10 ms·

Make it feature complete and you'll get the same speed the browser has. If we're going to build a new rendering engine for the web, maybe we could try to creat

by phn 12y ago

Make it feature complete and you'll get the same speed the browser has. If we're going to build a new rendering engine for the web, maybe we could try to create something nicer than HTML and CSS, whose only advantage at the present is the number of developers familiar with it. I know I wouldn't miss them.

emodendroket 12y ago
What is there that's so much better?
- aout 12y ago
  Because you could do something easier to understand in terms of 3D for a very simple use case and find a generic use for it.
  - emodendroket 12y ago
    I'm assuming this is not in the right place because I don't understand how it answers my question.
  - aout 12y ago
    Your browser is slow when applying transform to DOM elements because it has to translate everything 3D in terms of JavaScript and DOM. If you want to manipulate images and elements effectively in 3D then you have to learn matrix computations, quaternions and stuff which is horrible for the common web developer. I'm saying that if you offer a new approach that could mix HTML/CSS and encapsulate those complex 3D concepts it would be interesting.
- moron4hire 12y ago
  There really isn't anything "better". HTML isn't great, but it's all we got right now. le sigh.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    I am quite happy to have moved back to the native world.
- kelvin0 12y ago
  Postscript. Been there for ages and works like a charm.
  - emodendroket 12y ago
    Does anybody write that by hand? I kind of had the impression that it was notorious for being write-only.
- i_s 12y ago
  Almost any native UI framework (iOS, Android, WPF on windows, etc) has better layout options. Some of them like iOS have options that are not as beginner friendly (AutoLayout), but they are still better overall if you are trying to develop an application instead of formatting a document. Many other UI frameworks have had Flexbox type layouts, a technology W3C has only just recently realized is a good idea for 8+ years (probably much longer).
- icedchai 12y ago
  Pretty much anything? HTML/CSS/JS was never meant to develop application UIs. It's for documents. This all evolved over time into the clusterf-ck we have today, setting us back probably 20+ years in terms of developer productivity.
  - DiThi 12y ago
    Flexbox breaks with all the past clusterfuck layout system. It's the reason React Native only implements Flexbox. http://flexboxin5.com/ http://flexboxin5.com/
    - pcguru 12y ago
      But there are serious known bugs in IE10 and IE11 flexbox implementations. They will never be fixed, so when IE11 market share drops below 5% I will use flexbox. We're talking about perhaps in the year 2020. HTML/CSS is still not suited for app development and due to browser inconsistencies that will remain true for decades to come, perhaps forever. Apps in browsers is doable, but a more cumbersome than one might think.
PixelsCommander 12y ago
It is not a new rendering engine. It is just one custom tag which makes WebGL texture of your HTML content and allows to apply shaders. That is it...
- phn 12y ago
  I am sorry if I sounded rude, I didn't mean to knock this particular project down. I was commenting on a hypothetical future for something of its kind, and that I think HTML content is not really the way to go to make shiny WebGL things, IMO. To be a little more on-topic, yes, as an "apply shader to this semi-static div" it is a pretty cool thing :)
- _cpancake 12y ago
  It uses html2canvas which is its own rendering engine to an extent.
shimonamit 12y ago
Not necessarily. Looks like it is an immediate mode, HTML-like syntax but without the DOM.
paraboul 12y ago
FWIW, I'm working in this : http://www.nidium.com/ http://www.nidium.com/ since a few years. (It's almost ready and about to be released) Previous HN thread : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314961 video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=63&v=BSzEZXUTXlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=63&v=BSzEZXUTXlQ
- voctor 12y ago
  It looks very interesting ! It will be open source ?
  - paraboul 12y ago
    Of course :)
perdunov 12y ago
Yep, the model of HTML-CSS-DOM-JS implies extreme overhead, and only heroic efforts and thousands of man-years of work and optimization have made it bearable. I'm saying this as I have compared the performance of a simple local web page with a simple view with the same exact functionality rendered with my pet naive unoptimized UI engine and the latter was blazingly fast compared to HTML. So I guess you are right, we definitely need something less cluttered and more efficient than HTML+CSS+JS.
- BurningFrog 12y ago
  Yeah, it feels like we're slowly approaching what we could do with native programs 20 years ago.
- angersock 12y ago
  Compare how easy it is to make web pages with just HTML+CSS+JS, especially for a beginner, with any other framework, native code or no. The separation of structured markup, display theming, and custom logic is remarkably powerful, and everyone saying otherwise is just plain wrong if you look at history. Once you start doing anything outside of your simple page with a simple view (which was what, incidentally?), your engine starts to accrue features that move it in "bloat" towards a modern web browser. The link mentions "Hey, this is really useful on mobile"--and I would consider that a failing of the mobile vendors browser teams, not a problem with the web. This looks really flashy for the sort of static content + basic animations + interactions the author is showing off, but once you start handling further interaction--like, you know, building a virtual dom to render to the webgl texture, all you're doing is reinventing the facilities the browser already gives you, but instead behind one more layer of abstraction. tl,dr; web developers never learn.
  - perdunov 12y ago
    Well, I'm a beginner in web, and I can't say it's easy, in fact, it's quite the opposite. In native frameworks there's normally one idiomatic way to do things, while the web framework land looks terrifying. Actually, my pet UI engine was powerful enough so that I've implemented a complete mobile application in it. I'd also tried HTML, but it just wasn't competitive. The native iOS UI was even faster and was miles ahead of HTML in terms of speed. Also, there is such thing as Qt Quick, where you can basically write in reactive JavaScript, it is at least as powerful as HTML-CSS-JS, and it is still way faster. The web has started from something that obviously wasn't designed for performance and has come a long way of incremental evolution. Given this, and given that I know how hard it is to make a fast UI engine as powerful as web, the current web performance is actually spectacular. But still, there are better models, and there can be even better models.
macNchz 12y ago
>HTML and CSS, whose only advantage at the present is the number of developers familiar with it Given the sheer number of people familiar with it, I'd say this is a pretty huge advantage.
macspoofing 12y ago
>Make it feature complete That's the opposite direction you want to go. At that point, you might as well just use HTML. I think there are benefits to providing a subset of HTML features that you can tailor for super fast performance.
PixelsCommander 12y ago
The only bottleneck here is rasterization which we are trying to solve by making native Rasterization API live. You can read about here http://pixelscommander.com/en/javascript/state-of-html-content-rasterization-draw-html-to-canvas-image/ http://pixelscommander.com/en/javascript/state-of-html-conte...

