6 ms·

The web browser was originally was hyperlinked documents glued together with URLs. The browser has turned into a platform for apps that use a document paradigm

The web browser was originally was hyperlinked documents glued together with URLs. The browser has turned into a platform for apps that use a document paradigm for the UI... complete with built in database, graphics, and deep os integration. It's been huge leap in reducing cost to build, distribute, learn and use apps. The original use case of just documents is probably approaching being just and edge case.

heavenlyblue 6y ago
What is deep OS integration in browsers?
- dijit 6y ago
  Access to raw USB devices is a good example I suppose.
  - secondcoming 6y ago
    Oh sweet. What could possibly go wrong?
    - jtvjan 6y ago
      Not much, really. Unless the device has been created to work with WebUSB, you first need to manually add a udev rule (on Linux) or replace the driver with WinUSB (on Windows) before you can access it through a browser. Even then, the user needs to select the device from a list, like you would when giving a site access to your camera.
    - blandflakes 6y ago
      Right, why would we want applications to be able to use hardware anyway?
- zomglings 6y ago
  Does Chrome OS qualify?
- todd3834 6y ago
  First few things that come to mind: - Access to Camera & Microphone - Access to USB devices - Push Notifications - Geolocation - Bluetooth "deep" is probably the subjective term here.
  - methodsignature 6y ago
    Printer dialogs in browser [_we hates it_].
feanaro 6y ago
I disagree it could ever be just an edge case because the use case hasn't disappeared and will likely never disappear. Blog posts come to mind as an obvious example, but also encyclopedias, research... Anything that simply needs to transfer nearly pure information instead of providing interaction. Of course the app use case has grown tremendously and is probably the more important one for casual users which are growing in number in relative terms, so I understand where the sentiment comes from.
- afiori 6y ago
  One could say that even in many of those cases the original concept of document does not really apply. Blogs have comment section, wikipedia allows you to modify the document itself, and so on. Not to say that these are less of a document, just to say that most usecases are still moving toward using the web as an application delivery platform, even if that application purpose is to show documents.
  - II2II 6y ago
    Yet many of these use cases can be delivered to the end user as a document. Consider Hacker News. I am able to browse the site and submit comments in web browsers that do not support JS. (This comment is being submitted by one such web browser.) This approach does not work for everything, nor does it work for everyone. Someone creating a blog post is probably going to prefer the use of JS to make their browser work more like a word processor. It can be done without JS, but that typically involves some form of markup that only a handful will enjoy. You can offer a map service without making it behave like an app, but most people will find a more interactive user interface more efficient. You certainly aren't going to be able to create emulators of vintage computers without JS. That being said, we can do an awful lot in a useful way while serving up static documents.
    - afiori 6y ago
      My separation of document/non-document was not about javascript, it was about the type of functionality the site offers. I would call a site like https://danluu.com/ https://danluu.com/ document focused, while hacker news is focused on being a platform for conversation and a ranked news feed. If you were to download danluu.com and brouwse it locally you wouldn't miss much, while if you where to do the same for hacker news you would only get one part of the offered experience. Javascript enables this difference to grow to much greater extents but it is not necessary to me.
quickthrower2 6y ago
I don't think so, I see most people reading documents. Now those documents might have lots of spyware, adware, scroll highjacks etc. embedded in them using JS, but at heart they are documents. For example a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc, page is more like a doc than an app for the most part. The internet is people consuming content. Even web "apps" served using Rails can happily work like this for the most part, with the occasional form post, for example Hacker News, Banking, Email. I am finding old school web apps much nicer to use honestly. They run work fast on modern connections and hardware.
- minerjoe 6y ago
  FWIW, Facebook works great in Links. https://m.facebook.com https://m.facebook.com
  - peterburkimsher 6y ago
    There's also a lite version of Facebook for those who want Messenger without an app. https://mbasic.facebook.com https://mbasic.facebook.com
    - swilliamsio 6y ago
      Also https://www.messenger.com/ https://www.messenger.com/ for Facebook Messenger without the app or the Facebook.
      - Jaruzel 6y ago
        If you have 'mobile' or 'tablet' in your useragent this URL only offers a link to download the app. However, for desktop it's great - I use it (and web.whatsapp.com) with Chromes --app= parameter to emulate the app experience.
contravariant 6y ago
I don't know, I'm still vaguely optimistic that people will realise that breaking the HTML/HTTP document model is causing more issues than it solves. Although we are going to need to address the issue of rendering dynamic content, since as of now HTML allows no real separation between content and representation. This frequently means that even if the content can be read from an HTTP endpoint then it still can't make it into the page without large blobs of JavaScript, just because the way the data is represented is different from the way it's read.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  What makes you so sure it is causing more issues than it solves? We can do a LOT of things in the browser that we can't do with the pure html document model.
  - ori_b 6y ago
    More isn't necessarily better. I'd rather have a simpler and more restrictive model with fewer performance, accessibility, maintainability, and security issues.
    - qudat 6y ago
      This is a feature request relegated to HN. No one else wants this.
      - adrianN 6y ago
        We have marketing to thank for that. Consumers don't care about performance because they're trained to buy $800 devices every year or two. They also don't care about security because being hacked is seen both inevitable and no big deal. And why should they care about accessibility? Most people don't need that at all.
        remus 6y ago
        It's not that people don't care, it's that in their eyes these are reasonable trade-offs for the rich capabilities offered by things like google maps, youtube, gmail etc. Im all for getting rid of some of the cruft that has developed over the years, but let's not forget the literally world-changing utility that is enabled by the modern web.
jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
> It's been huge leap in reducing cost to build, distribute, learn and use apps. Citation needed. 20 years ago you could make a commercial app with a GUI in no time with things like Delphi or Visual Basic. Now to do the same we have to learn several standards and languages and libs/frameworks and build tools and server admin tools and...
- andykx 6y ago
  I mean, websites (and apps) are cross platform. That fact alone reduces a ton of development time and mental overhead.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    You could do cross platform UI with Java. It was slow, ugly and poorly integrated with the rest of the OS unless you put in extra effort for each platform.. Just like applications running in the browser today.
    - andykx 6y ago
      I struggle to conceive an alternative. I don't want to download a native app every time I want to access my bank account or browse Twitter, for example. Web applications, despite their glaringly obvious flaws, are undeniably convenient.
- remus 6y ago
  I think the key differentiator is in distribution. If you build a web app it's immediately available to a sizable proportion of the human population (not that they'll necessarily use it). Getting similar reach with something offline is much harder. As you say it's still not trivial (legacy browsers, funny standards, technical challenges of serving loads of users etc.) but Id argue it is substantially easier than the challenges involved in making a program written in visual basic available to billions of people.
  - jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
monadic2 6y ago
Do you have an example of how a web app has produced a product competitive in quality and functionality with a native offering? Office 360 is the only example I can think of. Everything else is niche SaaS (or ad-paid) without clearly established desktop patterns to compete with in the first place. Meanwhile, it’s an absolute joy to use as a document browser, especially without JavaScript to mess up basic expected native behavior. I don’t get why there isn’t an “immediate mode” for application-style websites, tbh, that bypasses the DOM to provide more scalable widget layout, rendering, and interaction. I’ve written about a half-dozen “scrollable infinite list” implementations and I’ve never lost more sleep than doing this with the DOM. Probably a major reason why software is slower than ever. Hell, I just filed a bug with Patreon today complaining about how their messaging feature is so slow that, in combination with a double post bug, I ended up harassing a creator with four copies of the same message. I’d buy this thesis that the browser-as-an-app-platform is a win if people could develop their software with a comparable degree of quality, responsiveness, and resource usage. Java managed this better like 20 years ago even if it did look and behave like ass by default. Instead you now need JavaScript to read basic newspaper articles, completely obscuring the internet‘s content to everyone but google crawlers and WebKit/gecko users.

