3 ms·

A related issue is that the means of making web UIs are too low-level. There's no standard ready-made widget kit like on desktops. HTML and CSS started as a so

by aasasd 8y ago

A related issue is that the means of making web UIs are too low-level. There's no standard ready-made widget kit like on desktops. HTML and CSS started as a solution for publishing text-based content, like the olde magazines but on the web. For that they are splendid: text rendering and basic input handling are taken care of, and wide variety of output devices were supported since day one (HTML 2.0 without tables works excellent on phones). Then web 2.0 and web apps happened, web idioms began to change, all of people's activity with computers started moving to the web. And it turned out that to create complex UIs for all of that you have to fiddle with rather low-level primitives and handle interactions between them, because outside of text layout HTML primarily knows about divs and a handful of input widgets. This may be good because high-level widgets will be developed independently and will evolve faster (and maybe better) than if they were built into browsers. But in the meantime we have to live with the chaos that we have.

simion314 8y ago
>This may be good because high-level widgets will be developed independently and will evolve faster (and maybe better) than if they were built into browsers. But in the meantime we have to live with the chaos that we have. I don't think that having some good built-in widgets (like a better dropdown, menus, DataGrid) would prevent third parties creating their own custom versions but it would help 99% of users that need the basic stuff (like a dropdown that can have icons)
aasasd 8y ago
(I need to add, though, that even if a compete and perfect-in-every-respect third-party widget kit for the web appears today, it will face a huge problem of adoption, or rather lack of it. In this regard, fragmentation on the web is unbelievable by desktop standards―also a consequence of the "web is for publishing" approach.)

by aasasd 8y ago

simion314 8y ago

>This may be good because high-level widgets will be developed independently and will evolve faster (and maybe better) than if they were built into browsers. But in the meantime we have to live with the chaos that we have. I don't think that having some good built-in widgets (like a better dropdown, menus, DataGrid) would prevent third parties creating their own custom versions but it would help 99% of users that need the basic stuff (like a dropdown that can have icons)

aasasd 8y ago

(I need to add, though, that even if a compete and perfect-in-every-respect third-party widget kit for the web appears today, it will face a huge problem of adoption, or rather lack of it. In this regard, fragmentation on the web is unbelievable by desktop standards―also a consequence of the "web is for publishing" approach.)