5 ms·

Yes, DOM is "just" HTML and CSS with a JS API. All of that is quite broken in various places, the APIs usually rather bad, mutability everywhere and performance

Yes, DOM is "just" HTML and CSS with a JS API. All of that is quite broken in various places, the APIs usually rather bad, mutability everywhere and performance suffers as soon as you e.g. switch the cursor from an arrow to hand/ finger, there can be a complete re-render. Google especially is in a position to fix most of these things if they wanted to. They even have the best test-data of any company. But they choose to side-step some of these problems by introducing another, completely new technology and then a small team of people goes on to hack something useable using this technology as if they were a small startup. The problem is, Google is basically a collection of teams with very different focus points. Some are paid to develop new technology no matter if they want it for a specific product. Other people are paid to "improve" an existing product, e.g. Google Docs and have to use what is available. Any kind of exchange of information between teams is a friction and blocks things from being improved. At OrgPad, 10% of CPU time is the maximum we can use if we want a smooth experience. The rest is eaten by the browser and inefficiencies there. I don't think we are alone in stepping over bugs, idiotic APIs and implementation differences everywhere all the time. The fix is not to delegate most of the work to the web developer but for the browser and web standards people to step up and do a thorough job with existing stuff.

hnedeotes 5y ago
I'm one of those persons that really want browsers to be viable options to building fully fledged applications but I sincerely like the core concepts of HTML and CSS. I think the biggest issue is that things kept on being tacked on the primitive specification to solve ever evolving needs. The browsers themselves are written in languages that are meant to go fast - which is important for drawing of elements, rebuilding trees, etc - but not good for doing concerted async operations in a structured fashion. Just looking at those codebases makes you want to stab your eyes with a fork up to your brain. In my, very valuable, opinion, a re-assessment of what HTML is (ignoring the name, and treating it as the language of the browser instead of hyper text) and what at web page can be - along with a browser designed to be multi-tabbed, async by nature, supporting advanced non-tree based layouts (maybe still trees, but trees that could be part of zindexed layers? detached layers that allowed for interaction handlers separate from the visual elements?) in a language that has tools to model those behaviours, could probably re-use all the lessons from HTML, CSS and JS apps. Of course, it would still be like building everything again - but I'm not sure wasm/canvas blobs is a better solution long-term.

hnedeotes 5y ago

I'm one of those persons that really want browsers to be viable options to building fully fledged applications but I sincerely like the core concepts of HTML and CSS. I think the biggest issue is that things kept on being tacked on the primitive specification to solve ever evolving needs. The browsers themselves are written in languages that are meant to go fast - which is important for drawing of elements, rebuilding trees, etc - but not good for doing concerted async operations in a structured fashion. Just looking at those codebases makes you want to stab your eyes with a fork up to your brain. In my, very valuable, opinion, a re-assessment of what HTML is (ignoring the name, and treating it as the language of the browser instead of hyper text) and what at web page can be - along with a browser designed to be multi-tabbed, async by nature, supporting advanced non-tree based layouts (maybe still trees, but trees that could be part of zindexed layers? detached layers that allowed for interaction handlers separate from the visual elements?) in a language that has tools to model those behaviours, could probably re-use all the lessons from HTML, CSS and JS apps. Of course, it would still be like building everything again - but I'm not sure wasm/canvas blobs is a better solution long-term.