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> why should HTML be stuck with a JS projection of OpenGL ES while native developers get Vulkan? Because web browsers are supposed to be locked down and able t

> why should HTML be stuck with a JS projection of OpenGL ES while native developers get Vulkan? Because web browsers are supposed to be locked down and able to run untrusted code, not an operating system that reinvents all the same failings of actual operating systems. They should be functionality impaired in favor of safety as much as possible. For the same reason you don't get access to high precision timing in browser (a lesson that took a while to learn!), you shouldn't have arbitrary capabilities piled onto it.

imiric 2y ago
Those are all historical remnants. Modern web browsers serve a radically different purpose than they did in the 90s. It doesn't make sense to even keep calling them "web browsers" since most people don't know what a "web" is, let alone "browse" it. Modern browsers are application runtimes with a very flexible delivery mechanism. It's really up to web developers to decide what features this system should have to enable rich experiences for their users. Declaring that they should be functionally impaired or what they "should be" without taking into account the user experience we want to deliver is the wrong way of approaching this. To be clear: I do think we should take security very seriously, especially in the one program people use the most. I also think reinventing operating systems to run within other operating systems is silly. But the web browser has become the primary application runtime and is how most people experience computing, so enabling it to deliver rich user experiences is inevitable. Doing this without compromising security or privacy is a very difficult problem, which should be addressed. It's not like the web is not a security and privacy nightmare without this already. So the solution is not to restrict functionality in order to safeguard security, but to find a way to implement these features securely and safely.
- mihaaly 2y ago
  > Modern web browsers serve a radically different purpose than they did in the 90s And that is a bad thing it was pushed this far! Exactly this is the argument here!
  - imiric 2y ago
    I don't necessarily disagree. But there's no going back now. There's a demand for rich user experiences that are not as easy to implement or deliver via legacy operating systems. So there's no point in arguing to keep functionality out of web browsers, since there is no practical alternative for it.
    - andyjohnson0 2y ago
      If rich ux can be delivered in a web browser then it can be delivered in a native app. I'd assert that the reason this is uncommon now (with the exception of games) is economic not technological.
      - imiric 2y ago
        It is partly economic, but I would say that it's more of a matter of convenience. Developing a web application is more approachable than a native app, and the pool of web developers is larger. Users also don't want the burden of installing and upgrading apps, they just want them available. Even traditional app stores that mobile devices popularized are antiquated now. Requesting a specific app by its unique identifier, which is what web URLs are, is much more user friendly than navigating an app store, let alone downloading an app on a traditional operating system and dealing with a hundred different "package managers", and all the associated issues that come with that. Some app stores and package managers automate a lot of this complexity to simplify the UX, and all of them use the web in the background anyway, but the experience is far from just loading a web URL in a browser. And native apps on most platforms are also a security nightmare, which is why there is a lot of momentum to replicate the mobile and web sandboxing model on traditional OSs, which is something that web browsers have had for a long time. The answer is somewhere in the middle. We need better and more secure operating systems that replicate some of the web model, and we need more capable and featureful "web browsers" that deliver the same experience as native apps. There have been numerous attempts at both approaches over the past decade+ with varying degrees of success, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
        2y ago
- andyjohnson0 2y ago
  > Modern browsers are application runtimes with a very flexible delivery mechanism. Clearly this is true. But as someone with an old-school preference for native applications over webapps (mostly for performance/ux/privacy reasons) it irritates me that I need to use an everything app just to browse HN or Wikipedia. I don't want to go all hairshirt and start using Lynx, I just want something with decent ux and a smaller vulnerability surface.
