8 ms·

Platform Strategy and Its Discontents

105 points by wmanley 2y ago

kevinsync 2y ago
[flagged]
ickelbawd 2y ago
I have some sympathy for this viewpoint. And I think Alex’s heart is in the right place—Nextjs is a dumpster fire and react server components are when react finally jumped the shark for me. Maybe if we had HTML6 we wouldn’t be in this scenario. HTML5 was great but form building on the web (without JS) is a second-rate experience. And it’s even more miserable once JS is in the mix, but hey developers can provide a much better UX for end users than HTML and CSS alone could possibly provide. Sorry Alex, but without JS the web would have died a decade ago as phones took over. It’s only JS that keeps us in the ring.
- Devasta 2y ago
  HTML can never be improved, that is at the very foundation of its current form. We are 20 years into the takeover from the W3C and still can't even do a PUT request without JS, nevermind anything approaching even one tenth of the functionality of XForms. The web of semantic documents died years ago, it's an application platform now and that means JS. HTML is naught but a payload carrier.
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    All true, but an error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it. Perhaps it is finally time to let the web-as-an-application-layer paradigm die?
  - aragilar 2y ago
    https://alexanderpetros.com/triptych/ https://alexanderpetros.com/triptych/ will hopefully address that.
    - Devasta 2y ago
      I wish them luck, but the last time this was attempted it was rejected as it apparently doesn't make sense that you would even want to do it in the first place. https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10671#c16 https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10671#c16
      - aragilar 2y ago
        https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/3577#issuecomment-2329578267 https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/3577#issuecomment-2329... and the links inside appear to imply there's interest?
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    I was really disappointed that XHTML effort was killed by the HTML5 folks, we could be so much better, but it is as it is.
    - Devasta 2y ago
      The founding members of the WHATWG really are the Thomas Midgley's of the software world. The world will spend the next century of software development trying to repair their screwups.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        Ironically that work is now being made obsolete with apps regaining the role of native apps, or the plugins revenge via WebGL/WebGPU/WebAssembly.
- amadeuspagel 2y ago
  The author actually links to the NextJS page for server components as "a tacit acknowledgement that their shit stinks". I guess this is how you acknowledge progress if you want to write an article in the tone that is expected on HN and mastodon now.
- andrewflnr 2y ago
  He's not opposed to JS entirely (he specifically praises a handful of JS-based tech like ServiceWorkers), more so the all-JS single page type of app. To be fair he definitely could have been more clear about what he's talking about and what lines he's drawing.
  - ec109685 2y ago
    All the desktop apps he cited that are a threat to native are SPA’s so it doesn’t seem like he hates them everywhere. I agree though it’s very odd that desktop web apps are serviceable, while they universally are horrible on mobile.
    - andrewflnr 2y ago
      Because their performance falls below acceptable levels specifically on (relatively slower) mobile devices. It takes a looong time for him to get around to it, but performance (specifically UI latency) is the crux of the whole article, as I read it at least.
      - marcus_holmes 2y ago
        Yeah, I read this (and some of his linked articles) as pointing out that Apple are specifically killing browser performance and features so that PWAs cannot compete with apps on iOS. Specifically because they can't claim 30% of revenue from web apps.
        photonthug 2y ago
        > Specifically because they can't claim 30% of revenue from web apps. This feels true, but it’s just one horn of the dilemma. The other is where websites wreck their own UX intentionally to herd users towards apps, presumably because pushing ads isn’t as lucrative as grabbing location data, contact lists, or whatever else can be legally exfiltrated and sold. It’s weird to frame this problem as if it were all the fault of whatever trends in js development or browser development (even though I agree those trends often seem foolish and messy, at least to the outsider). The whole situation the author bemoans just looks like another symptom of surveillance capitalism, enshittification, etc, call it what you will. Even with a perfect web, users will still get pushed towards apps if apps are the best way to exploit the user. There’s no other calculus of platform aesthetics or excellence going on here
- DeathArrow 2y ago
  >Sorry Alex, but without JS the web would have died a decade ago as phones took over. It’s only JS that keeps us in the ring. Not really. Web would still be there but for websites not web apps. The web was designed for hypertext, a medium that is just supposed to deliver information not build apps upon.
- aragilar 2y ago
  I doubt he's opposed to JS, given the number of new JS APIs he pushed Chrome to implement as part of Project Fugu, he seems more opposed to specific frameworks.
devjab 2y ago
