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Question for discussion: when have we reached the point where the Browser Feature-creep is too much and we say "okay, a browser probably doesn't need this"? Bec
by mpldr 3y ago
Question for discussion: when have we reached the point where the Browser Feature-creep is too much and we say "okay, a browser probably doesn't need this"? Because after seeing WebUSB and WebGPU I think my personal limit has been reached.
- dvngnt_ 3y agoI don't see a problem you don't have to use it
- chii 3y agothe more important question is whether the browser's surface area for bugs and perhaps security vulnerabilities are worth the marginal increase in features that most people might not use!
- throwaway60134 3y ago[dead]
- abirch 3y agoYou can find a security focused browser that don't implement these.
- mpldr 3y agoPlease, let me know which one!
- yellowapple 3y agoFirefox doesn't by default (and when that eventually changes, disabling it is an about:config tweak away).
- moron4hire 3y agoIt's not like native OS features don't have security vulnerabilities. At least all the major browser have at some major portion of their implementations that are open source projects. So if you're stuck working on Windows or MacOS, at least you can know that Web browsers aren't limited to one vendor finding and fixing those defects.
- z3t4 3y agoThe browser is basically an OS ontop of an OS ontop of. .. turtles all the way down
- CyberDildonics 3y agoThe browser is basically an OS ontop of an OS ontop of. .. turtles all the way down The OS runs on hardware, what do you think is below the OS you're running?
- reaperducer 3y agoThe OS runs on hardware, what do you think is below the OS you're running? Even excluding VMs, there are a lot of OSes running in a modern computer. Some chips have their own. BIOSes and Secure Enclave, networking chips, and probably a dozen more.
- CyberDildonics 3y agoTry to understand the context of more than one comment at a time if you can. This person said "it's turtles all the way down" because there are two layers, the browser and the OS, which is ridiculous.
- reaperducer 3y agoTry to understand the context of more than one comment at a time if you can. Try not to be a condescending dickweed, if you can.
- krylon 3y agoIntel has its ME which last I heard runs Minix, AMD has the PSP, though I don't know what kind of software that runs.
- fatneckbeard 3y agoWebPSU - this will allow your browser to directly access your computer's power supply. simply plug your appliances into your browser and they can use the same power that your computer has access to.
- saiojd 3y agoWhy does it bother you that browsers have many features? At this point browsers are essentially a cross-platform VM and it really seems like this trend will only accentuate in the future.
- Dalewyn 3y agoAt some point we're going to have to drop the pretense of running an operating system underneath because the browser is the operating system.
- mpldr 3y agoBlink is my operating system and Linux is its bootloader.
- chris37879 3y agoHow’s chromeos treating you?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mpldr 3y agohttps://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=chromium https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=chromium https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=chrome https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=chrome https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=firefox https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=firefox https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=webkit https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=webkit Those are the main reasons. And seeing how browsers are essentially designed to run other peoples code with minimal to no vetting processes, I consider this a serious issue.
- kajaktum 3y agoSo how is this any different if we don’t have a browser? People still want to visit “websites” which in your world is even worse. Because now every website is a distinct application (yikes!). The problem is that people are willing to run arbitrary code in the first place. How many times have _you_ as a developer, run arbitrary scripts from the internet? Blindly accepts packages that you have not vetted?
- capableweb 3y ago> Because after seeing WebUSB and WebGPU I think my personal limit has been reached. Sure, but where do you draw the line really? For me, having WebUSB and WebMIDI for example is useful, I want to be able to interact with synths over MIDI in the browser, or be able to access other accessories. I also love the idea of GPU access, so my personal limit has not been reached. Multiply this by every vendor, developer and user of every browser who contributes to the specifications, and you end up with probably 1000 different directions everyone wants to move in. How do you decide which is the right direction? Right now, the choice you have is which browser you use. If you don't want WebUSB or WebGPU or anything else "new and fancy", choose a browser that doesn't implement those things.
- boredemployee 3y agoTangentially in the WebMIDI topic, I wonder how DAWs will react with things going to browser and generative audio scaling quickly.