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    > it irritates me that I need to use an everything app just to browse HN or Wikipedia But why? That feels like saying it irritates someone they need to run Windows in order to run Notepad, when they don't need the capabilities of Photoshop at the moment. An everything app is for everything. Including the simple things. The last thing I'd want is to have to use one browser for simpler sites and another for more complex sites and webapps and constantly have to remember which one was for which.
    - ndriscoll 2y ago
      Some of us don't use the web for anything other than websites. I'm honestly not even sure what people are talking about with some proliferation of "apps". There's discord/slack, and...? And chat was on the road to being an open protocol until Google/Facebook saw the potential for lockin and both dropped XMPP. I already have an operating system. It's like saying I don't need notepad to be able to execute arbitrary programs with 3D capabilities and listen sockets because it's a text editor. You also wouldn't need to remember what your generic sandbox app runtime is. Use your browser, and if you click on a link to an app, you'll be prompted to open the link using your default handler for that mime type.
      - crazygringo 2y ago
        > I'm honestly not even sure what people are talking about with some proliferation of "apps". There's discord/slack, and...? Are you not familiar with Gmail or Google Maps or YouTube? > I already have an operating system. But Gmail and Google Maps and YouTube don't run on the OS. And this is a feature -- I can log into my Gmail on any browser without having to install anything. Life is so much easier when you don't have to install software, but just open a link. > Use your browser, and if you click on a link to an app, you'll be prompted to open the link using your default handler for that mime type. But I like having news links in Gmail open in a new tab in the same window. The last thing I want is to be juggling windows between different applications when tabs in the same app are such a superior UX. Imagine how annoying it would be if my "app" browser had tabs for Gmail and Maps and YouTube and my "docs" browser had tabs for the NYT and WaPo and CNN, and I couldn't mix them? Or if the NYT only worked in my "docs" browser, but opening a link to its crossword puzzle opened in my "apps" browser instead? That's a terrible user experience for zero benefit at all. (And I still would have to remember which is which, even if there's a MIME type, for when I want to go back to a tab I already opened!)
- dpig_ 2y ago
  Browsers should be aggressively pro-user, and developers can innovate within the limitations they're given.
  - imiric 2y ago
    That settles it then. Let's remove all the innovations of the past 30 years that have allowed the web to deliver rich user experiences, and leave developers to innovate with static HTML alone. Who needs JavaScript and CSS anyway? Seriously, don't you see the incongruity of your statement?
mihaaly 2y ago
Exactly. Putting everything, I mean everything into the browser, and arguing for it, is stupid. It stops becoming a browser then and becomes a native sytem, with the problems of the native systems accessing the open wild all over again. And then? Will be there a sandbox inside the browser/new-OS for the sake of security then? Sanbox into a not so sandbox anymore?
- junon 2y ago
  That's exactly what ChromeOS is/was. Users hated it.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- vbezhenar 2y ago
  Modern operating systems are bad and they are not going to be fixed. So Browser is another attempt at creating better operating system. Why modern operating systems are bad: 1. Desktop OS allow installation of unrestricted applications. And actually most applications are unrestricted. While there are attempts at creating containerised applications, those attempts are weak and not popular. When I'm installing World of Warcraft, its installer silently adds trusted root certificate into my computer. 2. Mobile OS are walled gardens. You can't just run anything, you need to jump through many hoops at best or live in certain countries at worst. 3. There's no common ground for every operating system. Every operating system is different, has completely different APIs. While there are frameworks which try to abstract those things, those frameworks adds their own pile of issues. Browser just fixes everything. It provides secure sandbox which is trusted by billions of users. It does not restrict user in any way, there's no "Website Store" or something like that, you can open everything and you can bring your app online within few minutes. It provides an uniform API which is enough to create many kinds of applications and it'll run everywhere: iPhone, Pixel, Macbook, Surface, Thinkpad.
  - smolder 2y ago
    Unrestricted app installation is not bad. It's a trade-off. It's freedom to use your own hardware how you want versus 'safety' and restriction imposed by some central authority which aims to profit. Fuck app stores, generally speaking. I prefer to determine what source to trust myself and not be charged (directly or indirectly) to put software on my own system.
chrisjj 2y ago
This guy gets it 100%.