heavenlyblue 6y ago

What is deep OS integration in browsers?

dijit 6y ago
Access to raw USB devices is a good example I suppose.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  Oh sweet. What could possibly go wrong?
  - jtvjan 6y ago
    Not much, really. Unless the device has been created to work with WebUSB, you first need to manually add a udev rule (on Linux) or replace the driver with WinUSB (on Windows) before you can access it through a browser. Even then, the user needs to select the device from a list, like you would when giving a site access to your camera.
  - blandflakes 6y ago
    Right, why would we want applications to be able to use hardware anyway?
zomglings 6y ago
Does Chrome OS qualify?
todd3834 6y ago
First few things that come to mind: - Access to Camera & Microphone - Access to USB devices - Push Notifications - Geolocation - Bluetooth "deep" is probably the subjective term here.
- methodsignature 6y ago
  Printer dialogs in browser [_we hates it_].

feanaro 6y ago

I disagree it could ever be just an edge case because the use case hasn't disappeared and will likely never disappear. Blog posts come to mind as an obvious example, but also encyclopedias, research... Anything that simply needs to transfer nearly pure information instead of providing interaction. Of course the app use case has grown tremendously and is probably the more important one for casual users which are growing in number in relative terms, so I understand where the sentiment comes from.

afiori 6y ago
One could say that even in many of those cases the original concept of document does not really apply. Blogs have comment section, wikipedia allows you to modify the document itself, and so on. Not to say that these are less of a document, just to say that most usecases are still moving toward using the web as an application delivery platform, even if that application purpose is to show documents.
- II2II 6y ago
  Yet many of these use cases can be delivered to the end user as a document. Consider Hacker News. I am able to browse the site and submit comments in web browsers that do not support JS. (This comment is being submitted by one such web browser.) This approach does not work for everything, nor does it work for everyone. Someone creating a blog post is probably going to prefer the use of JS to make their browser work more like a word processor. It can be done without JS, but that typically involves some form of markup that only a handful will enjoy. You can offer a map service without making it behave like an app, but most people will find a more interactive user interface more efficient. You certainly aren't going to be able to create emulators of vintage computers without JS. That being said, we can do an awful lot in a useful way while serving up static documents.
  - afiori 6y ago
    My separation of document/non-document was not about javascript, it was about the type of functionality the site offers. I would call a site like https://danluu.com/ https://danluu.com/ document focused, while hacker news is focused on being a platform for conversation and a ranked news feed. If you were to download danluu.com and brouwse it locally you wouldn't miss much, while if you where to do the same for hacker news you would only get one part of the offered experience. Javascript enables this difference to grow to much greater extents but it is not necessary to me.