This is a very good article and I agree with most of it. I never really understood why React and Angular became big for the general web. They have a lot of usage in enterprise applications, where you typically access them from a “pc”, but even then they suck on the tablets your employees drive around with. At least for the most part they don’t suck that much worse than the terrible native clients that came before (and still do in the rare case that a supplier actually build a native mobile app). Why that spread to the wider web is beyond me though. I get why you would use it for personal projects if it’s your day time job anyway, but a page reload never hurt anyone. I personally think that the most responsible “father” is finance. The article states that there is more money with the web, but in my experience it’s far easier to lock down payments through apps. I agree that part of this is because native apps are better on mobile, but they are also much easier to work with and consume. It’s not easy to make payments function well on the web while in a native app it’s just a click with well powered api behind it. Serving both users and developers. Now, it probably could be easier on the web, but who would deliver it? The article calls out Apple and to some degree Google as guilty of not making browsers competitive with mobile apps, but why would they? If anything it’s in their best interest to keep the web shitty on mobile.
- gruez 2y ago
  >I never really understood why React and Angular became big for the general web. As opposed to what? Server side rendered pages with random jquery snippets sprinkled around for interactivity? I prefer the reactive model far more than manually trying to update the page myself.
  - devjab 2y ago
    You could just do page reloads. Of course if you don’t really need very advanced authentication with role-based access control there is also HTMX which is around 10kb.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Apparently SSR is quite hot in JS frameworks, after a new generation rediscovered how we oldies do Web development in .NET, Java, Ruby, Python, Go, PHP....
amadeuspagel 2y ago
The article refers to the JS-industrial-complex but only has stats for NextJS[1]. Maybe other frameworks are better? I would love to see a similar chart for the showcases of other frameworks. [1]: https://infrequently.org/2024/10/platforms-are-competitions/#fn-failure-on-repeat-2 https://infrequently.org/2024/10/platforms-are-competitions/...
skybrian 2y ago
I'm looking at the list of top websites and thinking "when have I ever wanted to install the mobile app?" The only one I see that I use is Spotify. Maybe the time spent on mobile is in other apps? But I'm probably an outlier because I spend most of my time on websites, even on phone and tablet. It would be nice to see this broken down by market segment. I don't see any banks in the list. I use my bank's app for certain reasons like depositing checks and Zelle.
- nchmy 2y ago
  I think what youre missing is that most of these are just websites, not "apps". And they suck
- gruez 2y ago
  >But I'm probably an outlier because I spend most of my time on websites, even on phone and tablet. Meanwhile our users are clamoring for app version of our web app, even though it's just a web wrapper. I guess some people just have a "there's an app for that" mentality.
- tonyhart7 2y ago
  because western especially people got to tech has more chance to comfortable being on the web than the app example of Gen Z and alpha social media addict that used to use Tiktok,Snaps etc You cant deny that the use of web is dying and I still not mentioning Asia market where mobile is the first choice
  - skybrian 2y ago
    This seems like the revenge of TV. People used to spend many hours watching TV and now video is back, with algorithms that try to give you more stimulating things to watch. Other entertainment (like video games) have to compete with that. But I’m not sure that websites have to compete with that if they have more practical purposes. What will people do when not watching TV? The metric of “hours spent on entertainment” doesn’t seem like the right one to use. It doesn’t measure the value you get from an activity or how much you’re willing to spend on it. For example, does a banking app need to try to compete with video games for hours spent on them? Something seems wrong with that comparison.
forgetfreeman 2y ago
Pretty solid take on a roiling shitstorm that's been brewing for at least the last 15 years. One thing I strongly disagree with the author about is wanting the web to win. Of all possible outcomes the web coming out on top of the platform wars is the worst available. Simple fact of the matter is the web wasn't built for any of this shit as our bloated and still wildly insecure browsers demonstrate rather vividly. The web defaulting back to a largely static information display medium would free up so much client budget and development hours it's hard to imagine that multi-OS support for native apps wouldn't be a net savings over the long haul. Hell, just imagine the kinds of resources that would free up if forced migration of highly dynamic websites was a thing of the past (yeah I'm looking at you Drupal).
- crabmusket 2y ago
  What are you suggesting complex Drupal sites be migrated to?
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    Most would get migrated into the void where they belong. A small handful that have real use cases would have their interactive services ported to native app. Solutions already exist for commerce and donations features, remote data entry and retrieval would need a rethink I'm guessing. As with any massive paradigm shift there'd be a cull. I strongly doubt much of value would be lost.
