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Honestly, I really miss Edge's EPUB support. Like really miss it. There's a lot of things I think browsers should not do. WebUSB? WebMIDI? Burn these things wit

Honestly, I really miss Edge's EPUB support. Like really miss it. There's a lot of things I think browsers should not do. WebUSB? WebMIDI? Burn these things with fire. Do not connect the web browser to hardware. Web browsers are supposed to actually be document viewers. HTML is a document format. I am 100% on-board with web browsers also reading PDFs and EPUBs. I know Mozilla is hurting for manpower right now, but I'd drop dead with excitement if EPUB support came to Firefox.

kelnos 6y ago
> Web browsers are supposed to actually be document viewers. That ship sailed long ago. For better or worse, web browsers are application platforms now.
nickjj 6y ago
Fortunately Sumatra (on Windows) opens pdf, epub and mobi files: https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader.html https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader.html I switched to it a while back and haven't looked back since. It's open source too.
mhh__ 6y ago
Not really sure about WebUSB but WebMIDI is pretty harmless, surely? The browser probably won't be good enough to replace Ableton (or similar) for a while but it is the primary medium for a lot of digital (interactive) artwork - for projects that use sound it's nice to plug a MIDI device straight into the browser.
- moonchild 6y ago
  It can be used for fingerprinting. And most people who care enough to own dedicated MIDI devices also care enough to own dedicated MIDI software.
- acolumb 6y ago
  As long as VSTs are native-only (which based on the low-latency nature of audio processing would probably never see a cloud implementation,) web-based DAWs will never replace locally-run ones. Most music studios airgap their systems anyway.
  - flingo 6y ago
    You could probably get alright performance running in the browser using webassembly. No idea if anyone's working on anything like that.
    - lioeters 6y ago
      I'm curious too. From a quick search, I found WebDSP, "A client-side DSP library utilizing the power of WebAssembly". https://github.com/shamadee/web-dsp https://github.com/shamadee/web-dsp > WebDSP is a collection of highly performant algorithms, which are designed to be building blocks for web applications that aim to operate on media data. > The methods are written in C++ and compiled to WASM, and exposed as simple vanilla Javascript functions developers can run on the client side. ..On further reading, they have functions for video and image processing, but not audio as far as I can tell. --- There's Glissando, "A web-based digital audio workstation using the web platform APIs (Web Audio, Web MIDI) and WebAssembly". https://github.com/glissando-daw/glissando-app https://github.com/glissando-daw/glissando-app They mention "VST support", but I cannot imagine how that's possible from the web.
symlinkk 6y ago
How far do you go with that? Should web browsers render .docx?
- notriddle 6y ago
  Yeah, that would be awesome.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  I mean, sure? XML-based document formats aren't really foreign to web browsers anyways, and it'd probably be a safer way to view third party documents than Word...
  - int_19h 6y ago
    And just like that, we'll reinvent OLE eventually, but with HTML5 and JavaScript.

kelnos 6y ago

> Web browsers are supposed to actually be document viewers. That ship sailed long ago. For better or worse, web browsers are application platforms now.

nickjj 6y ago

Fortunately Sumatra (on Windows) opens pdf, epub and mobi files: https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader.html https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader.html I switched to it a while back and haven't looked back since. It's open source too.

mhh__ 6y ago

Not really sure about WebUSB but WebMIDI is pretty harmless, surely? The browser probably won't be good enough to replace Ableton (or similar) for a while but it is the primary medium for a lot of digital (interactive) artwork - for projects that use sound it's nice to plug a MIDI device straight into the browser.

moonchild 6y ago
It can be used for fingerprinting. And most people who care enough to own dedicated MIDI devices also care enough to own dedicated MIDI software.
acolumb 6y ago
As long as VSTs are native-only (which based on the low-latency nature of audio processing would probably never see a cloud implementation,) web-based DAWs will never replace locally-run ones. Most music studios airgap their systems anyway.
- flingo 6y ago
  You could probably get alright performance running in the browser using webassembly. No idea if anyone's working on anything like that.
  - lioeters 6y ago
    I'm curious too. From a quick search, I found WebDSP, "A client-side DSP library utilizing the power of WebAssembly". https://github.com/shamadee/web-dsp https://github.com/shamadee/web-dsp > WebDSP is a collection of highly performant algorithms, which are designed to be building blocks for web applications that aim to operate on media data. > The methods are written in C++ and compiled to WASM, and exposed as simple vanilla Javascript functions developers can run on the client side. ..On further reading, they have functions for video and image processing, but not audio as far as I can tell. --- There's Glissando, "A web-based digital audio workstation using the web platform APIs (Web Audio, Web MIDI) and WebAssembly". https://github.com/glissando-daw/glissando-app https://github.com/glissando-daw/glissando-app They mention "VST support", but I cannot imagine how that's possible from the web.

symlinkk 6y ago

How far do you go with that? Should web browsers render .docx?

notriddle 6y ago
Yeah, that would be awesome.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I mean, sure? XML-based document formats aren't really foreign to web browsers anyways, and it'd probably be a safer way to view third party documents than Word...
- int_19h 6y ago
  And just like that, we'll reinvent OLE eventually, but with HTML5 and JavaScript.