by phn 12y ago

emodendroket 12y ago

What is there that's so much better?

aout 12y ago
Because you could do something easier to understand in terms of 3D for a very simple use case and find a generic use for it.
- emodendroket 12y ago
  I'm assuming this is not in the right place because I don't understand how it answers my question.
- aout 12y ago
  Your browser is slow when applying transform to DOM elements because it has to translate everything 3D in terms of JavaScript and DOM. If you want to manipulate images and elements effectively in 3D then you have to learn matrix computations, quaternions and stuff which is horrible for the common web developer. I'm saying that if you offer a new approach that could mix HTML/CSS and encapsulate those complex 3D concepts it would be interesting.
moron4hire 12y ago
There really isn't anything "better". HTML isn't great, but it's all we got right now. le sigh.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  I am quite happy to have moved back to the native world.
kelvin0 12y ago
Postscript. Been there for ages and works like a charm.
- emodendroket 12y ago
  Does anybody write that by hand? I kind of had the impression that it was notorious for being write-only.
i_s 12y ago
Almost any native UI framework (iOS, Android, WPF on windows, etc) has better layout options. Some of them like iOS have options that are not as beginner friendly (AutoLayout), but they are still better overall if you are trying to develop an application instead of formatting a document. Many other UI frameworks have had Flexbox type layouts, a technology W3C has only just recently realized is a good idea for 8+ years (probably much longer).
icedchai 12y ago
Pretty much anything? HTML/CSS/JS was never meant to develop application UIs. It's for documents. This all evolved over time into the clusterf-ck we have today, setting us back probably 20+ years in terms of developer productivity.
- DiThi 12y ago
  Flexbox breaks with all the past clusterfuck layout system. It's the reason React Native only implements Flexbox. http://flexboxin5.com/ http://flexboxin5.com/
  - pcguru 12y ago
    But there are serious known bugs in IE10 and IE11 flexbox implementations. They will never be fixed, so when IE11 market share drops below 5% I will use flexbox. We're talking about perhaps in the year 2020. HTML/CSS is still not suited for app development and due to browser inconsistencies that will remain true for decades to come, perhaps forever. Apps in browsers is doable, but a more cumbersome than one might think.