- kajaktum 3y agoBrowsers are just “standardised” OS at this point. Really, what is the difference? It seems to me that people basically wants a 1 to 1 mapping between every OS feature to browsers. I wouldn’t be surprised if this standard will fall apart in the next decade once Chrome runs everything. That is to say Chrome is the standard. I am already seeing websites drop support for Firefox and won’t even load using it.
- SquareWheel 3y agoI tend to feel that way mainly towards new features that are very similar to ones that already exist. eg. WebGPU being a more advanced form of WebGL. Yes they work differently, but they generally solve the same problem. Eventually I'd like to see WebGL deprecated, and perhaps an extension released to reimplement it. Or it could be adapted to translate calls to WebGPU, rather than having a completely separate implementation. Is that realistic? No, of course not. Browser vendors take backwards compatibility pretty seriously, and WebGL is used on a ton of websites. Still, that'd be my preferred solution for avoiding said feature creep.
- moron4hire 3y agoThat's actually not unreasonable, as WebGL under the hood is already implemented through Vulkan, Metal, and DX12.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- RGamma 3y agoFree yourself from the notion that a web browser purely browses The Web. It's nowadays also a cross-platform insta-deployment GUI application runtime environment with mostly bad native OS integration and performance characteristics (both ~improving, there's even native filesystem access now). In any case it's Good Enough (C), so it sticks.
- danielvaughn 3y agothere's native filesystem access? edit: wow, I had no idea and I've been a web dev for over a decade lol
- 2h 3y ago> Free yourself from the notion that a web browser purely browses The Web. Free yourself from the notion that a web browser should do anything more than browsing the web. native applications have existed for decades, no reason to bloat the scope of a browser.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- shpx 3y agoOne big reason is that installing the software is one click (on the link) and it works every time. With native software, on phones you have to open the App Store, search for an app and usually wait to download hundreds of megabytes before anything happens. On personal computers it's much worse.
- IlliOnato 3y agoHmm, RGamma describes reality: it is a fact that web browsers don't purely browse The Web, has been for decades now, and there is zero indication this is going to change. You seem to demand that people ignore this reality, because you don't like it. This is not helpful. I don't like this reality either, but despite that I find your statement also factually incorrect: "native applications have existed for decades, no reason to bloat the scope of a browser". Of course there are reasons, otherwise people/companies won't do it, and users won't use bloated browser that give them no benefits. I agree that downsides outweigh the upsides, but the upsides are obvious and immediate while the downsides are long-term and mostly subtle...
- gary_0 3y agoThe issue of the Web's lack of distinction between document viewing features and being an application platform (with access to system resources and private data) is decades old. Unfortunately, the question has been academic for decades as well: before the advent of HTML5, proprietary browser plugins gave Web sites the same abilities (ActiveX and Flash being notable, as were their security vulnerabilities). Flash was ubiquitous circa 1998-2008; your typical user would always have it installed. Nor did the typical (non-techie) user know that the Web was not originally intended to be an application platform, or the implications of it being used as such.
- ReptileMan 3y agoThe more of this features in the browsers - the sooner the stranglehold of the app stores could be broken
- account42 3y agoOr you will just find yourself in the domain of a new lord.
- archerx 3y agoI used webUSB to make an NFC login system and it was awesome, what’s the problem?
- jillesvangurp 3y agoWho's the royal we here? It's great that you have personal limits. But why should "we" care about those? Seems like a perfectly reasonable new feature to me. I'm actually looking forward to people using this to build some cool stuff. Why should that not be a thing?
- magicalhippo 3y agoWebUSB was actually useful to me not long ago. I installed Home Assistant and its ESPHome[1] companion, and ESPHome had support for using WebUSB to upload the firmware to a blank ESP8266 I had. I didn't have to install or set up anything on my Windows machine, and the whole process was very quick and convenient. It seems clear to me that the main issue here is that a lot of programs aren't closely tied to the hardware or the OS. Building them to be so is an annoyance for both users and developers. As Scott McNealy said, you don't need to know how to operate a nuclear power plant to turn on the lights, and most users just want to get stuff done. That we have three major operating systems still going relatively strong is evidence that there are differences that matters to people. But for a lot of applications those differences don't. The WebXYZ stuff thus increases usability a lot by simultaneously solving the cross-platform compatibility issues and distribution. In my ESPHome example above literally opened the website, plugged in the USB cable to my device, clicked a button on the web page and the job was done. So while I don't really like that the same web browser is used to surf other web sites, given that these WebXYZ components present additional security risks and fingerprinting opportunities, I can't deny that they're useful. [1]: https://esphome.io/guides/getting_started_hassio.html https://esphome.io/guides/getting_started_hassio.html
- awhitty 3y agoI had a similar pleasant experience with a Wooting 60HE keyboard I purchased recently. Updated my keyboard’s firmware and settings right in Chrome! So much nicer than downloading icky gaming peripheral software. I’ve been told a lot of that stuff is borderline spyware. Excited to try it out with some ESPHome projects too now.