    - emushack 2y ago
      Do you know what Drupal is used for? Can you seriously imagine migrating that stuff to native apps?
      - forgetfreeman 2y ago
        sigh I've contributed to core and several of the most used modules in the contrib space, have built over a thousand sites with it ranging in complexity from state level nonprofits to Unicef and the ACLU, and once ran testbot for a week. I know a little about what it's for, and yes I can absolutely imagine migrating to native. 1. You'd only have to do it once. 2. The overwhelming majority of sites platformed on Drupal could easily be replaced by pure static HTML and other than a handful of back office staff bitching about social media integration nothing of note would be impacted. If you've spent any time at all in the industry you know as well as I do what the client says they need and what they actually need are orthogonal.
DeathArrow 2y ago
I agree with points about openness and gate keeping. But from my point of view, the web is the worst platform to run apps. I worked on microcontrollers, system software, desktop software, mobile apps, games and now I am a full stack web developer who mostly does backend and defers most of the front-end tasks to colleagues. I don't like JS frameworks and it was far more enjoyable for me to use QT, Borland C++Builder, Windows Forms XCode and Android Studio than to use Angular and React and even Vue. Aside from Web front-end to being a less enjoyable experience for me, the Web was designed for websites, not for apps. Web as an app platform means subpar experience for the users, too. We tried with Flash and Java applets running in the browser. Those died and now we have the Javascript mess. When, if ever, Wasm will have full access to browser DOM, maybe we can get rid of the Javascript mess. But then, again, why bother running a binary app in the browser when you can run it on the desktop or phone? And even if web as an app platform is said to promote openness and impede gatekeeping it still has a terrible downside for the end user: it makes the user rent the software instead of owning it.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  The issue with renting software, is that it will happen even in native apps, because it is the only way most companies can get some money out of their products. Piracy doesn't bring any money, and forever licenses don't scale to keep a steady income per month after the user base is settled, and everyone likes to get a steady income for their work.
  - aragilar 2y ago
    True, but it's much easier for web apps to alter the deal than native apps, given most of their local state is ephemeral and hard to access, and much of the useful data, and potentially even software, is on the server. How many emulators are there for web apps, compared with emulators for nearly every popular OS/platform in the last 40 years?
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      It is just as easy with native apps distributed via app stores, which is why most companies aren't that bothered with gatekeeping, as folks in sites like HN. Emulators for Web apps doesn't make sense, that is a browser.
DeathArrow 2y ago
How bad will it be if we will run apps on desktop and phones instead of the web? Does the Facebook app provide a worse experience on the phone than the web app? Is Gmail phone app worse than Gmail web app?
pards 2y ago
What does the OP mean by "web" in this context? - UI running in browsers? - TCP/IP? - HTTP(S)? I personally think ReST APIs accessed over HTTP + TCP/IP have a lot of utility but I think we can do better on the UI front. Maybe we need an alternative to the web browser that can run a different (or variety of) languages other than Javascript, with a better presentation option than the DOM.
- crabmusket 2y ago
  This is a lengthy quote from TFA but I think it best describes what the author means by "the web" in practical terms: <quote> As I see it, the web is the only generational software platform that has a reasonable shot at delivering a potent set of benefits to users: - Fresh - Frictionless - Safe by default - Portable and interoperable - Gatekeeper-free (no prior restraint on publication) - Standards-based, and therefore... - User-mediated (extensions, browser settings, etc.) - Open Source compatible No other successful platform provides all of these today and others that could are too small to matter. Platforms like Android and Flutter deliver subsets of these properties but capitulate to capture by the host OS agenda, allowing their developers to be taxed through app stores and proprietary API lock-in. Most treat user mediation like a bug to be fixed. </quote> The DOM seems critical to the user mediation goal, and user mediation is IMO a critical differentiator with other platforms. E.g. the web would be way less cool if I couldn't have "reader mode".
  - arkh 2y ago
    Maybe the root problems are HTML and its browsers. Or more exactly: the fact HTML is about documents. Everything done to make apps from it are hacks. What would be really needed is an open application format standard and a protocol to share it and maybe interact with it. And open source clients able to run those applications.
    - BlueTemplar 2y ago
      How would it be different from the standards and protocols we have now ?
dzannetandreevn 2y ago
[dead]

