7 ms·

At this point, I really loathe adopting any facet of web-browser technology: there are too many broken APIs in too many browsers to maintain on both sides of th

by lwlml 9y ago

At this point, I really loathe adopting any facet of web-browser technology: there are too many broken APIs in too many browsers to maintain on both sides of the system: the browser developers have an insane number of combinations of features that need to be useful, secured and made reliable and developers for browsers are always at some weird disadvantage where they can spend months or years maintaining an application for the browser to find it rots out from underneath them. Should you even be slightly successful in the use of an API, you always have to worry about deprecation when someone is no longer interested in doing the maintenance any more. I am sure there were more than a few game developers that are are livid today about this announcement. These things will go in cycles and I expect there will be an native-application cycle coming soon from browser-api-fatigue.

skybrian 9y ago
If you used this at all, it was in a Chrome-only app; this is pretty far from mainstream. A good rule of thumb seems to be to use what everyone else uses, and make sure you're always ready to ship another version. People expecting compiled apps to survive unchanged for years are out of luck.
- rch 9y ago
  It used to be worse: keeping an old Compaq or DOS box around just so one random business app would keep working.
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    "Used to be"? There are still places that do that. :-) It's especially prevalent in factory automation and process control. We're lucky in that many of those systems are actually so old that no one ever thought of connecting them to the Internet.
- tostitos1979 9y ago
  Not true. NaCl is pretty big in some areas of Consumer Electronics.
  - jonknee 9y ago
    Can you provide some examples?
    - tostitos1979 9y ago
      E.g. http://developer.samsung.com/tv/develop/extension-libraries/nacl/getting-started http://developer.samsung.com/tv/develop/extension-libraries/...
      - BHSPitMonkey 9y ago
        That's a controlled environment, though; Samsung almost certainly creates a customized build of Chromium for its TVs and can simply keep NaCl enabled if it wishes. They aren't beholden to the same policies that apply to the consumer Chrome releases.
        skybrian 9y ago
        Yes, it's a gradual decay, not a forced upgrade. The problem is that you eventually end up stuck with an ancient version of Chromium without security fixes and incompatible with websites that use newer browser features.
        jonknee 9y ago
        > The problem is that you eventually end up stuck with an ancient version of Chromium without security fixes and incompatible with websites that use newer browser features. Samsung can't even keep their flagship phones up to date, their TVs are not going to be kept updated regardless of what Google does with Chrome...
  - MikusR 9y ago
    This is about Google Native Client not the crypto library.
  - coldtea 9y ago
fiatjaf 9y ago
When was the last browser-api-fatigue?
irrational 9y ago
Yeah, we were looking at browser stats for our website today and during the last 30 days 20% of our distinct users were using IE 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, or 11. Of course most were on IE 11, but when you still have a significant number of people still using ancient versions of IE, I despair at ever being able to use modern web technologies.
- spiderfarmer 9y ago
  The only way to move forward is to ignore them. Put up a message that advises to install Chrome or Firefox and get rid of all the cruft that supports browsers older than 5 years. Most probably already have a modern browser installed but use IE out of habit. I see it at large corporations all the time. I even heard "I wish it would remind me to just use Chrome"
  - nerpderp83 9y ago
    Chrome and Firefox probably dont run on their OS.
    - gtirloni 9y ago
      Then they have bigger problems that they should be getting on top of urgently.
      - nerpderp83 9y ago
        I agree, but simply telling user to download a better browser could be a pretty condescending attitude. Falling back to a css-less html 4 would be more responsible for everyone.
        spiderfarmer 9y ago
        It could sound condescending, but the amount of people really limited to IE9 or IE10 without an alternative is really, really small.
      - 9y ago
richdougherty 9y ago
Deprecated APIs is the cost we pay for innovation. If we're going to get new APIs then it's reasonable to expect that old, little used and superseded APIs will be retired, since the browser vendors don't have unlimited resources. Of course, it's understandable for those who are hit by a deprecation to be annoyed, but overall I think the tradeoff is worth it. It's definitely better than have unchanging APIs and having browsers becoming less relevant over time.
- bluGill 9y ago
  There needs to a middle ground. While it is true bad APIs need to go once in a while, a lot of them never should have come in the first place, and if some work had been put into getting them right in the first place they would still work just find today. Not perfect mind you, but just a little effort would be enough that we wouldn't have to deprecate them. I think the Web is moving in this direction, though I don't know how well.
  - nojvek 9y ago
    Flash is a zombie but not dead. You can still get an old swf working by clicking a couple of things in browser settings. The thing with google is they deprecate wayyyy to fast without proper thought to the alternative. It's like their projects commit suicide than die naturally.
draw_down 9y ago
Makes sense, if you consider a thing only Google implemented as "web-browser technology".
marcosdumay 9y ago
Yeah. Wouldn't it be great if they just created a simple VM with well specified bytecode so that we could push the complexity into our tooling and just compile into the standard target?
- kuschku 9y ago
  And if that VM ran on over 2 billion devices, on every toaster out there? In the end, this all is just reinventing the JVM, in slower, but more secure.
  - eriknstr 9y ago
    I think that's what parent commenter was implying. (However, I don't agree. I remember the horrible Java applets and I am thankful that I pretty much never encounter any of them these days.)
    - lvh 9y ago
      Is the horribleness of applets intrinsic in the concept of a common target?
      - matt4077 9y ago
        It might be, because "common target" implies a lack of competition.
      - duskwuff 9y ago
        IMO: No. It was more of an implementation issue. When Java applets were first implemented, the web platform was still extremely limited -- HTML was still at version 2.0, CSS and the DOM didn't exist yet, and Javascript was still very new. So it made some sense, at that point, to have Java applets exist in their own "world", and not interact with other web content. A modern Java applet environment would probably look very different. More of a focus on providing a bridge to the browser's DOM, less of a focus on building UIs using native Java frameworks (like AWT or Swing).
      - 9y ago
matt4077 9y ago
Have you been doing this for any amount of time? Because today browser compatibility is just excellent compared by historical standards. The only differences are usually that some new feature doesn't appear in all browser engines at the same time.

