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I keep coming back to the idea that HTML needs to phase out making way for a modern rendering language. Then when I start thinking about what that would mean I

I keep coming back to the idea that HTML needs to phase out making way for a modern rendering language. Then when I start thinking about what that would mean I realize it's almost always going to be an evolution not a revolution for the following reasons... 1) No one wants to deliver two UIs, one for HTML legacy browsers, and one for the hot new browser rendering. 2) Who would own the standards? If it's a consortium we'll be back to lengthy RFPs and glacier pace of agreement, possibly resulting in something worse than HTML that does not get adopted. I can't see how any one organization could own the standard and get other browser developers to buy into it. HTML+CSS is so integral to everyday life it's hard to see how it could ever be deprecated.

tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
I believe it could be replaced by a platform agnostic language for describing interfaces. Imagine a universal standard for representing data on screen, where each platform could differentiate by building their specific abstractions on top of it.
- hestefisk 5y ago
  And we have … HTML with Java Applets and VB Script extensions
  - tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
    So those can work on iOS, Android, TV, Desktop, etc?
  - jamespo 5y ago
    Do we? What browsers support java applets nowadays?
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  Isnt that exactly what HTML is?
  - tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
    Not exactly, no. It can be rendered on any operating system, but it is not the rendering language used for all platforms. What I'm talking about is all platforms (web, ios, android, tv, etc etc) using a single standard for representing interfaces. Similar to what happened to network technologies in the 80's and 90's, where all the competing silos agreed to use the http standard.
    - tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
      What I'm proposing is drastic and radical, but consider how insanely expensive it is to create a multi-platform application. Currently all efforts to bridge the gap between platforms sits at the application layer - flutter, react native, electron, etc. It's a massive effort to build an abstraction on top of each of these platforms, because the only common denominator between them is at the OpenGL layer. I think the common layer should be a couple of abstraction layers higher.
    - chriswarbo 5y ago
      > It can be rendered on any operating system, but it is not the rendering language used for all platforms. We could have this right now if iOS, Android, TVs, Windows, macOS, Linux, etc. all used HTML+CSS instead of their own toolkits. Yet they don't. Creating some fancy alternative is an even harder problem, since (a) that alternative needs to be designed and built and (b) all those same platforms will still need to switch, except we would also have to switch over the Web too. This is a political issue, not a technology issue: it requires convincing a whole bunch of organisations to perform a costly change, for little direct benefit to them. This would also be very easy to abuse via "embrace, extend, extinguish". Consider the history of word processors: everyone used the de facto standard (Lotus Notes) for compatibility. When Rich Text Format came along, underdogs like Word could read and write Notes-compatible documents. Once Word's market share rose, Microsoft "extended" the format so its documents could no longer be read reliably by Notes. Customers then switched to Word since it was "more reliable" at reading documents (i.e. it could handle the valid files produced by Notes, as well as the broken junk that Word produced). Of course, Microsoft tried the same thing with HTML (badges like "Best viewed in Internet Explorer" became common precisely because IE did things in an incompatible way; I remember the relief among Web devs when IE7 came out, at its slight move towards compatibility!)
seph-reed 5y ago
My expectation is that we're going to move away from the hard link between data and UI some day. Services will simply offer their data with an API (and micro-transactions to use it), and then 3rd parties will create UI's for each interface. Tweets are a useful data type, but there's nothing about twitter's brand UI that is necessary.
- wvenable 5y ago
  Why would any company give up their data and brand awareness? Twitter exists to sell advertising -- their brand UI is 100% necessary. More necessary than the data itself.

tenaciousDaniel 5y ago

I believe it could be replaced by a platform agnostic language for describing interfaces. Imagine a universal standard for representing data on screen, where each platform could differentiate by building their specific abstractions on top of it.

hestefisk 5y ago
And we have … HTML with Java Applets and VB Script extensions
- tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
  So those can work on iOS, Android, TV, Desktop, etc?
- jamespo 5y ago
  Do we? What browsers support java applets nowadays?
madeofpalk 5y ago
Isnt that exactly what HTML is?
- tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
  Not exactly, no. It can be rendered on any operating system, but it is not the rendering language used for all platforms. What I'm talking about is all platforms (web, ios, android, tv, etc etc) using a single standard for representing interfaces. Similar to what happened to network technologies in the 80's and 90's, where all the competing silos agreed to use the http standard.
  - tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
    What I'm proposing is drastic and radical, but consider how insanely expensive it is to create a multi-platform application. Currently all efforts to bridge the gap between platforms sits at the application layer - flutter, react native, electron, etc. It's a massive effort to build an abstraction on top of each of these platforms, because the only common denominator between them is at the OpenGL layer. I think the common layer should be a couple of abstraction layers higher.
  - chriswarbo 5y ago
    > It can be rendered on any operating system, but it is not the rendering language used for all platforms. We could have this right now if iOS, Android, TVs, Windows, macOS, Linux, etc. all used HTML+CSS instead of their own toolkits. Yet they don't. Creating some fancy alternative is an even harder problem, since (a) that alternative needs to be designed and built and (b) all those same platforms will still need to switch, except we would also have to switch over the Web too. This is a political issue, not a technology issue: it requires convincing a whole bunch of organisations to perform a costly change, for little direct benefit to them. This would also be very easy to abuse via "embrace, extend, extinguish". Consider the history of word processors: everyone used the de facto standard (Lotus Notes) for compatibility. When Rich Text Format came along, underdogs like Word could read and write Notes-compatible documents. Once Word's market share rose, Microsoft "extended" the format so its documents could no longer be read reliably by Notes. Customers then switched to Word since it was "more reliable" at reading documents (i.e. it could handle the valid files produced by Notes, as well as the broken junk that Word produced). Of course, Microsoft tried the same thing with HTML (badges like "Best viewed in Internet Explorer" became common precisely because IE did things in an incompatible way; I remember the relief among Web devs when IE7 came out, at its slight move towards compatibility!)

seph-reed 5y ago

My expectation is that we're going to move away from the hard link between data and UI some day. Services will simply offer their data with an API (and micro-transactions to use it), and then 3rd parties will create UI's for each interface. Tweets are a useful data type, but there's nothing about twitter's brand UI that is necessary.

wvenable 5y ago
Why would any company give up their data and brand awareness? Twitter exists to sell advertising -- their brand UI is 100% necessary. More necessary than the data itself.