105 points by wmanley 2y ago

[flagged]

I have some sympathy for this viewpoint. And I think Alex’s heart is in the right place—Nextjs is a dumpster fire and react server components are when react finally jumped the shark for me. Maybe if we had HTML6 we wouldn’t be in this scenario. HTML5 was great but form building on the web (without JS) is a second-rate experience. And it’s even more miserable once JS is in the mix, but hey developers can provide a much better UX for end users than HTML and CSS alone could possibly provide. Sorry Alex, but without JS the web would have died a decade ago as phones took over. It’s only JS that keeps us in the ring.

Devasta 2y ago
HTML can never be improved, that is at the very foundation of its current form. We are 20 years into the takeover from the W3C and still can't even do a PUT request without JS, nevermind anything approaching even one tenth of the functionality of XForms. The web of semantic documents died years ago, it's an application platform now and that means JS. HTML is naught but a payload carrier.
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  All true, but an error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it. Perhaps it is finally time to let the web-as-an-application-layer paradigm die?
- aragilar 2y ago
  https://alexanderpetros.com/triptych/ https://alexanderpetros.com/triptych/ will hopefully address that.
  - Devasta 2y ago
    I wish them luck, but the last time this was attempted it was rejected as it apparently doesn't make sense that you would even want to do it in the first place. https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10671#c16 https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10671#c16
    - aragilar 2y ago
      https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/3577#issuecomment-2329578267 https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/3577#issuecomment-2329... and the links inside appear to imply there's interest?
- pjmlp 2y ago
  I was really disappointed that XHTML effort was killed by the HTML5 folks, we could be so much better, but it is as it is.
  - Devasta 2y ago
    The founding members of the WHATWG really are the Thomas Midgley's of the software world. The world will spend the next century of software development trying to repair their screwups.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Ironically that work is now being made obsolete with apps regaining the role of native apps, or the plugins revenge via WebGL/WebGPU/WebAssembly.
amadeuspagel 2y ago
The author actually links to the NextJS page for server components as "a tacit acknowledgement that their shit stinks". I guess this is how you acknowledge progress if you want to write an article in the tone that is expected on HN and mastodon now.
andrewflnr 2y ago
He's not opposed to JS entirely (he specifically praises a handful of JS-based tech like ServiceWorkers), more so the all-JS single page type of app. To be fair he definitely could have been more clear about what he's talking about and what lines he's drawing.
- ec109685 2y ago
  All the desktop apps he cited that are a threat to native are SPA’s so it doesn’t seem like he hates them everywhere. I agree though it’s very odd that desktop web apps are serviceable, while they universally are horrible on mobile.
  - andrewflnr 2y ago
    Because their performance falls below acceptable levels specifically on (relatively slower) mobile devices. It takes a looong time for him to get around to it, but performance (specifically UI latency) is the crux of the whole article, as I read it at least.
    - marcus_holmes 2y ago
      Yeah, I read this (and some of his linked articles) as pointing out that Apple are specifically killing browser performance and features so that PWAs cannot compete with apps on iOS. Specifically because they can't claim 30% of revenue from web apps.
      - photonthug 2y ago
        > Specifically because they can't claim 30% of revenue from web apps. This feels true, but it’s just one horn of the dilemma. The other is where websites wreck their own UX intentionally to herd users towards apps, presumably because pushing ads isn’t as lucrative as grabbing location data, contact lists, or whatever else can be legally exfiltrated and sold. It’s weird to frame this problem as if it were all the fault of whatever trends in js development or browser development (even though I agree those trends often seem foolish and messy, at least to the outsider). The whole situation the author bemoans just looks like another symptom of surveillance capitalism, enshittification, etc, call it what you will. Even with a perfect web, users will still get pushed towards apps if apps are the best way to exploit the user. There’s no other calculus of platform aesthetics or excellence going on here
DeathArrow 2y ago
>Sorry Alex, but without JS the web would have died a decade ago as phones took over. It’s only JS that keeps us in the ring. Not really. Web would still be there but for websites not web apps. The web was designed for hypertext, a medium that is just supposed to deliver information not build apps upon.
aragilar 2y ago
I doubt he's opposed to JS, given the number of new JS APIs he pushed Chrome to implement as part of Project Fugu, he seems more opposed to specific frameworks.