- cjbgkagh 3y agoI think of the browser as another kind of OS, and as Microsoft keeps making their OS worse the browser is a nice reprieve. The more that goes into the browser the more I can ditch Microsoft and hopefully be rid of it all together. Though ironically maybe given that the browser can do so much is the reason that Microsoft has to focus on ‘value add’ crap instead of just a rock solid OS. Which sets up a self reinforcing cycle. Microsoft should recognize that this was intentional move by Google and not take the bait.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tourgen 3y ago[dead]
- Cloudef 3y agoWebGPU in browser isn't really interesting to me. But I do like WebGPU in native applications, as we are yet again in scenario where Windows prefers DX, OSX their own Metal and Vulkan is yet again mostly linux only player, and popular WebGPU implementations have backends to all of these (+ more).
- yellowapple 3y agoYep. I just read through the entirety of this guide specifically to better understand Mach, which uses Google's WebGPU implementation for everything graphics-related.
- account42 3y agoWindows supports Vulkan just fine. People use DX because of Xbox and tooling - the existence of yet another API won't change that. And neither will WebGL be better on macOS than MolenVK.
- Cloudef 3y agoYes until it doesn't or vulkan implementation is considered as second class citizen. Been there seen that. The other thing is that webgpu is slightly higher-level so you do not have to go into extremes with memory handling and synchronization as in vulkan. So unless you absolutely need to squeeze everything out, webgpu gives nice balance.
- hathawsh 3y agoI think one of the main drivers of new browser features is ChromeOS. Manufacturers are selling a lot of Chromebooks, especially to schools, and because ChromeOS is primarily a conduit for running Chrome, the best way to add features to Chromebooks is by adding to the browser. From Google's point of view, anything ChromeOS needs is a candidate for a new browser feature.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mpalmer 3y agoIn the age of app stores and notarized binaries, anything that makes the browser non-trivially more competitive with native apps is defensible.
- account42 3y agoAnd you think your webapp is safe from those kinds of requirements? Not when one company runs the show.
- inportb 3y agoI think WebCPU is where it's at. First class virtualization in the browser so you don't have to emulate :)
- mindcrime 3y agoWhy not? People are already running VM's and other OS's in the browser. https://github.com/atrosinenko/qemujs https://github.com/atrosinenko/qemujs https://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/ibmpc-games/ https://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/ibmpc-games/ https://leaningtech.com/webvm-server-less-x86-virtual-machines-in-the-browser/ https://leaningtech.com/webvm-server-less-x86-virtual-machin... and so on...
- jesse__ 3y agoWhy exactly would programs running in web browsers not want the ability to access the most powerful piece of hardware in a users machine? WGPU unlocks an enormous amount of space for userland programs to explore. I agree there have been some questionable 'advancements' in the web spec recently (web workers as a solution to multithreading, for example, were hilariously inadequate for quite a while), but as far as I can tell WGPU is a solid effort to unlock browsers as an actually interactive platform, instead of the fairly static image/text display devices they are today. Maybe our visions of what browsers could or 'should' be are different
- mpldr 3y agoAt least for me a browser should be an interactive document viewer. Not CAD, not file conversion, not writing OS images to an SD card, not generating GCode. Ingesting HTML, CSS, and JS and turning it into an interactive view of that XML document nothing more, nothing less.
- throwaway60134 3y ago[dead]
- jimmySixDOF 3y agoBut the web is where the stuff I want is. Just about everything else gets in the way.
- CapsAdmin 3y agoIt will stop once it's easier, more reliable and more secure to run someone's code outside your browser.