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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 o

by 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.)
- kitsunesoba 8y ago
  It would be nice if websites and web apps existed on different layers, so you could opt out of either if desired and know exactly what you’re going to get on both.
jccalhoun 8y ago
I can imagine people having the same conversation back in the 90s: "Who needs images?"

by koboll 8y ago

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.)
kitsunesoba 8y ago
It would be nice if websites and web apps existed on different layers, so you could opt out of either if desired and know exactly what you’re going to get on both.

jccalhoun 8y ago

I can imagine people having the same conversation back in the 90s: "Who needs images?"