5 ms·

We've come full circle. The web developers are starting to realize there's a whole operating system underneath the browser that might actually be of some use.

by junon 6y ago

qsort 6y ago
Web applications can be run locally. As much as it's easy to shit on the web stack, it solved a real problem, namely the 'operating systems underneath' being absolute clusterfucks at least as much as the web. It's really sad that the only way to reliably access something from multiple devices and locations are websites. Ironically, if we're ever going to see something like the OP wants, it's 100% going to be locally-run webapps. Whether we like it or not, think it's right or not, it's clear by now that the average joe is not going to learn tools like git.
- wrnr 6y ago
  That's why I am so exited about gioui.org because it'll allow native applications for OSX, Windows, Linux (both X11 and Wayland), iOS, android and (sortof) webASM. It is a simple wrapper around the input devices like mouse, keyboard and touch screen and outputs the graphics using GPU shaders (DirectX, OpenGL, Metal). It feels like a mix between a 2D game engine and a UI library. The immediate mode architecture is a mindfuck how easy it is compared to (functional) reactive programming. You basically get all the benefits of having observers of values with just values.
  - nine_k 6y ago
    The usual problems are caused by the non-native controls: no built-in affordances like spell checking and all the OS-specific behaviors, no easy way to plug in accessibility, and the non-native look and feel. All this is totally fine for a game UI, and is a much harder sell for productivity software.
    - wrnr 6y ago
      Thats a little bit unfair, even the W3C's web-agency has a hard time building an accessible website and needed spend two weeks (of billable time) reviewing different web frameworks because of it: https://w3c.studio24.net/updates/on-not-choosing-wordpress/ https://w3c.studio24.net/updates/on-not-choosing-wordpress/
      - nine_k 6y ago
        Not that many people need accessibility. About 100% of people need spell-checking, though.
        OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago
        Certain types of automation and testing are often built on top of accessibility features. Accessibility doesn't just mean accessible to the disabled. It also means accessible to your code.
        p_l 6y ago
        Exactly. And people forget that depending on the UI libraries you use, you might get a mostly accessible app by default. All of core Windows widget classes, and WinForms and WFP, support accessibility features. Worst case you have a somewhat broken object tree without good labels, but that's already a start. Dealing with something that believed it only needs a canvas to draw on is PITA.
        outworlder 6y ago
        > Not that many people need accessibility. 100% will require accessibility in some form if your timeframe is long enough. We aren't young forever, you know.
    - wtetzner 6y ago
      > All this is totally fine for a game UI, and is a much harder sell for productivity software. Is it? Web and electron applications have the same issue, and they seem to be doing fine.
  - jniedrauer 6y ago
    I started playing around with gioui the other day. It looks like it has a lot of potential. I was curious if it could redraw efficiently enough to be used as a go equivalent to pygame. Have you experimented with anything that requires a high refresh rate? I guess I need to finish my experimenting and find out for myself.
  - rektide 6y ago
    Flutter is similarly building a canvas based rendering system for the web, called CanvasKit. I think it's neat that folks can skip the conventional web technologies & hypertext & use the web to create arbitrary systems. But I also think this is quite a malignant & user-de-empowering & tragic development for the web. The DOM has been extremely powerful as a common language, that users can make use of directly & via extensions & scrapers. Stealing this fire back from the users, renegging on the web's promise that it's the user's agent, for them to use to navigate the web as they like: that's a great & sad regression. In my opinion the web is worthwhile & useful. Bypassing it, treating the web like thin-client, a way to push pixels in people's face, via some auxiliary rendering process, be it local (webassembly) or remote, is a terrible usurpation of user's agency. Projects like Flutter's CanvasKit & others are a great danger to one of the few piece of technology that has enabled users some level of control & freedom, the web.
- oakpond 6y ago
  OSes may be technical clusterfucks. However, the most important thing imho is that all this shit is running on a stack that's robust against vendor lock-in. That's easier with a smaller stack since you have less vendors to worry about. LFSFS (local-first software from scratch), if you will.
jka 6y ago
I'd be very curious to know what percentage of total aggregate CPU and memory resources are in the hands of everyday people (in smartphones) compared to in datacentres.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  1 gigabyte over a billion cellphones turns into a exabyte, so I would guess, similar orders of magnitude?
  - randtrain34 6y ago
    seems data centers have 2k exabytes https://www.statista.com/statistics/638593/worldwide-data-center-storage-capacity-cloud-vs-traditional/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/638593/worldwide-data-ce...
    - saalweachter 6y ago
      Back-of-the-enveloping it I have a hard time seeing how you'd arrive at more than low-100's of exabytes total storage across the world's supply of cellphones -- there's 1.4 billion active iPhones and 3.75 billion other phones, so even if you assume that the average iPhone has 32GiB and the average non-iPhone has 16GiB (which is pretty generous considering a large chunk of those are probably feature phones), you only get up to ~100 EiB. To break 2000 EiB you'd need each cellphone to have more than 400 GiB of storage, which I'm pretty sure is very much not true, unless my phone is older than I thought it was.
    - shalmanese 6y ago
      That's storage, not memory.
eli_gottlieb 6y ago
Yeah this article mostly makes me feel very old.
onion2k 6y ago
The web developers are starting to realize there's a whole operating system underneath the browser that might actually be of some use. The article doesn't mention anything at the OS level. Every technology suggested runs in the browser.
tomc1985 6y ago
FINALLY!

