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FTA: "At the very least, we should stop serving HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to users. Let’s instead serve things in concise, binary format—compiled documents, com

FTA: "At the very least, we should stop serving HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to users. Let’s instead serve things in concise, binary format—compiled documents, compiled stylesheets, and bytecode-compiled JavaScript that runs in a standard-issue stack-based virtual machine." I'm right there with him in wishing there were a chance in hell web browsers would move to a (language neutral as possible) VM for client-side code, but as for those other things, they basically are served in "binary compiled" versions most of the time, in the form of gzipped versions of the documents. Using a different custom binary format for the same data would save very little over a gzipped html/css file and would add an immense amount of complexity, thus really isn't worth it, IMO.

evincarofautumn 15y ago
Well, if you say I made one good point, then at least I made one good point. A standard VM is the most obvious thing we need. But I think there is definitely something to the notion of web applications as real applications, which can be queried in a structured way and composed (think pipes) with one another and with desktop applications.
- magicalist 15y ago
  If you haven't checked them out, you might find web intents interesting: http://webintents.org/ http://webintents.org/
  - evincarofautumn 15y ago
    I hadn’t, but it seems to be a very good solution within the current model of things. Thanks for putting me on to this.
- georgemcbay 15y ago
  To be clear, while I'm not sold on binary formats for HTML and CSS as they currently exist, I do agree with your general point. The web (even as of HTML5) is somewhat of a ridiculous answer to the question of "How do we build these things we want to build" when those things are rich UI apps. Unfortunately the problem is more politics than technical. To make any big sweeping changes you need buy in from at least Apple, Google, Mozilla and Microsoft, who all have very different goals and borderline antagonistic relationships with each other in all directions. Good luck with that.
zobzu 15y ago
to me the real issue is not so much the format. its standardization. (standard-issue stack-based VM) - no two javascript VMs support the same things. - no two HTML engines support the same things. - no two CSS engines support the same things. So there you go, dear open and standard web: you're not. you're just not standard. it's time for people to realize that. There's a zillion w3c drafts which every browser attempts to support, and they spawn new ones (hi Google) all the time. There's zillion of new extensions to solve "HTML5 stuff that we need" (everything is called HTML5 if its new features, easy!) and of course many are not compatible, or implemented only by one or the other browser (audio stuff, database stuff, etc). And you have pages with "works best in chrome" or even "you need chrome to see this". Chrome is the best example because Google is the company coming with the most new drafts and the most "Chrome-only" technology. But it could be other companies eventually. Well again guess what. That's not standard. At all.

evincarofautumn 15y ago

Well, if you say I made one good point, then at least I made one good point. A standard VM is the most obvious thing we need. But I think there is definitely something to the notion of web applications as real applications, which can be queried in a structured way and composed (think pipes) with one another and with desktop applications.

magicalist 15y ago
If you haven't checked them out, you might find web intents interesting: http://webintents.org/ http://webintents.org/
- evincarofautumn 15y ago
  I hadn’t, but it seems to be a very good solution within the current model of things. Thanks for putting me on to this.
georgemcbay 15y ago
To be clear, while I'm not sold on binary formats for HTML and CSS as they currently exist, I do agree with your general point. The web (even as of HTML5) is somewhat of a ridiculous answer to the question of "How do we build these things we want to build" when those things are rich UI apps. Unfortunately the problem is more politics than technical. To make any big sweeping changes you need buy in from at least Apple, Google, Mozilla and Microsoft, who all have very different goals and borderline antagonistic relationships with each other in all directions. Good luck with that.

zobzu 15y ago

to me the real issue is not so much the format. its standardization. (standard-issue stack-based VM) - no two javascript VMs support the same things. - no two HTML engines support the same things. - no two CSS engines support the same things. So there you go, dear open and standard web: you're not. you're just not standard. it's time for people to realize that. There's a zillion w3c drafts which every browser attempts to support, and they spawn new ones (hi Google) all the time. There's zillion of new extensions to solve "HTML5 stuff that we need" (everything is called HTML5 if its new features, easy!) and of course many are not compatible, or implemented only by one or the other browser (audio stuff, database stuff, etc). And you have pages with "works best in chrome" or even "you need chrome to see this". Chrome is the best example because Google is the company coming with the most new drafts and the most "Chrome-only" technology. But it could be other companies eventually. Well again guess what. That's not standard. At all.