4 ms·

> The only way it really fell short is in the way that a lot of people were predicting that it would become a sort of total replacement for JS+HTML+CSS for buil

by rob74 9mo ago

> The only way it really fell short is in the way that a lot of people were predicting that it would become a sort of total replacement for JS+HTML+CSS for building web apps. I for one hope that doesn't happen anytime soon. YouTube or Spotify could theoretically switch to Wasm drawing to a canvas right now (with a lot of development effort), but that would make the things that are currently possible thanks to the DOM (scraping, ad blockers etc.) harder or impossible.

ivell 9mo ago
I suspect this will be coming soon. For ad-driven companies, having an opaque deployment which would prevent ad-blockers would be ideal. However ads still need to be delivered over the net so there is still some way to block them (without resorting to router/firewall level blocking).
- creata 9mo ago
  They'd be raked over the coals for the lack of accessibility, I hope.
  - javcasas 9mo ago
    That's like the mafia being raked over the coals for not having accessibility ramps for wheelchairs in their clandestine distilleries. Not gonna happen.
    - lynx97 9mo ago
      You are probably right. What will happen is that ad-blocker people will indirectly kill accessibility. That would make a lot of sense in this world. Its a reoccuring pattern. Spam killed a part of accessibility indirectly via CAPTCHA. And "it is my god-given right to block ads of free services I use" people will indirectly finally kill accessibility for good, now that we have <canvas>.
gf000 9mo ago
> DOM (scraping, ad blockers etc.) harder or impossible. This is a cat mouse fight, and Facebook already does some ultra-shady stuff like rendering a word as a list of randomly ordered divs for each character, and only using CSS to display in a readable way. But it can't be made impossible, at the worst case we can always just capture the screen and use an AI to recognize ads, wasting a lot of energy. The same is true for cheating in video games and many forms of online integrity problems - I can just hire a good player who would play in my place, and no technology could recognize that.
- smallnix 9mo ago
  > no technology could recognize that. Perhaps require monitoring of the arm muscle electrical signals, build a profile, match the readings to the game actions and check that the profile matches the advertised player
- palata 9mo ago
  > ultra-shady stuff like rendering a word as a list of randomly ordered divs for each character, and only using CSS to display in a readable way. I wonder how much the developers writing that are being paid to be complete assholes.
  - ljm 9mo ago
    Knowing what total comp is like for those companies, I'm sure Facebook more than exceeded the price one might put on ethics. I've personally resigned from positions for less and it hasn't cost me much comfort in life (maybe some career progression perhaps but, meh).
  - strangegecko 9mo ago
    I can't speak for FB. But I know a local (non-US) real estate company which does crap like this (they also love to disable right click and detect when browser tools are open and programmatically close the tab/page when that happens), and they're not paying much. I'm guessing it's double of minimum wage, which isn't high here.
  - draw_down 9mo ago
p_l 9mo ago
multiple web apps already work by rendering all to canvas - for example Google Docs and O365
m00dy 9mo ago
>>possible thanks to the DOM (scraping, ad blockers etc.) harder or impossible. lol, you can scrape anything visible on your screen.
lynx97 9mo ago
Add Accessibility to that list. Morally speaking, it is likely more important then scraping and ad-blockers.
- willtemperley 9mo ago
  Yes, however I reject the idea that a full WASM app would be strictly worse for accessibility in the long term. Native UI frameworks do have accessibility APIs and browsers could implement something similar. I see it as an opportunity to do better.
  - lynx97 9mo ago
    So far, huge rewrites/rearchitecturings typically worsened the end user experience from an a11y POV. I even know people personally who have lost their job of 20 years because their employer decided to redo their IT, "accidentally" leaving the disabled employee behind. It is naiv to think a big rewrite will NOT make things much worse for years.

by rob74 9mo ago

ivell 9mo ago

I suspect this will be coming soon. For ad-driven companies, having an opaque deployment which would prevent ad-blockers would be ideal. However ads still need to be delivered over the net so there is still some way to block them (without resorting to router/firewall level blocking).

creata 9mo ago
They'd be raked over the coals for the lack of accessibility, I hope.
- javcasas 9mo ago
  That's like the mafia being raked over the coals for not having accessibility ramps for wheelchairs in their clandestine distilleries. Not gonna happen.
  - lynx97 9mo ago
    You are probably right. What will happen is that ad-blocker people will indirectly kill accessibility. That would make a lot of sense in this world. Its a reoccuring pattern. Spam killed a part of accessibility indirectly via CAPTCHA. And "it is my god-given right to block ads of free services I use" people will indirectly finally kill accessibility for good, now that we have <canvas>.

gf000 9mo ago

> DOM (scraping, ad blockers etc.) harder or impossible. This is a cat mouse fight, and Facebook already does some ultra-shady stuff like rendering a word as a list of randomly ordered divs for each character, and only using CSS to display in a readable way. But it can't be made impossible, at the worst case we can always just capture the screen and use an AI to recognize ads, wasting a lot of energy. The same is true for cheating in video games and many forms of online integrity problems - I can just hire a good player who would play in my place, and no technology could recognize that.

smallnix 9mo ago
> no technology could recognize that. Perhaps require monitoring of the arm muscle electrical signals, build a profile, match the readings to the game actions and check that the profile matches the advertised player
palata 9mo ago
> ultra-shady stuff like rendering a word as a list of randomly ordered divs for each character, and only using CSS to display in a readable way. I wonder how much the developers writing that are being paid to be complete assholes.
- ljm 9mo ago
  Knowing what total comp is like for those companies, I'm sure Facebook more than exceeded the price one might put on ethics. I've personally resigned from positions for less and it hasn't cost me much comfort in life (maybe some career progression perhaps but, meh).
- strangegecko 9mo ago
  I can't speak for FB. But I know a local (non-US) real estate company which does crap like this (they also love to disable right click and detect when browser tools are open and programmatically close the tab/page when that happens), and they're not paying much. I'm guessing it's double of minimum wage, which isn't high here.
- draw_down 9mo ago

p_l 9mo ago

multiple web apps already work by rendering all to canvas - for example Google Docs and O365

m00dy 9mo ago

>>possible thanks to the DOM (scraping, ad blockers etc.) harder or impossible. lol, you can scrape anything visible on your screen.

lynx97 9mo ago

Add Accessibility to that list. Morally speaking, it is likely more important then scraping and ad-blockers.

willtemperley 9mo ago
Yes, however I reject the idea that a full WASM app would be strictly worse for accessibility in the long term. Native UI frameworks do have accessibility APIs and browsers could implement something similar. I see it as an opportunity to do better.
- lynx97 9mo ago
  So far, huge rewrites/rearchitecturings typically worsened the end user experience from an a11y POV. I even know people personally who have lost their job of 20 years because their employer decided to redo their IT, "accidentally" leaving the disabled employee behind. It is naiv to think a big rewrite will NOT make things much worse for years.