6 ms·

You see this pattern in tons of web apps and sites. The browser is slowly turning into some sort of virtual machine. A sensible DOM structure with logical eleme

by jstsch 5y ago

You see this pattern in tons of web apps and sites. The browser is slowly turning into some sort of virtual machine. A sensible DOM structure with logical element naming seems to be a thing of the past. I think it makes development more complicated and also increases the barrier of entry for new devs.

foxfluff 5y ago
It turned into that (more than) a decade ago. I was still browsing the web with links2 and a tiny text mode browser (similar to w3m) of my own writing until around the time google said "let's kill IE6." Shortly after that, the web at large started becoming unusable with simple browsers. It was still reasonably usable with script blocking, but that ship sailed too, and the vast majority of sites now absolutely require some scripts before you can see the text and images or navigate at all.
- fouc 5y ago
  Sometimes I wonder if some sort of legislation could fix this trend of abstracting users away from the web (and from software, and from hardware). Beyond just "the right to repair" we also need "the right to access the web", and "the right to run old versions of software and OSes", and so on.
toxik 5y ago
The browser is becoming a TV. In the future, computers with keyboards and actual user control will be specialty devices for experts, quite separated from the content you can access today. It is really sad to see what humankind is about to lose in the name of copyright and content ownership. We really could have a share everything utopia, but no, our societies are built on adversarial competition and our politicians are unwilling or simply unable to stop the unending barrage of overreaches.
- arpa 5y ago
  I don't want to believe the battle is lost, but I don't see a way to fight back aside from establishing a hacker counterculture, which is kind of happening with tor and internet alternatives.
- selectodude 5y ago
  You’re aware that is what people actually want though.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Which people? The ones that want to get rich at the expense of others, or the ones the former bamboozle into believing this is how tech should work?
    - selectodude 5y ago
      The vast majority of people who want to pull a television out of the box, log into netflix, and watch their shows. For them, technology is a means to an end. Nothing more.
  - toxik 5y ago
    People want to consume their content, nowhere does that dictate that they sign away their rights and actual ownership of their devices that they buy with their own money. The already existing DRM is user hostile, it is about control and nothing else. Users do NOT want these things, if you took the time to explain what it means, and gave them another option. The only reason the current set of DRM malware still exists today is by artificial scarcity, and mafia-like bullying through courts. Public opinion was largely in favor of peer to peer sharing content, but that wasn’t good enough for the big boys. They wanted to be able to bring ALL other parties to their knees: cable manufacturers, display makers, computer makers, storage device makers, and of course, users. EVERYONE is now under their control. The general public is apathetic to the issue of DRM, they certainly don’t want it. But they are not given a choice. You must have a HDCP certified computer, cable and display - otherwise no content for you.
- google234123 5y ago
  > We really could have a share everything utopia The Soviet Union also had a similar idea... utopia can only be approached across a sea of blood, and you never arrive
  - toxik 5y ago
    So DRM and the constant rent seeking bullshit content owners put us up to is okay because the Soviet union was an oppressive regime? Did you really think this was a good argument against stopping the copyright abuse happening today?
btown 5y ago
For the endgame of this, look no further than Figma. Their entire engine is custom-built in C++ and has been since 2015: https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-tool-on-the-web/ https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-to... > Instead of attempting to get one of [HTML/SVG/JS Canvas] to work, we implemented everything from scratch using WebGL. Our renderer is a highly-optimized tile-based engine with support for masking, blurring, dithered gradients, blend modes, nested layer opacity, and more. All rendering is done on the GPU and is fully anti-aliased. Internally our code looks a lot like a browser inside a browser; we have our own DOM, our own compositor, our own text layout engine, and we’re thinking about adding a render tree just like the one browsers use to render HTML. For what it's worth, this isn't all that dissimilar from game development on proprietary engines, and that hasn't stopped indie game devs from experimenting. But it will be a huge problem for accessibility.
ajdude 5y ago
Even the website this post links to just displays a blank page for me, with JavaScript disabled.

by jstsch 5y ago

foxfluff 5y ago

It turned into that (more than) a decade ago. I was still browsing the web with links2 and a tiny text mode browser (similar to w3m) of my own writing until around the time google said "let's kill IE6." Shortly after that, the web at large started becoming unusable with simple browsers. It was still reasonably usable with script blocking, but that ship sailed too, and the vast majority of sites now absolutely require some scripts before you can see the text and images or navigate at all.

fouc 5y ago
Sometimes I wonder if some sort of legislation could fix this trend of abstracting users away from the web (and from software, and from hardware). Beyond just "the right to repair" we also need "the right to access the web", and "the right to run old versions of software and OSes", and so on.

toxik 5y ago

The browser is becoming a TV. In the future, computers with keyboards and actual user control will be specialty devices for experts, quite separated from the content you can access today. It is really sad to see what humankind is about to lose in the name of copyright and content ownership. We really could have a share everything utopia, but no, our societies are built on adversarial competition and our politicians are unwilling or simply unable to stop the unending barrage of overreaches.

arpa 5y ago
I don't want to believe the battle is lost, but I don't see a way to fight back aside from establishing a hacker counterculture, which is kind of happening with tor and internet alternatives.
selectodude 5y ago
You’re aware that is what people actually want though.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Which people? The ones that want to get rich at the expense of others, or the ones the former bamboozle into believing this is how tech should work?
  - selectodude 5y ago
    The vast majority of people who want to pull a television out of the box, log into netflix, and watch their shows. For them, technology is a means to an end. Nothing more.
- toxik 5y ago
  People want to consume their content, nowhere does that dictate that they sign away their rights and actual ownership of their devices that they buy with their own money. The already existing DRM is user hostile, it is about control and nothing else. Users do NOT want these things, if you took the time to explain what it means, and gave them another option. The only reason the current set of DRM malware still exists today is by artificial scarcity, and mafia-like bullying through courts. Public opinion was largely in favor of peer to peer sharing content, but that wasn’t good enough for the big boys. They wanted to be able to bring ALL other parties to their knees: cable manufacturers, display makers, computer makers, storage device makers, and of course, users. EVERYONE is now under their control. The general public is apathetic to the issue of DRM, they certainly don’t want it. But they are not given a choice. You must have a HDCP certified computer, cable and display - otherwise no content for you.
google234123 5y ago
> We really could have a share everything utopia The Soviet Union also had a similar idea... utopia can only be approached across a sea of blood, and you never arrive
- toxik 5y ago
  So DRM and the constant rent seeking bullshit content owners put us up to is okay because the Soviet union was an oppressive regime? Did you really think this was a good argument against stopping the copyright abuse happening today?

btown 5y ago

For the endgame of this, look no further than Figma. Their entire engine is custom-built in C++ and has been since 2015: https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-tool-on-the-web/ https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-to... > Instead of attempting to get one of [HTML/SVG/JS Canvas] to work, we implemented everything from scratch using WebGL. Our renderer is a highly-optimized tile-based engine with support for masking, blurring, dithered gradients, blend modes, nested layer opacity, and more. All rendering is done on the GPU and is fully anti-aliased. Internally our code looks a lot like a browser inside a browser; we have our own DOM, our own compositor, our own text layout engine, and we’re thinking about adding a render tree just like the one browsers use to render HTML. For what it's worth, this isn't all that dissimilar from game development on proprietary engines, and that hasn't stopped indie game devs from experimenting. But it will be a huge problem for accessibility.

ajdude 5y ago

Even the website this post links to just displays a blank page for me, with JavaScript disabled.