PixelsCommander 12y ago

It is not a new rendering engine. It is just one custom tag which makes WebGL texture of your HTML content and allows to apply shaders. That is it...

phn 12y ago
I am sorry if I sounded rude, I didn't mean to knock this particular project down. I was commenting on a hypothetical future for something of its kind, and that I think HTML content is not really the way to go to make shiny WebGL things, IMO. To be a little more on-topic, yes, as an "apply shader to this semi-static div" it is a pretty cool thing :)
_cpancake 12y ago
It uses html2canvas which is its own rendering engine to an extent.

shimonamit 12y ago

Not necessarily. Looks like it is an immediate mode, HTML-like syntax but without the DOM.

paraboul 12y ago

FWIW, I'm working in this : http://www.nidium.com/ http://www.nidium.com/ since a few years. (It's almost ready and about to be released) Previous HN thread : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314961 video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=63&v=BSzEZXUTXlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=63&v=BSzEZXUTXlQ

voctor 12y ago
It looks very interesting ! It will be open source ?
- paraboul 12y ago
  Of course :)

perdunov 12y ago

Yep, the model of HTML-CSS-DOM-JS implies extreme overhead, and only heroic efforts and thousands of man-years of work and optimization have made it bearable. I'm saying this as I have compared the performance of a simple local web page with a simple view with the same exact functionality rendered with my pet naive unoptimized UI engine and the latter was blazingly fast compared to HTML. So I guess you are right, we definitely need something less cluttered and more efficient than HTML+CSS+JS.

BurningFrog 12y ago
Yeah, it feels like we're slowly approaching what we could do with native programs 20 years ago.
angersock 12y ago
Compare how easy it is to make web pages with just HTML+CSS+JS, especially for a beginner, with any other framework, native code or no. The separation of structured markup, display theming, and custom logic is remarkably powerful, and everyone saying otherwise is just plain wrong if you look at history. Once you start doing anything outside of your simple page with a simple view (which was what, incidentally?), your engine starts to accrue features that move it in "bloat" towards a modern web browser. The link mentions "Hey, this is really useful on mobile"--and I would consider that a failing of the mobile vendors browser teams, not a problem with the web. This looks really flashy for the sort of static content + basic animations + interactions the author is showing off, but once you start handling further interaction--like, you know, building a virtual dom to render to the webgl texture, all you're doing is reinventing the facilities the browser already gives you, but instead behind one more layer of abstraction. tl,dr; web developers never learn.
- perdunov 12y ago
  Well, I'm a beginner in web, and I can't say it's easy, in fact, it's quite the opposite. In native frameworks there's normally one idiomatic way to do things, while the web framework land looks terrifying. Actually, my pet UI engine was powerful enough so that I've implemented a complete mobile application in it. I'd also tried HTML, but it just wasn't competitive. The native iOS UI was even faster and was miles ahead of HTML in terms of speed. Also, there is such thing as Qt Quick, where you can basically write in reactive JavaScript, it is at least as powerful as HTML-CSS-JS, and it is still way faster. The web has started from something that obviously wasn't designed for performance and has come a long way of incremental evolution. Given this, and given that I know how hard it is to make a fast UI engine as powerful as web, the current web performance is actually spectacular. But still, there are better models, and there can be even better models.

macNchz 12y ago

>HTML and CSS, whose only advantage at the present is the number of developers familiar with it Given the sheer number of people familiar with it, I'd say this is a pretty huge advantage.

macspoofing 12y ago

>Make it feature complete That's the opposite direction you want to go. At that point, you might as well just use HTML. I think there are benefits to providing a subset of HTML features that you can tailor for super fast performance.

PixelsCommander 12y ago

The only bottleneck here is rasterization which we are trying to solve by making native Rasterization API live. You can read about here http://pixelscommander.com/en/javascript/state-of-html-content-rasterization-draw-html-to-canvas-image/ http://pixelscommander.com/en/javascript/state-of-html-conte...