devjab 2y ago

This is a very good article and I agree with most of it. I never really understood why React and Angular became big for the general web. They have a lot of usage in enterprise applications, where you typically access them from a “pc”, but even then they suck on the tablets your employees drive around with. At least for the most part they don’t suck that much worse than the terrible native clients that came before (and still do in the rare case that a supplier actually build a native mobile app). Why that spread to the wider web is beyond me though. I get why you would use it for personal projects if it’s your day time job anyway, but a page reload never hurt anyone. I personally think that the most responsible “father” is finance. The article states that there is more money with the web, but in my experience it’s far easier to lock down payments through apps. I agree that part of this is because native apps are better on mobile, but they are also much easier to work with and consume. It’s not easy to make payments function well on the web while in a native app it’s just a click with well powered api behind it. Serving both users and developers. Now, it probably could be easier on the web, but who would deliver it? The article calls out Apple and to some degree Google as guilty of not making browsers competitive with mobile apps, but why would they? If anything it’s in their best interest to keep the web shitty on mobile.

gruez 2y ago
>I never really understood why React and Angular became big for the general web. As opposed to what? Server side rendered pages with random jquery snippets sprinkled around for interactivity? I prefer the reactive model far more than manually trying to update the page myself.
- devjab 2y ago
  You could just do page reloads. Of course if you don’t really need very advanced authentication with role-based access control there is also HTMX which is around 10kb.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Apparently SSR is quite hot in JS frameworks, after a new generation rediscovered how we oldies do Web development in .NET, Java, Ruby, Python, Go, PHP....

amadeuspagel 2y ago

The article refers to the JS-industrial-complex but only has stats for NextJS[1]. Maybe other frameworks are better? I would love to see a similar chart for the showcases of other frameworks. [1]: https://infrequently.org/2024/10/platforms-are-competitions/#fn-failure-on-repeat-2 https://infrequently.org/2024/10/platforms-are-competitions/...

skybrian 2y ago

I'm looking at the list of top websites and thinking "when have I ever wanted to install the mobile app?" The only one I see that I use is Spotify. Maybe the time spent on mobile is in other apps? But I'm probably an outlier because I spend most of my time on websites, even on phone and tablet. It would be nice to see this broken down by market segment. I don't see any banks in the list. I use my bank's app for certain reasons like depositing checks and Zelle.

nchmy 2y ago
I think what youre missing is that most of these are just websites, not "apps". And they suck
gruez 2y ago
>But I'm probably an outlier because I spend most of my time on websites, even on phone and tablet. Meanwhile our users are clamoring for app version of our web app, even though it's just a web wrapper. I guess some people just have a "there's an app for that" mentality.
tonyhart7 2y ago
because western especially people got to tech has more chance to comfortable being on the web than the app example of Gen Z and alpha social media addict that used to use Tiktok,Snaps etc You cant deny that the use of web is dying and I still not mentioning Asia market where mobile is the first choice
- skybrian 2y ago
  This seems like the revenge of TV. People used to spend many hours watching TV and now video is back, with algorithms that try to give you more stimulating things to watch. Other entertainment (like video games) have to compete with that. But I’m not sure that websites have to compete with that if they have more practical purposes. What will people do when not watching TV? The metric of “hours spent on entertainment” doesn’t seem like the right one to use. It doesn’t measure the value you get from an activity or how much you’re willing to spend on it. For example, does a banking app need to try to compete with video games for hours spent on them? Something seems wrong with that comparison.

forgetfreeman 2y ago

Pretty solid take on a roiling shitstorm that's been brewing for at least the last 15 years. One thing I strongly disagree with the author about is wanting the web to win. Of all possible outcomes the web coming out on top of the platform wars is the worst available. Simple fact of the matter is the web wasn't built for any of this shit as our bloated and still wildly insecure browsers demonstrate rather vividly. The web defaulting back to a largely static information display medium would free up so much client budget and development hours it's hard to imagine that multi-OS support for native apps wouldn't be a net savings over the long haul. Hell, just imagine the kinds of resources that would free up if forced migration of highly dynamic websites was a thing of the past (yeah I'm looking at you Drupal).