imiric 2y ago

Those are all historical remnants. Modern web browsers serve a radically different purpose than they did in the 90s. It doesn't make sense to even keep calling them "web browsers" since most people don't know what a "web" is, let alone "browse" it. Modern browsers are application runtimes with a very flexible delivery mechanism. It's really up to web developers to decide what features this system should have to enable rich experiences for their users. Declaring that they should be functionally impaired or what they "should be" without taking into account the user experience we want to deliver is the wrong way of approaching this. To be clear: I do think we should take security very seriously, especially in the one program people use the most. I also think reinventing operating systems to run within other operating systems is silly. But the web browser has become the primary application runtime and is how most people experience computing, so enabling it to deliver rich user experiences is inevitable. Doing this without compromising security or privacy is a very difficult problem, which should be addressed. It's not like the web is not a security and privacy nightmare without this already. So the solution is not to restrict functionality in order to safeguard security, but to find a way to implement these features securely and safely.

mihaaly 2y ago
> Modern web browsers serve a radically different purpose than they did in the 90s And that is a bad thing it was pushed this far! Exactly this is the argument here!
- imiric 2y ago
  I don't necessarily disagree. But there's no going back now. There's a demand for rich user experiences that are not as easy to implement or deliver via legacy operating systems. So there's no point in arguing to keep functionality out of web browsers, since there is no practical alternative for it.
  - andyjohnson0 2y ago
    If rich ux can be delivered in a web browser then it can be delivered in a native app. I'd assert that the reason this is uncommon now (with the exception of games) is economic not technological.
    - imiric 2y ago
      It is partly economic, but I would say that it's more of a matter of convenience. Developing a web application is more approachable than a native app, and the pool of web developers is larger. Users also don't want the burden of installing and upgrading apps, they just want them available. Even traditional app stores that mobile devices popularized are antiquated now. Requesting a specific app by its unique identifier, which is what web URLs are, is much more user friendly than navigating an app store, let alone downloading an app on a traditional operating system and dealing with a hundred different "package managers", and all the associated issues that come with that. Some app stores and package managers automate a lot of this complexity to simplify the UX, and all of them use the web in the background anyway, but the experience is far from just loading a web URL in a browser. And native apps on most platforms are also a security nightmare, which is why there is a lot of momentum to replicate the mobile and web sandboxing model on traditional OSs, which is something that web browsers have had for a long time. The answer is somewhere in the middle. We need better and more secure operating systems that replicate some of the web model, and we need more capable and featureful "web browsers" that deliver the same experience as native apps. There have been numerous attempts at both approaches over the past decade+ with varying degrees of success, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
      - 2y ago
andyjohnson0 2y ago
> Modern browsers are application runtimes with a very flexible delivery mechanism. Clearly this is true. But as someone with an old-school preference for native applications over webapps (mostly for performance/ux/privacy reasons) it irritates me that I need to use an everything app just to browse HN or Wikipedia. I don't want to go all hairshirt and start using Lynx, I just want something with decent ux and a smaller vulnerability surface.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  > it irritates me that I need to use an everything app just to browse HN or Wikipedia But why? That feels like saying it irritates someone they need to run Windows in order to run Notepad, when they don't need the capabilities of Photoshop at the moment. An everything app is for everything. Including the simple things. The last thing I'd want is to have to use one browser for simpler sites and another for more complex sites and webapps and constantly have to remember which one was for which.
  - ndriscoll 2y ago
    Some of us don't use the web for anything other than websites. I'm honestly not even sure what people are talking about with some proliferation of "apps". There's discord/slack, and...? And chat was on the road to being an open protocol until Google/Facebook saw the potential for lockin and both dropped XMPP. I already have an operating system. It's like saying I don't need notepad to be able to execute arbitrary programs with 3D capabilities and listen sockets because it's a text editor. You also wouldn't need to remember what your generic sandbox app runtime is. Use your browser, and if you click on a link to an app, you'll be prompted to open the link using your default handler for that mime type.
    - crazygringo 2y ago
      > I'm honestly not even sure what people are talking about with some proliferation of "apps". There's discord/slack, and...? Are you not familiar with Gmail or Google Maps or YouTube? > I already have an operating system. But Gmail and Google Maps and YouTube don't run on the OS. And this is a feature -- I can log into my Gmail on any browser without having to install anything. Life is so much easier when you don't have to install software, but just open a link. > Use your browser, and if you click on a link to an app, you'll be prompted to open the link using your default handler for that mime type. But I like having news links in Gmail open in a new tab in the same window. The last thing I want is to be juggling windows between different applications when tabs in the same app are such a superior UX. Imagine how annoying it would be if my "app" browser had tabs for Gmail and Maps and YouTube and my "docs" browser had tabs for the NYT and WaPo and CNN, and I couldn't mix them? Or if the NYT only worked in my "docs" browser, but opening a link to its crossword puzzle opened in my "apps" browser instead? That's a terrible user experience for zero benefit at all. (And I still would have to remember which is which, even if there's a MIME type, for when I want to go back to a tab I already opened!)
dpig_ 2y ago
Browsers should be aggressively pro-user, and developers can innovate within the limitations they're given.
- imiric 2y ago
  That settles it then. Let's remove all the innovations of the past 30 years that have allowed the web to deliver rich user experiences, and leave developers to innovate with static HTML alone. Who needs JavaScript and CSS anyway? Seriously, don't you see the incongruity of your statement?

mihaaly 2y ago

Exactly. Putting everything, I mean everything into the browser, and arguing for it, is stupid. It stops becoming a browser then and becomes a native sytem, with the problems of the native systems accessing the open wild all over again. And then? Will be there a sandbox inside the browser/new-OS for the sake of security then? Sanbox into a not so sandbox anymore?

junon 2y ago
That's exactly what ChromeOS is/was. Users hated it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
vbezhenar 2y ago
Modern operating systems are bad and they are not going to be fixed. So Browser is another attempt at creating better operating system. Why modern operating systems are bad: 1. Desktop OS allow installation of unrestricted applications. And actually most applications are unrestricted. While there are attempts at creating containerised applications, those attempts are weak and not popular. When I'm installing World of Warcraft, its installer silently adds trusted root certificate into my computer. 2. Mobile OS are walled gardens. You can't just run anything, you need to jump through many hoops at best or live in certain countries at worst. 3. There's no common ground for every operating system. Every operating system is different, has completely different APIs. While there are frameworks which try to abstract those things, those frameworks adds their own pile of issues. Browser just fixes everything. It provides secure sandbox which is trusted by billions of users. It does not restrict user in any way, there's no "Website Store" or something like that, you can open everything and you can bring your app online within few minutes. It provides an uniform API which is enough to create many kinds of applications and it'll run everywhere: iPhone, Pixel, Macbook, Surface, Thinkpad.
- smolder 2y ago
  Unrestricted app installation is not bad. It's a trade-off. It's freedom to use your own hardware how you want versus 'safety' and restriction imposed by some central authority which aims to profit. Fuck app stores, generally speaking. I prefer to determine what source to trust myself and not be charged (directly or indirectly) to put software on my own system.

chrisjj 2y ago

This guy gets it 100%.