We've come full circle. The web developers are starting to realize there's a whole operating system underneath the browser that might actually be of some use.

by junon 6y ago

We've come full circle. The web developers are starting to realize there's a whole operating system underneath the browser that might actually be of some use.

qsort 6y ago

Web applications can be run locally. As much as it's easy to shit on the web stack, it solved a real problem, namely the 'operating systems underneath' being absolute clusterfucks at least as much as the web. It's really sad that the only way to reliably access something from multiple devices and locations are websites. Ironically, if we're ever going to see something like the OP wants, it's 100% going to be locally-run webapps. Whether we like it or not, think it's right or not, it's clear by now that the average joe is not going to learn tools like git.

wrnr 6y ago
That's why I am so exited about gioui.org because it'll allow native applications for OSX, Windows, Linux (both X11 and Wayland), iOS, android and (sortof) webASM. It is a simple wrapper around the input devices like mouse, keyboard and touch screen and outputs the graphics using GPU shaders (DirectX, OpenGL, Metal). It feels like a mix between a 2D game engine and a UI library. The immediate mode architecture is a mindfuck how easy it is compared to (functional) reactive programming. You basically get all the benefits of having observers of values with just values.
- nine_k 6y ago
  The usual problems are caused by the non-native controls: no built-in affordances like spell checking and all the OS-specific behaviors, no easy way to plug in accessibility, and the non-native look and feel. All this is totally fine for a game UI, and is a much harder sell for productivity software.
  - wrnr 6y ago
    Thats a little bit unfair, even the W3C's web-agency has a hard time building an accessible website and needed spend two weeks (of billable time) reviewing different web frameworks because of it: https://w3c.studio24.net/updates/on-not-choosing-wordpress/ https://w3c.studio24.net/updates/on-not-choosing-wordpress/
    - nine_k 6y ago
      Not that many people need accessibility. About 100% of people need spell-checking, though.
      - OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago
        Certain types of automation and testing are often built on top of accessibility features. Accessibility doesn't just mean accessible to the disabled. It also means accessible to your code.
        p_l 6y ago
        Exactly. And people forget that depending on the UI libraries you use, you might get a mostly accessible app by default. All of core Windows widget classes, and WinForms and WFP, support accessibility features. Worst case you have a somewhat broken object tree without good labels, but that's already a start. Dealing with something that believed it only needs a canvas to draw on is PITA.
      - outworlder 6y ago
        > Not that many people need accessibility. 100% will require accessibility in some form if your timeframe is long enough. We aren't young forever, you know.
  - wtetzner 6y ago
    > All this is totally fine for a game UI, and is a much harder sell for productivity software. Is it? Web and electron applications have the same issue, and they seem to be doing fine.
- jniedrauer 6y ago
  I started playing around with gioui the other day. It looks like it has a lot of potential. I was curious if it could redraw efficiently enough to be used as a go equivalent to pygame. Have you experimented with anything that requires a high refresh rate? I guess I need to finish my experimenting and find out for myself.
- rektide 6y ago
  Flutter is similarly building a canvas based rendering system for the web, called CanvasKit. I think it's neat that folks can skip the conventional web technologies & hypertext & use the web to create arbitrary systems. But I also think this is quite a malignant & user-de-empowering & tragic development for the web. The DOM has been extremely powerful as a common language, that users can make use of directly & via extensions & scrapers. Stealing this fire back from the users, renegging on the web's promise that it's the user's agent, for them to use to navigate the web as they like: that's a great & sad regression. In my opinion the web is worthwhile & useful. Bypassing it, treating the web like thin-client, a way to push pixels in people's face, via some auxiliary rendering process, be it local (webassembly) or remote, is a terrible usurpation of user's agency. Projects like Flutter's CanvasKit & others are a great danger to one of the few piece of technology that has enabled users some level of control & freedom, the web.
oakpond 6y ago
OSes may be technical clusterfucks. However, the most important thing imho is that all this shit is running on a stack that's robust against vendor lock-in. That's easier with a smaller stack since you have less vendors to worry about. LFSFS (local-first software from scratch), if you will.

jka 6y ago

I'd be very curious to know what percentage of total aggregate CPU and memory resources are in the hands of everyday people (in smartphones) compared to in datacentres.

saalweachter 6y ago
1 gigabyte over a billion cellphones turns into a exabyte, so I would guess, similar orders of magnitude?
- randtrain34 6y ago
  seems data centers have 2k exabytes https://www.statista.com/statistics/638593/worldwide-data-center-storage-capacity-cloud-vs-traditional/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/638593/worldwide-data-ce...
  - saalweachter 6y ago
    Back-of-the-enveloping it I have a hard time seeing how you'd arrive at more than low-100's of exabytes total storage across the world's supply of cellphones -- there's 1.4 billion active iPhones and 3.75 billion other phones, so even if you assume that the average iPhone has 32GiB and the average non-iPhone has 16GiB (which is pretty generous considering a large chunk of those are probably feature phones), you only get up to ~100 EiB. To break 2000 EiB you'd need each cellphone to have more than 400 GiB of storage, which I'm pretty sure is very much not true, unless my phone is older than I thought it was.
  - shalmanese 6y ago
    That's storage, not memory.

eli_gottlieb 6y ago

Yeah this article mostly makes me feel very old.

onion2k 6y ago

The web developers are starting to realize there's a whole operating system underneath the browser that might actually be of some use. The article doesn't mention anything at the OS level. Every technology suggested runs in the browser.

tomc1985 6y ago

FINALLY!