an interesting trend. For example, React seems to be about custom components that have client side local state and event handling, whereas things like Redux seem to be about gracefully handling the interactions between client/server state and behaviors. This same pattern appears in some way in Angular, Vue, etc. - two-way databinding, injection of services representing server-side objects, etc. Also, consider things like WebAssembly, which will essentially provide an optimized VM in the browser closely linked to Javascript. What do we get when we cross improved client/server side state and behavior interactions plus optimized run-time environment in the client? I think it's basically like the UI of the application runs in the client (whereas VNC was just an image of the application running), the client handles some of the processing logic and the server handles the rest, often manipulating the view of the user and coordinating that with the user's input. All this, and it only takes a server, server application, server protocol, client application, client VM, client app/scripting language and client styling. Looking into the future, this architecture seems to be presented as something that is the future - for example, look at Electron apps or WPF - they actually have a lot in common in some ways. Electron - node, Chrome, HTML, CSS, JS. WPF - UI host/application main loop, XAML, styling, C#... I also think isomorphic Javascript concepts (write in one language, this code runs in the client, this code runs on the server) are going to make a massive leap forward when WebAssembly hits (shortly!!!) [1]. Exciting times in my opinion. [1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webassembly/2017Feb/0002.html https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webassembly/2017...