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> ... entire rest of the world ... Speak for yourself! I certainly agree with the parent that the Web is for content. And I believe many here around do as wel

> ... entire rest of the world ... Speak for yourself! I certainly agree with the parent that the Web is for content. And I believe many here around do as well. You do realize you're commenting here on a site which is as non-PWA/SPA as it gets, don't you?

krapp 9y ago
Content is still content when javascript is involved. Twitter serves content, so does facebook, so do wordpress blogs and medium and likely whatever other sites you think of when you think about how terrible javascript is, because "content" and "javascript" are not mutually opposed. I like Hacker News (obviously, since I spend far too much time here,) but I also like that I can run software in my browser and stream video and audio and play games. FFS, I'm running DOOM in a DosBox emulator in another browser tab as I type this. How is that not qualitatively better in terms of the breadth of content that the web allows than having it be limited to basic text styling and embedded images?
- tannhaeuser 9y ago
  Audio/video yes, but what's the point of running DOS emulators in a browser? What a browser can and cannot do should be very carefully balanced, or you end up with a tangled mess of Chrome-only content and security/privacy catastrophes.
  - krapp 9y ago
    >Audio/video yes, but what's the point of running DOS emulators in a browser? The point is that if I want to play DOS games I only need a URL and a modern browser, just the same as with text, images and other media. That "software" becomes just another content type the web can provide, in a way that's transparent and easy for the end user. If nothing else, the browser can act as a sandbox for software that operating systems otherwise don't seem to provide. A developer can't sneak "rm -rf /*" into their javascript and have it work the way they could natively. > What a browser can and cannot do should be very carefully balanced, or you end up with a tangled mess of Chrome-only content and security/privacy catastrophes. I would argue things have gotten more stable, not less, over time. Flash is more or less dead, as are web applets, and a lot of security issues in javascript WRT overriding object primitives, high frequency timing, cross origin requests, etc, have been dealt with. It's not entirely the wild west anymore.
- jpttsn 9y ago
  It’s like, how is it not better if my fridge can play music? Obviously I’d rather have music and cold food than just cold food. I’m listening to Beethoven through my other fridge as I type this on my first fridge.
  - krapp 9y ago
    Yes... because a refrigerator playing music is just as absurd as a computer running software...
- gaius 9y ago
  Twitter serves content, Yeah, 140 bytes of content the user wants and 140k of JS that is entirely superfluous if not outright user hostile.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sp332 9y ago
The "content" gets rendered either server-side or client-side. There's not that much difference between the browser filling in a template from a database vs a server filling in a template from a database. https://hnpwa.com/ https://hnpwa.com/
- tannhaeuser 9y ago
  It makes a world of a difference to equip a browser with these facilities in terms of security, privacy, accessibility, searchability, and content archival though.
  - SquareWheel 9y ago
    That's true. Moving it client-side grants the end user more control over the content.

krapp 9y ago

Content is still content when javascript is involved. Twitter serves content, so does facebook, so do wordpress blogs and medium and likely whatever other sites you think of when you think about how terrible javascript is, because "content" and "javascript" are not mutually opposed. I like Hacker News (obviously, since I spend far too much time here,) but I also like that I can run software in my browser and stream video and audio and play games. FFS, I'm running DOOM in a DosBox emulator in another browser tab as I type this. How is that not qualitatively better in terms of the breadth of content that the web allows than having it be limited to basic text styling and embedded images?

tannhaeuser 9y ago
Audio/video yes, but what's the point of running DOS emulators in a browser? What a browser can and cannot do should be very carefully balanced, or you end up with a tangled mess of Chrome-only content and security/privacy catastrophes.
- krapp 9y ago
  >Audio/video yes, but what's the point of running DOS emulators in a browser? The point is that if I want to play DOS games I only need a URL and a modern browser, just the same as with text, images and other media. That "software" becomes just another content type the web can provide, in a way that's transparent and easy for the end user. If nothing else, the browser can act as a sandbox for software that operating systems otherwise don't seem to provide. A developer can't sneak "rm -rf /*" into their javascript and have it work the way they could natively. > What a browser can and cannot do should be very carefully balanced, or you end up with a tangled mess of Chrome-only content and security/privacy catastrophes. I would argue things have gotten more stable, not less, over time. Flash is more or less dead, as are web applets, and a lot of security issues in javascript WRT overriding object primitives, high frequency timing, cross origin requests, etc, have been dealt with. It's not entirely the wild west anymore.
jpttsn 9y ago
It’s like, how is it not better if my fridge can play music? Obviously I’d rather have music and cold food than just cold food. I’m listening to Beethoven through my other fridge as I type this on my first fridge.
- krapp 9y ago
  Yes... because a refrigerator playing music is just as absurd as a computer running software...
gaius 9y ago
Twitter serves content, Yeah, 140 bytes of content the user wants and 140k of JS that is entirely superfluous if not outright user hostile.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

sp332 9y ago

The "content" gets rendered either server-side or client-side. There's not that much difference between the browser filling in a template from a database vs a server filling in a template from a database. https://hnpwa.com/ https://hnpwa.com/

tannhaeuser 9y ago
It makes a world of a difference to equip a browser with these facilities in terms of security, privacy, accessibility, searchability, and content archival though.
- SquareWheel 9y ago
  That's true. Moving it client-side grants the end user more control over the content.