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I have a complete unlovely thought; web browser needs a rewrite with thin web specs (imagine javascript the good part book meme). People think it's impossible t

I have a complete unlovely thought; web browser needs a rewrite with thin web specs (imagine javascript the good part book meme). People think it's impossible to rewrite, but I believe it's only because it's a mess. Inventing a new programming language and new DOM api that works greatly with webassembly probably worth it, consider that the next 10 years the web is still not going anywhere. You may laugh at Flash .. but hey do you love "hydration" thing? I'd love to have an isomorphic?(terrible name) template engine that rendered as text as well as client program binary. Do you love OS based form control that can't be styled? I'd love a complete separate controls from OS, clean the contract between widget and actual system api. Just stop caring (coercing) how it looks, just provide api to enforce how its functionality works, we already have these bunch of aria- thing. The question is what block the progress of making it complete, what kind of problem? I believe it's not a technical problem. Maybe incentive?

acoard 6y ago
It's both technical and incentive. The problem is that so much of technology is standing on the shoulders of giants. If we re-write, how much of the giants do we decide to lop-off? For example, could you get Google, Apple, Mozilla, to all agree where to draw the line? Should we still use HTTP? Should everything use QUIC? An entirely new standard? What about DNS? But let's say they do agree. Then what, they create entirely new browsers (I'll call Chrome2, Safari2, etc). Maybe they don't even use the DOM or HTML at all, but an entirely new setup. A side note – if the web was re-built today it probably wouldn't have "View Source." As you said, I imagine it'd lean into WASM and "isomorphic" code, which could just be WebGL/canvas/some new paradigm/etc. So then what... everyone says abandon my original website and download a new browser to access the new one? Because that's what throwing out backwards compatibility looks like. And that seems like a non-starter to most people. Browsers are too big to fail; too big to be thrown out and re-written. Our hope is incremental, not revolutionary. Things like WASM in browsers let us pursue new paradigms while also being backwards compatible. Lastly, I'd say the incentives for a new web would be worse than an old web. The original web was written by tinkerers and tech startups like Netscape/Mozilla. The new web would be written by multibillion dollar companies who like and know how to build moats. It would have microtransactions (not necessarily bad by itself) and I worry would look more like an app store.
Jyaif 6y ago
> web browser needs a rewrite with thin web specs Flutter was started by Chrome engineers asking the question "what would the web look like if we could strip out all the things that makes it slow without worrying about breaking compatibility?"

acoard 6y ago

It's both technical and incentive. The problem is that so much of technology is standing on the shoulders of giants. If we re-write, how much of the giants do we decide to lop-off? For example, could you get Google, Apple, Mozilla, to all agree where to draw the line? Should we still use HTTP? Should everything use QUIC? An entirely new standard? What about DNS? But let's say they do agree. Then what, they create entirely new browsers (I'll call Chrome2, Safari2, etc). Maybe they don't even use the DOM or HTML at all, but an entirely new setup. A side note – if the web was re-built today it probably wouldn't have "View Source." As you said, I imagine it'd lean into WASM and "isomorphic" code, which could just be WebGL/canvas/some new paradigm/etc. So then what... everyone says abandon my original website and download a new browser to access the new one? Because that's what throwing out backwards compatibility looks like. And that seems like a non-starter to most people. Browsers are too big to fail; too big to be thrown out and re-written. Our hope is incremental, not revolutionary. Things like WASM in browsers let us pursue new paradigms while also being backwards compatible. Lastly, I'd say the incentives for a new web would be worse than an old web. The original web was written by tinkerers and tech startups like Netscape/Mozilla. The new web would be written by multibillion dollar companies who like and know how to build moats. It would have microtransactions (not necessarily bad by itself) and I worry would look more like an app store.

Jyaif 6y ago

> web browser needs a rewrite with thin web specs Flutter was started by Chrome engineers asking the question "what would the web look like if we could strip out all the things that makes it slow without worrying about breaking compatibility?"