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The greatest threat to the web is those that want to turn it into an “app platform” instead of a hypermedia system. Sadly the battle has probably been lost.

chatmasta 8y ago
In what way is it a threat? It’s not like every website needs to use the new features. If you mean security/privacy wise, then yeah I agree. But I don’t think it’s a “threat” in any other sense, eg it doesn’t mean every website is suddenly going to be using accelerometers and Bluetooth. It just means a subset of websites will have more features for browsers that support them. Aside from the security/privacy issues, shouldn’t we be celebrating this as a liberation of functionality from walled garden app stores?
- addicted 8y ago
  You are right. The sites that will use this are those who have a strong incentive to do so. Therefore this will likely be used by: 1) A really tiny minority of sites that enhance functionality with this. 2) Malicious sites. 3) Sites that are trying to track you more and better (so, for example, FB can use this to ID you across devices even if you’re not logged in because you probably use the same Bluetooth headphones across your devices).
  - UncleMeat 8y ago
    A really tiny minority? Today I navigated some maps in an unfamiliar city in a web browser. I also edited some images. I streamed some video too. These are incredibly useful features. Pretty much the only "raw document" websites I ever visit are wikipedia, hn, and stack overflow.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
You think this is bad? Wait 10-15 years, when the next layer of abstraction starts to take hold and now you're running some other platform on top of a web browser on top of an OS and all the kids are saying "this time will be different!".
- throwaway_009 8y ago
  We are already running all kinds of JS frameworks as an abstraction. Like React
koboll 8y ago
HN commenters have such a strange cognitive dissonance on this issue. On one hand, there's this consistent theme of web Luddism - a lament for the simplicity of when the web was for documents, rather than apps. On the other hand, there's this rage against increasing control of distribution channels by tech giants like Apple. The whole point of the web as app platform is to circumvent that.
- duckerude 8y ago
  Those are not incompatible sentiments. You can think centralized distribution is a problem and still think the modern web is a bad solution to that problem. A problem is that the web is being used for both applications and documents. I don't mind if an application I explicitly launched as an application asks to make Bluetooth connections, but I would mind if a blog post did that. I think there's a lot of value in web applications, but I really don't like how it interferes with the non-application web.
  - diggan 8y ago
    > I don't mind if an application I explicitly launched as an application asks to make Bluetooth connections, but I would mind if a blog post did that There is an easy way of getting this experience today. Install NoScript (or some other extension so you can enable JS ondemand for certain websites) and everything is by default basically documents (well, forms, inputs and such will still be there). Then, when you encounter a application that needs JS, you simple enable it for that website. Granted, I encounter many websites per week that simply won't render without JS, even non-interactive articles! Usually I just close them down unless the content is something I really, really want to read.
  - petecox 8y ago
    > I don't mind if an application I explicitly launched as an application asks to make Bluetooth connections The security model for a desktop-installable 'app' is a superset of a webpage. Or at least it was in Firefox OS, where additional permissions were required for accessing the filesystem or hardware APIs. In this way they were not available to websites to hijack the in-browser sandbox; the system web browser was itself a 'browser app' with a restricted set of permissions. (I presume it's similar in Chrome OS, while this blog post is in the context of 'appifying' Windows desktop outside the browser.)
Spivak 8y ago
There's no threat to the web. Having the ability to be an app platform in no way stops people from sending non-interactive documents over it. The 'threat' is that people will use these features. And if the only thing that is keeping the 'old web' alive is that it simply wasn't possible to develop rich applications then it's already dead and probably never really existed in the first place.

chatmasta 8y ago

In what way is it a threat? It’s not like every website needs to use the new features. If you mean security/privacy wise, then yeah I agree. But I don’t think it’s a “threat” in any other sense, eg it doesn’t mean every website is suddenly going to be using accelerometers and Bluetooth. It just means a subset of websites will have more features for browsers that support them. Aside from the security/privacy issues, shouldn’t we be celebrating this as a liberation of functionality from walled garden app stores?

addicted 8y ago
You are right. The sites that will use this are those who have a strong incentive to do so. Therefore this will likely be used by: 1) A really tiny minority of sites that enhance functionality with this. 2) Malicious sites. 3) Sites that are trying to track you more and better (so, for example, FB can use this to ID you across devices even if you’re not logged in because you probably use the same Bluetooth headphones across your devices).
- UncleMeat 8y ago
  A really tiny minority? Today I navigated some maps in an unfamiliar city in a web browser. I also edited some images. I streamed some video too. These are incredibly useful features. Pretty much the only "raw document" websites I ever visit are wikipedia, hn, and stack overflow.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

You think this is bad? Wait 10-15 years, when the next layer of abstraction starts to take hold and now you're running some other platform on top of a web browser on top of an OS and all the kids are saying "this time will be different!".

throwaway_009 8y ago
We are already running all kinds of JS frameworks as an abstraction. Like React

koboll 8y ago

HN commenters have such a strange cognitive dissonance on this issue. On one hand, there's this consistent theme of web Luddism - a lament for the simplicity of when the web was for documents, rather than apps. On the other hand, there's this rage against increasing control of distribution channels by tech giants like Apple. The whole point of the web as app platform is to circumvent that.

duckerude 8y ago
Those are not incompatible sentiments. You can think centralized distribution is a problem and still think the modern web is a bad solution to that problem. A problem is that the web is being used for both applications and documents. I don't mind if an application I explicitly launched as an application asks to make Bluetooth connections, but I would mind if a blog post did that. I think there's a lot of value in web applications, but I really don't like how it interferes with the non-application web.
- diggan 8y ago
  > I don't mind if an application I explicitly launched as an application asks to make Bluetooth connections, but I would mind if a blog post did that There is an easy way of getting this experience today. Install NoScript (or some other extension so you can enable JS ondemand for certain websites) and everything is by default basically documents (well, forms, inputs and such will still be there). Then, when you encounter a application that needs JS, you simple enable it for that website. Granted, I encounter many websites per week that simply won't render without JS, even non-interactive articles! Usually I just close them down unless the content is something I really, really want to read.
- petecox 8y ago
  > I don't mind if an application I explicitly launched as an application asks to make Bluetooth connections The security model for a desktop-installable 'app' is a superset of a webpage. Or at least it was in Firefox OS, where additional permissions were required for accessing the filesystem or hardware APIs. In this way they were not available to websites to hijack the in-browser sandbox; the system web browser was itself a 'browser app' with a restricted set of permissions. (I presume it's similar in Chrome OS, while this blog post is in the context of 'appifying' Windows desktop outside the browser.)

Spivak 8y ago

There's no threat to the web. Having the ability to be an app platform in no way stops people from sending non-interactive documents over it. The 'threat' is that people will use these features. And if the only thing that is keeping the 'old web' alive is that it simply wasn't possible to develop rich applications then it's already dead and probably never really existed in the first place.