quickthrower2 6y ago

I don't think so, I see most people reading documents. Now those documents might have lots of spyware, adware, scroll highjacks etc. embedded in them using JS, but at heart they are documents. For example a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc, page is more like a doc than an app for the most part. The internet is people consuming content. Even web "apps" served using Rails can happily work like this for the most part, with the occasional form post, for example Hacker News, Banking, Email. I am finding old school web apps much nicer to use honestly. They run work fast on modern connections and hardware.

minerjoe 6y ago
FWIW, Facebook works great in Links. https://m.facebook.com https://m.facebook.com
- peterburkimsher 6y ago
  There's also a lite version of Facebook for those who want Messenger without an app. https://mbasic.facebook.com https://mbasic.facebook.com
  - swilliamsio 6y ago
    Also https://www.messenger.com/ https://www.messenger.com/ for Facebook Messenger without the app or the Facebook.
    - Jaruzel 6y ago
      If you have 'mobile' or 'tablet' in your useragent this URL only offers a link to download the app. However, for desktop it's great - I use it (and web.whatsapp.com) with Chromes --app= parameter to emulate the app experience.

contravariant 6y ago

I don't know, I'm still vaguely optimistic that people will realise that breaking the HTML/HTTP document model is causing more issues than it solves. Although we are going to need to address the issue of rendering dynamic content, since as of now HTML allows no real separation between content and representation. This frequently means that even if the content can be read from an HTTP endpoint then it still can't make it into the page without large blobs of JavaScript, just because the way the data is represented is different from the way it's read.

cortesoft 6y ago
What makes you so sure it is causing more issues than it solves? We can do a LOT of things in the browser that we can't do with the pure html document model.
- ori_b 6y ago
  More isn't necessarily better. I'd rather have a simpler and more restrictive model with fewer performance, accessibility, maintainability, and security issues.
  - qudat 6y ago
    This is a feature request relegated to HN. No one else wants this.
    - adrianN 6y ago
      We have marketing to thank for that. Consumers don't care about performance because they're trained to buy $800 devices every year or two. They also don't care about security because being hacked is seen both inevitable and no big deal. And why should they care about accessibility? Most people don't need that at all.
      - remus 6y ago
        It's not that people don't care, it's that in their eyes these are reasonable trade-offs for the rich capabilities offered by things like google maps, youtube, gmail etc. Im all for getting rid of some of the cruft that has developed over the years, but let's not forget the literally world-changing utility that is enabled by the modern web.

jfkebwjsbx 6y ago

> It's been huge leap in reducing cost to build, distribute, learn and use apps. Citation needed. 20 years ago you could make a commercial app with a GUI in no time with things like Delphi or Visual Basic. Now to do the same we have to learn several standards and languages and libs/frameworks and build tools and server admin tools and...

andykx 6y ago
I mean, websites (and apps) are cross platform. That fact alone reduces a ton of development time and mental overhead.
- adrianN 6y ago
  You could do cross platform UI with Java. It was slow, ugly and poorly integrated with the rest of the OS unless you put in extra effort for each platform.. Just like applications running in the browser today.
  - andykx 6y ago
    I struggle to conceive an alternative. I don't want to download a native app every time I want to access my bank account or browse Twitter, for example. Web applications, despite their glaringly obvious flaws, are undeniably convenient.
remus 6y ago
I think the key differentiator is in distribution. If you build a web app it's immediately available to a sizable proportion of the human population (not that they'll necessarily use it). Getting similar reach with something offline is much harder. As you say it's still not trivial (legacy browsers, funny standards, technical challenges of serving loads of users etc.) but Id argue it is substantially easier than the challenges involved in making a program written in visual basic available to billions of people.
- jfkebwjsbx 6y ago

monadic2 6y ago

Do you have an example of how a web app has produced a product competitive in quality and functionality with a native offering? Office 360 is the only example I can think of. Everything else is niche SaaS (or ad-paid) without clearly established desktop patterns to compete with in the first place. Meanwhile, it’s an absolute joy to use as a document browser, especially without JavaScript to mess up basic expected native behavior. I don’t get why there isn’t an “immediate mode” for application-style websites, tbh, that bypasses the DOM to provide more scalable widget layout, rendering, and interaction. I’ve written about a half-dozen “scrollable infinite list” implementations and I’ve never lost more sleep than doing this with the DOM. Probably a major reason why software is slower than ever. Hell, I just filed a bug with Patreon today complaining about how their messaging feature is so slow that, in combination with a double post bug, I ended up harassing a creator with four copies of the same message. I’d buy this thesis that the browser-as-an-app-platform is a win if people could develop their software with a comparable degree of quality, responsiveness, and resource usage. Java managed this better like 20 years ago even if it did look and behave like ass by default. Instead you now need JavaScript to read basic newspaper articles, completely obscuring the internet‘s content to everyone but google crawlers and WebKit/gecko users.