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I think to be fair to Flutter their entire concept of web support is literally months old at this point outside of beta, it obviously has a long road ahead of i

by mhoad 5y ago

I think to be fair to Flutter their entire concept of web support is literally months old at this point outside of beta, it obviously has a long road ahead of it to become more web native. At the same time, I think that we need to start thinking about what web apps can and should look like strictly outside the context of just the DOM. It's not clear that it is really going to be the right tool for the job moving forward for more complicated applications. For example Google Docs is moving (has moved?) entirely to canvas based rendering for performance and flexibility reasons. Technologies like WASM, canvas, WebGPU and HTTP3 means that the list of available options is about to change rather dramatically in the next few years I think. These new approaches are going to require new solutions not just for the use cases you outlined but also things like just general accessibility. I've had a chance to look at what the Flutter team are doing on that front and I think it would be safe to say that they aren't in anyway unaware of where things fall short currently but have public plans already in various stages of implementation to address them. Not asking anyone to drink to kool-aid just yet but I feel good about their plans to play catch up over the next couple of years. I could easily see it becoming a very sensible default option for app development before too long.

skinkestek 5y ago
I have no interest of being fair to Flutter. Flutter is just another proof that for Google as an organization[1] being nice, open and friendly was just a trick that lasted as long as it was useful for Google. [1]: I think the majority of people there are nice, there is just some dynamic that drives them to become dumb[2], manipulative[3] and destructive[4] when they operate together ;-) [2]: still haven't managed to fix search a decade after they broke it. [3]: censorship etc [4]: destroying their own products, companies they buy, and even entire markets (like web browsers) Edit: I don't hate Google, neither as an organization and definitely not as individuals but I really really really wish Googlers could get their act together and start being Google again because they behave as a small child with super powers or something :-/
- ternaryoperator 5y ago
  > I really really really wish Googlers could get their act together and start being Google again Google has always abandoned projects suddenly--even in the era you're describing.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    Yep. But search used to be rock solid and Google used to be a driving force behind the open web.
KronisLV 5y ago
> At the same time, I think that we need to start thinking about what web apps can and should look like strictly outside the context of just the DOM. In my eyes, the DOM is an inseparable part of how web apps should work - the web being composed primarily of documents, even if more dynamic ones nowadays thanks to SPAs and intermediate technologies like virtual DOM implementations. Throwing away the entire model while chasing performance gains due to overcomplicating what websites should be in the first place is not good, in my eyes. That view may change some day, however, but for now i'm happy with creating and consuming primarily lightweight websites (HN is a good example of this, as is the old Reddit layout) and using specialized software for the things that the web doesn't always do good in my eyes, such as Thunderbird for e-mail and Libre Office for documents. Should people have the choice to use different architectures and approaches for the cases where it's necessary (e.g. educational physics simulations with WASM in the browser)? Sure. But should we push those approaches as the new normal and usurp decades of progress? I don't think so.
- mhoad 5y ago
  I guess that’s the part where we differ. I can’t help but see an inevitable merging between the idea of a native app and a web app until they are possible to be one and the same. So for me the browser is more of a rendering pipeline that can deliver DOM for pages and apps or something like canvas for “native apps”. As I was saying above I totally share that fear of sending these opaque blobs of binary data down the wire that paint arbitrary pixels that I have no control over. That isn’t how “the web” works. So you are going to need to find a way to think about accessibility APIs for example that aren’t tightly coupled to the DOM. Those things are already happening. Source maps are another important tool to maintain that slick view source experience. But I think there is a reasonable case to be made that the browser should 100% be capable of running native apps so long as they are able to play nice with the web as a platform. Note: I have to just explicitly make that distinction between pages and apps here. I don’t ever want to see this try and become the new normal for anything that would reasonably be considered “document based”. I think they can comfortably coexist each with their own specialities.
  - KronisLV 5y ago

by mhoad 5y ago

skinkestek 5y ago

I have no interest of being fair to Flutter. Flutter is just another proof that for Google as an organization[1] being nice, open and friendly was just a trick that lasted as long as it was useful for Google. [1]: I think the majority of people there are nice, there is just some dynamic that drives them to become dumb[2], manipulative[3] and destructive[4] when they operate together ;-) [2]: still haven't managed to fix search a decade after they broke it. [3]: censorship etc [4]: destroying their own products, companies they buy, and even entire markets (like web browsers) Edit: I don't hate Google, neither as an organization and definitely not as individuals but I really really really wish Googlers could get their act together and start being Google again because they behave as a small child with super powers or something :-/

ternaryoperator 5y ago
> I really really really wish Googlers could get their act together and start being Google again Google has always abandoned projects suddenly--even in the era you're describing.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  Yep. But search used to be rock solid and Google used to be a driving force behind the open web.

KronisLV 5y ago

> At the same time, I think that we need to start thinking about what web apps can and should look like strictly outside the context of just the DOM. In my eyes, the DOM is an inseparable part of how web apps should work - the web being composed primarily of documents, even if more dynamic ones nowadays thanks to SPAs and intermediate technologies like virtual DOM implementations. Throwing away the entire model while chasing performance gains due to overcomplicating what websites should be in the first place is not good, in my eyes. That view may change some day, however, but for now i'm happy with creating and consuming primarily lightweight websites (HN is a good example of this, as is the old Reddit layout) and using specialized software for the things that the web doesn't always do good in my eyes, such as Thunderbird for e-mail and Libre Office for documents. Should people have the choice to use different architectures and approaches for the cases where it's necessary (e.g. educational physics simulations with WASM in the browser)? Sure. But should we push those approaches as the new normal and usurp decades of progress? I don't think so.

mhoad 5y ago
I guess that’s the part where we differ. I can’t help but see an inevitable merging between the idea of a native app and a web app until they are possible to be one and the same. So for me the browser is more of a rendering pipeline that can deliver DOM for pages and apps or something like canvas for “native apps”. As I was saying above I totally share that fear of sending these opaque blobs of binary data down the wire that paint arbitrary pixels that I have no control over. That isn’t how “the web” works. So you are going to need to find a way to think about accessibility APIs for example that aren’t tightly coupled to the DOM. Those things are already happening. Source maps are another important tool to maintain that slick view source experience. But I think there is a reasonable case to be made that the browser should 100% be capable of running native apps so long as they are able to play nice with the web as a platform. Note: I have to just explicitly make that distinction between pages and apps here. I don’t ever want to see this try and become the new normal for anything that would reasonably be considered “document based”. I think they can comfortably coexist each with their own specialities.
- KronisLV 5y ago