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This is a stop-gap before the web apps are rendered server side and streamed to the client. Not as HTML and JS, but as 4/8K 60FPS video, like Stadia or Xbox clo

This is a stop-gap before the web apps are rendered server side and streamed to the client. Not as HTML and JS, but as 4/8K 60FPS video, like Stadia or Xbox cloud. The reason is simple, your smartphone, tablet or laptop can already view a Netflix HDR 4K stream but still cannot render Gmail or Figma with acceptable performance. You can also do things like remove ads and telemetry which the service providers would really you rather not. The app will display exactly as the provider intended, all compatibility issues will be eliminated, and the performance will be entirely uniform and in the provider's control, provided by AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Stadia for gaming is OK, but Stadia for Adobe Creative Cloud, Figma and Visual Studio is much more interesting, coming to your browser tab soon.

rochacon 5y ago
I take this with a similar perspective. As a complete standalone browser, I'm a bit skeptical on its adoption, as a built-in feature backed by the browser vendor (Apple/Google/Mozilla/Microsoft/etc.) to "offline this tab to the cloud" I think this gets a lot more appealing. Add billing per minute and this can be a very nice way of interacting with heavy applications through a browser.
sfblah 5y ago
Are people actually working on this internally at companies? I haven't run across it. But, reading this post, it does seem plausible.
smaddock 5y ago
Wouldn't this completely break accessibility support of such web apps? This is part of the reason why omitting the DOM and rendering a UI with WebGL isn't the best idea. Maybe this could be resolved by sending the accessibility tree to the client, but it seems like a step backwards.
andrepd 5y ago
> but still cannot render Gmail or Figma with acceptable performance Then that's a problem of software, not hardware.
rahimnathwani 5y ago
A Netflix HDR 4K stream isn't a great example, because: - the data only needs to be compressed once, for many viewers (vs. browser sessions, which are single-user) - the receiving device can buffer data (vs. browser-sessions, for which the future is yet unknown) - latency doesn't matter, because the user only perceives it at the beginning of the session (vs. every time they use an input device)
- artursapek 5y ago
  Great points.
IvanAchlaqullah 5y ago
> This is a stop-gap before the web apps are rendered server side and streamed to the client. Not as HTML and JS, but as 4/8K 60FPS video, like Stadia or Xbox cloud. The reason is simple, your smartphone, tablet or laptop can already view a Netflix HDR 4K stream but still cannot render Gmail or Figma with acceptable performance. As somebody who lives in 3rd world country, I'm still baffled why somebody keep pushing for streaming everything. It feels like they are trying so hard to fix the wrong problem while oblivious to the real problems. The actual problems is bloated software. Gmail won't be slow if their JS didn't take 10+ MB. Figma would be much faster if they ditch Electron rewrite it as fully native application. Not to mention the sheer stupidity of Stadia. If I use Stadia for streaming video games at 4k 60 FPS, it will eat 23 GB of my data caps per hours. I need around 20 hours to beat single player games, so using stadia will cost me 460 GB just to play one game. Here's the kicker: my entire steam library are 405 GB.

rochacon 5y ago

I take this with a similar perspective. As a complete standalone browser, I'm a bit skeptical on its adoption, as a built-in feature backed by the browser vendor (Apple/Google/Mozilla/Microsoft/etc.) to "offline this tab to the cloud" I think this gets a lot more appealing. Add billing per minute and this can be a very nice way of interacting with heavy applications through a browser.

sfblah 5y ago

Are people actually working on this internally at companies? I haven't run across it. But, reading this post, it does seem plausible.

smaddock 5y ago

Wouldn't this completely break accessibility support of such web apps? This is part of the reason why omitting the DOM and rendering a UI with WebGL isn't the best idea. Maybe this could be resolved by sending the accessibility tree to the client, but it seems like a step backwards.

andrepd 5y ago

> but still cannot render Gmail or Figma with acceptable performance Then that's a problem of software, not hardware.

rahimnathwani 5y ago

A Netflix HDR 4K stream isn't a great example, because: - the data only needs to be compressed once, for many viewers (vs. browser sessions, which are single-user) - the receiving device can buffer data (vs. browser-sessions, for which the future is yet unknown) - latency doesn't matter, because the user only perceives it at the beginning of the session (vs. every time they use an input device)

artursapek 5y ago
Great points.

IvanAchlaqullah 5y ago

> This is a stop-gap before the web apps are rendered server side and streamed to the client. Not as HTML and JS, but as 4/8K 60FPS video, like Stadia or Xbox cloud. The reason is simple, your smartphone, tablet or laptop can already view a Netflix HDR 4K stream but still cannot render Gmail or Figma with acceptable performance. As somebody who lives in 3rd world country, I'm still baffled why somebody keep pushing for streaming everything. It feels like they are trying so hard to fix the wrong problem while oblivious to the real problems. The actual problems is bloated software. Gmail won't be slow if their JS didn't take 10+ MB. Figma would be much faster if they ditch Electron rewrite it as fully native application. Not to mention the sheer stupidity of Stadia. If I use Stadia for streaming video games at 4k 60 FPS, it will eat 23 GB of my data caps per hours. I need around 20 hours to beat single player games, so using stadia will cost me 460 GB just to play one game. Here's the kicker: my entire steam library are 405 GB.