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In light of the current top comment thread [1], I'm glad the state of browser APIs is holding back this particular "innovation". And I wonder if the friction of

In light of the current top comment thread [1], I'm glad the state of browser APIs is holding back this particular "innovation". And I wonder if the friction of distributing and installing desktop apps is actually a good thing, even though it's affecting my current (non-AccessKit) project. It means you have to be really sure that what you're doing deserves to exist outside the good constraints of the browser. I'm not a fan of VR in general. Some of us aren't comfortable navigating the physical world, and we don't want an emulation of the physical world to infect the digital (or more accurately, hypertext) world that we love and consider our true home. As Jakob Nielsen said in 1998, the Internet can be better than reality [2]. [1]: for posterity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35020429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35020429 [2]: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/better-than-reality-a-fundamental-internet-principle/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/better-than-reality-a-funda...

mike_hearn 4y ago
I mean, sure, I personally wouldn't care for this feature, but that's because I'm a bloke and don't derive much joy from shopping. My girlfriend though absolutely loves window shopping. I think this sort of feature would be far more appealing to her than me. For better or worse we can't know how popular this sort of thing would be, because their project failed for tech reasons before even getting to the point of doing market research or usability testing. That's the higher level issue here, I think. If they'd gone the desktop route they could have at least tried it and seen what people thought, then later looked for ways to shrink it down to fit inside the browser. By starting with that requirement as axiomatic they never even got as far as running a usability testing day.
- mwcampbell 4y ago
  To clarify, my objection isn't merely that I dislike that feature, but that I'm concerned about it becoming a fad that gets foisted on those of us who don't want it and possibly can't use it (due to accessibility issues) but still have to buy stuff, access educational/training content, etc. It would be better, IMO, if the web could get back to having multiple browsers that are serious about acting as user agents for a variety of users. Then, freed of the expectation that the browser must render a pixel-perfect presentation of the UI as it was designed, some browsers could provide a VR interface to the lovely accessible hypertext that sites should be providing as their one and only version, while other browsers provide a TTS-optimized UI, a Braille-optimized UI, a UI optimized for large fonts, etc. Put another way, I think the web community should redouble its efforts to achieve the things that Hixie apparently gave up on. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34622514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34622514

mike_hearn 4y ago

I mean, sure, I personally wouldn't care for this feature, but that's because I'm a bloke and don't derive much joy from shopping. My girlfriend though absolutely loves window shopping. I think this sort of feature would be far more appealing to her than me. For better or worse we can't know how popular this sort of thing would be, because their project failed for tech reasons before even getting to the point of doing market research or usability testing. That's the higher level issue here, I think. If they'd gone the desktop route they could have at least tried it and seen what people thought, then later looked for ways to shrink it down to fit inside the browser. By starting with that requirement as axiomatic they never even got as far as running a usability testing day.

mwcampbell 4y ago
To clarify, my objection isn't merely that I dislike that feature, but that I'm concerned about it becoming a fad that gets foisted on those of us who don't want it and possibly can't use it (due to accessibility issues) but still have to buy stuff, access educational/training content, etc. It would be better, IMO, if the web could get back to having multiple browsers that are serious about acting as user agents for a variety of users. Then, freed of the expectation that the browser must render a pixel-perfect presentation of the UI as it was designed, some browsers could provide a VR interface to the lovely accessible hypertext that sites should be providing as their one and only version, while other browsers provide a TTS-optimized UI, a Braille-optimized UI, a UI optimized for large fonts, etc. Put another way, I think the web community should redouble its efforts to achieve the things that Hixie apparently gave up on. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34622514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34622514