4 ms·

Stop trying to do things in your browser that should be their own independent programs.

by Endy 8y ago

what_ever 8y ago
Well they are a user and not the programmer so they may not have that option.
- Endy 8y ago
  I'm also a user and not a programmer. There are things I use a browser for, and things I use proper programs for. There is some overlap, in the space of email, video watching (I'm entirely too lazy to stream every video I watch through VLC), and to a small degree gaming (i.e. Flash). There are a great many things I do not do because I hold to my beliefs. Overall, I don't feel I lose anything. If anything, I gain peace of mind that my browser doesn't have more data leaking out to servers than I'm willing to accommodate.
hazz99 8y ago
I believe the future is with powerful web apps. They're cross-platform & often easy to use. I don't have to worry about downloading & installing. In the future, they'll be able to run as efficiently as non-browser applications. What should be its "own independent program"? Where do we draw that line? Why should we be constrained to our own offline system, when the web enables millions of (more) user-friendly use-cases?
- Nadya 8y ago
  >What should be its "own independent program"? Where do we draw that line? Why should we be constrained to our own offline system, when the web enables millions of (more) user-friendly use-cases? I'm an edge case, but nearly everything. I prefer to not only "own" the program so that I may use it beyond the lifespan of the creator or hosting company supports it but I also prefer to own my files (cloud storage is prohibitively expensive for me). At $0.02 per GB per month I would be spending in excess of >$4,000/yr - and that's just my photos. It would be in excess of $10,000/yr if I also wanted to store videos. For me to move into an "online, cloud-based software" world online storage would have to be price competitive with purchasing my own local storage for the TB's of data I have and the software would have to be fast enough to work on the files and work with whichever cloud storage I was using. (Let's also pretend that internet is always-present and always-fast-enough.) On the note of expensive cloud storage... non-affiliated shout-out to Backblaze. I'm probably a borderline "abusive user", $5/mo is an absolute steal to backup the huge amount of data I backup with them.
- Endy 8y ago
  For me, I want to download and install everything. I want every small thing I do to be its own program, with its own name. I want to be able to remove my network card and still have programs which work. I want to own everything about my own PC and all the data that enters or leaves it. When everything's in the browser, that's not possible, because you're essentially turning a PC back into a network terminal. I want my computer to be mine. I want my data to be mine. I do not want anyone or any program to have the authority to edit data on my PC over a network without my clear consent. And if you say that installing and/or activating the browser executable means I'm giving consent to it to edit data freely on my machine, then I think I'm going to need to go a different way than the Web. We need the freedom to have our own computers, our own thoughts, our own data. We need to be able to say at a user level that we wish to interact with this data in our way, rather than "the Web way". Not every piece of data needs to be viewed or manipulated in a way that works in a Web browser. And the processor load should absolutely be a concern. A well-written and optimized program written in asm will always run faster and better when compared to a "program" written in a web-deployed JavaScript on top of a browser. Why should we be constrained by the lowest common denominator of the Web, when having the ability to use our own offline system enables the use of millions of more user-focused use-cases?

Stop trying to do things in your browser that should be their own independent programs.

by Endy 8y ago

Stop trying to do things in your browser that should be their own independent programs.

what_ever 8y ago

Well they are a user and not the programmer so they may not have that option.

Endy 8y ago
I'm also a user and not a programmer. There are things I use a browser for, and things I use proper programs for. There is some overlap, in the space of email, video watching (I'm entirely too lazy to stream every video I watch through VLC), and to a small degree gaming (i.e. Flash). There are a great many things I do not do because I hold to my beliefs. Overall, I don't feel I lose anything. If anything, I gain peace of mind that my browser doesn't have more data leaking out to servers than I'm willing to accommodate.

hazz99 8y ago

I believe the future is with powerful web apps. They're cross-platform & often easy to use. I don't have to worry about downloading & installing. In the future, they'll be able to run as efficiently as non-browser applications. What should be its "own independent program"? Where do we draw that line? Why should we be constrained to our own offline system, when the web enables millions of (more) user-friendly use-cases?

Nadya 8y ago
>What should be its "own independent program"? Where do we draw that line? Why should we be constrained to our own offline system, when the web enables millions of (more) user-friendly use-cases? I'm an edge case, but nearly everything. I prefer to not only "own" the program so that I may use it beyond the lifespan of the creator or hosting company supports it but I also prefer to own my files (cloud storage is prohibitively expensive for me). At $0.02 per GB per month I would be spending in excess of >$4,000/yr - and that's just my photos. It would be in excess of $10,000/yr if I also wanted to store videos. For me to move into an "online, cloud-based software" world online storage would have to be price competitive with purchasing my own local storage for the TB's of data I have and the software would have to be fast enough to work on the files and work with whichever cloud storage I was using. (Let's also pretend that internet is always-present and always-fast-enough.) On the note of expensive cloud storage... non-affiliated shout-out to Backblaze. I'm probably a borderline "abusive user", $5/mo is an absolute steal to backup the huge amount of data I backup with them.
Endy 8y ago
For me, I want to download and install everything. I want every small thing I do to be its own program, with its own name. I want to be able to remove my network card and still have programs which work. I want to own everything about my own PC and all the data that enters or leaves it. When everything's in the browser, that's not possible, because you're essentially turning a PC back into a network terminal. I want my computer to be mine. I want my data to be mine. I do not want anyone or any program to have the authority to edit data on my PC over a network without my clear consent. And if you say that installing and/or activating the browser executable means I'm giving consent to it to edit data freely on my machine, then I think I'm going to need to go a different way than the Web. We need the freedom to have our own computers, our own thoughts, our own data. We need to be able to say at a user level that we wish to interact with this data in our way, rather than "the Web way". Not every piece of data needs to be viewed or manipulated in a way that works in a Web browser. And the processor load should absolutely be a concern. A well-written and optimized program written in asm will always run faster and better when compared to a "program" written in a web-deployed JavaScript on top of a browser. Why should we be constrained by the lowest common denominator of the Web, when having the ability to use our own offline system enables the use of millions of more user-focused use-cases?