by lwlml 9y ago

skybrian 9y ago

If you used this at all, it was in a Chrome-only app; this is pretty far from mainstream. A good rule of thumb seems to be to use what everyone else uses, and make sure you're always ready to ship another version. People expecting compiled apps to survive unchanged for years are out of luck.

rch 9y ago
It used to be worse: keeping an old Compaq or DOS box around just so one random business app would keep working.
- Turing_Machine 9y ago
  "Used to be"? There are still places that do that. :-) It's especially prevalent in factory automation and process control. We're lucky in that many of those systems are actually so old that no one ever thought of connecting them to the Internet.
tostitos1979 9y ago
Not true. NaCl is pretty big in some areas of Consumer Electronics.
- jonknee 9y ago
  Can you provide some examples?
  - tostitos1979 9y ago
    E.g. http://developer.samsung.com/tv/develop/extension-libraries/nacl/getting-started http://developer.samsung.com/tv/develop/extension-libraries/...
    - BHSPitMonkey 9y ago
      That's a controlled environment, though; Samsung almost certainly creates a customized build of Chromium for its TVs and can simply keep NaCl enabled if it wishes. They aren't beholden to the same policies that apply to the consumer Chrome releases.
      - skybrian 9y ago
        Yes, it's a gradual decay, not a forced upgrade. The problem is that you eventually end up stuck with an ancient version of Chromium without security fixes and incompatible with websites that use newer browser features.
        jonknee 9y ago
        > The problem is that you eventually end up stuck with an ancient version of Chromium without security fixes and incompatible with websites that use newer browser features. Samsung can't even keep their flagship phones up to date, their TVs are not going to be kept updated regardless of what Google does with Chrome...
- MikusR 9y ago
  This is about Google Native Client not the crypto library.
- coldtea 9y ago

fiatjaf 9y ago

When was the last browser-api-fatigue?

irrational 9y ago

Yeah, we were looking at browser stats for our website today and during the last 30 days 20% of our distinct users were using IE 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, or 11. Of course most were on IE 11, but when you still have a significant number of people still using ancient versions of IE, I despair at ever being able to use modern web technologies.

spiderfarmer 9y ago
The only way to move forward is to ignore them. Put up a message that advises to install Chrome or Firefox and get rid of all the cruft that supports browsers older than 5 years. Most probably already have a modern browser installed but use IE out of habit. I see it at large corporations all the time. I even heard "I wish it would remind me to just use Chrome"
- nerpderp83 9y ago
  Chrome and Firefox probably dont run on their OS.
  - gtirloni 9y ago
    Then they have bigger problems that they should be getting on top of urgently.
    - nerpderp83 9y ago
      I agree, but simply telling user to download a better browser could be a pretty condescending attitude. Falling back to a css-less html 4 would be more responsible for everyone.
      - spiderfarmer 9y ago
        It could sound condescending, but the amount of people really limited to IE9 or IE10 without an alternative is really, really small.
    - 9y ago

richdougherty 9y ago

Deprecated APIs is the cost we pay for innovation. If we're going to get new APIs then it's reasonable to expect that old, little used and superseded APIs will be retired, since the browser vendors don't have unlimited resources. Of course, it's understandable for those who are hit by a deprecation to be annoyed, but overall I think the tradeoff is worth it. It's definitely better than have unchanging APIs and having browsers becoming less relevant over time.

bluGill 9y ago
There needs to a middle ground. While it is true bad APIs need to go once in a while, a lot of them never should have come in the first place, and if some work had been put into getting them right in the first place they would still work just find today. Not perfect mind you, but just a little effort would be enough that we wouldn't have to deprecate them. I think the Web is moving in this direction, though I don't know how well.
- nojvek 9y ago
  Flash is a zombie but not dead. You can still get an old swf working by clicking a couple of things in browser settings. The thing with google is they deprecate wayyyy to fast without proper thought to the alternative. It's like their projects commit suicide than die naturally.

draw_down 9y ago

Makes sense, if you consider a thing only Google implemented as "web-browser technology".

marcosdumay 9y ago

Yeah. Wouldn't it be great if they just created a simple VM with well specified bytecode so that we could push the complexity into our tooling and just compile into the standard target?

kuschku 9y ago
And if that VM ran on over 2 billion devices, on every toaster out there? In the end, this all is just reinventing the JVM, in slower, but more secure.
- eriknstr 9y ago
  I think that's what parent commenter was implying. (However, I don't agree. I remember the horrible Java applets and I am thankful that I pretty much never encounter any of them these days.)
  - lvh 9y ago
    Is the horribleness of applets intrinsic in the concept of a common target?
    - matt4077 9y ago
      It might be, because "common target" implies a lack of competition.
    - duskwuff 9y ago
      IMO: No. It was more of an implementation issue. When Java applets were first implemented, the web platform was still extremely limited -- HTML was still at version 2.0, CSS and the DOM didn't exist yet, and Javascript was still very new. So it made some sense, at that point, to have Java applets exist in their own "world", and not interact with other web content. A modern Java applet environment would probably look very different. More of a focus on providing a bridge to the browser's DOM, less of a focus on building UIs using native Java frameworks (like AWT or Swing).
    - 9y ago

matt4077 9y ago

Have you been doing this for any amount of time? Because today browser compatibility is just excellent compared by historical standards. The only differences are usually that some new feature doesn't appear in all browser engines at the same time.