crabmusket 2y ago
What are you suggesting complex Drupal sites be migrated to?
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  Most would get migrated into the void where they belong. A small handful that have real use cases would have their interactive services ported to native app. Solutions already exist for commerce and donations features, remote data entry and retrieval would need a rethink I'm guessing. As with any massive paradigm shift there'd be a cull. I strongly doubt much of value would be lost.
  - emushack 2y ago
    Do you know what Drupal is used for? Can you seriously imagine migrating that stuff to native apps?
    - forgetfreeman 2y ago
      sigh I've contributed to core and several of the most used modules in the contrib space, have built over a thousand sites with it ranging in complexity from state level nonprofits to Unicef and the ACLU, and once ran testbot for a week. I know a little about what it's for, and yes I can absolutely imagine migrating to native. 1. You'd only have to do it once. 2. The overwhelming majority of sites platformed on Drupal could easily be replaced by pure static HTML and other than a handful of back office staff bitching about social media integration nothing of note would be impacted. If you've spent any time at all in the industry you know as well as I do what the client says they need and what they actually need are orthogonal.

DeathArrow 2y ago

I agree with points about openness and gate keeping. But from my point of view, the web is the worst platform to run apps. I worked on microcontrollers, system software, desktop software, mobile apps, games and now I am a full stack web developer who mostly does backend and defers most of the front-end tasks to colleagues. I don't like JS frameworks and it was far more enjoyable for me to use QT, Borland C++Builder, Windows Forms XCode and Android Studio than to use Angular and React and even Vue. Aside from Web front-end to being a less enjoyable experience for me, the Web was designed for websites, not for apps. Web as an app platform means subpar experience for the users, too. We tried with Flash and Java applets running in the browser. Those died and now we have the Javascript mess. When, if ever, Wasm will have full access to browser DOM, maybe we can get rid of the Javascript mess. But then, again, why bother running a binary app in the browser when you can run it on the desktop or phone? And even if web as an app platform is said to promote openness and impede gatekeeping it still has a terrible downside for the end user: it makes the user rent the software instead of owning it.

pjmlp 2y ago
The issue with renting software, is that it will happen even in native apps, because it is the only way most companies can get some money out of their products. Piracy doesn't bring any money, and forever licenses don't scale to keep a steady income per month after the user base is settled, and everyone likes to get a steady income for their work.
- aragilar 2y ago
  True, but it's much easier for web apps to alter the deal than native apps, given most of their local state is ephemeral and hard to access, and much of the useful data, and potentially even software, is on the server. How many emulators are there for web apps, compared with emulators for nearly every popular OS/platform in the last 40 years?
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    It is just as easy with native apps distributed via app stores, which is why most companies aren't that bothered with gatekeeping, as folks in sites like HN. Emulators for Web apps doesn't make sense, that is a browser.

DeathArrow 2y ago

How bad will it be if we will run apps on desktop and phones instead of the web? Does the Facebook app provide a worse experience on the phone than the web app? Is Gmail phone app worse than Gmail web app?

pards 2y ago

What does the OP mean by "web" in this context? - UI running in browsers? - TCP/IP? - HTTP(S)? I personally think ReST APIs accessed over HTTP + TCP/IP have a lot of utility but I think we can do better on the UI front. Maybe we need an alternative to the web browser that can run a different (or variety of) languages other than Javascript, with a better presentation option than the DOM.

crabmusket 2y ago
This is a lengthy quote from TFA but I think it best describes what the author means by "the web" in practical terms: <quote> As I see it, the web is the only generational software platform that has a reasonable shot at delivering a potent set of benefits to users: - Fresh - Frictionless - Safe by default - Portable and interoperable - Gatekeeper-free (no prior restraint on publication) - Standards-based, and therefore... - User-mediated (extensions, browser settings, etc.) - Open Source compatible No other successful platform provides all of these today and others that could are too small to matter. Platforms like Android and Flutter deliver subsets of these properties but capitulate to capture by the host OS agenda, allowing their developers to be taxed through app stores and proprietary API lock-in. Most treat user mediation like a bug to be fixed. </quote> The DOM seems critical to the user mediation goal, and user mediation is IMO a critical differentiator with other platforms. E.g. the web would be way less cool if I couldn't have "reader mode".
- arkh 2y ago
  Maybe the root problems are HTML and its browsers. Or more exactly: the fact HTML is about documents. Everything done to make apps from it are hacks. What would be really needed is an open application format standard and a protocol to share it and maybe interact with it. And open source clients able to run those applications.
  - BlueTemplar 2y ago
    How would it be different from the standards and protocols we have now ?

dzannetandreevn 2y ago

[dead]