The Web Doesn't Suck. Browsers are Innovating.

http://yehudakatz.com/2010/04/30/the-web-doesnt-suck-browsers-are-innovating/

by wycats • 16 years ago

111 54 16 years ago

mbrubeck3• 16 years ago

Daniel Glazman (W3C CSS Working Group co-chair) gives a few more examples from a CSS point of view: http://www.glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/index.php?post/2010/0...

Yet another example is "viewport" meta tag, which Mobile Safari introduced, Android later adopted, and which we (Mozilla) are now adding to mobile Firefox. There's no spec for this anywhere; it will probably be implemented in half a dozen mobile browser engines before even a draft spec is written.

Now, it's clear from all these examples that Sachin and Joe's description of the situation are factually wrong. But that doesn't mean they don't have a point. The problems they feel with web development may indeed exist, but with some other cause than the one they imagined.

wycats• 16 years ago

@mbrubeck I totally agree that there is a real problem, but from all the responses, I think it's actually the opposite of what they're saying.

People say "it's all well and good that Mobile Webkit has hardware accelerated transforms, but I can't use it in IE". In other words, people are (correctly) seeing that despite the rapid innovation, the lowest-common-denominator of browsers in use is changing rather slowly. And that's frustrating.

Apple's work on Mobile Safari clearly puts the lie to Joe's argument about browser innovation on the iPhone (which is where his experience lies). I see plenty of evidence that Apple and others are improving the underlying browser engine, and that Apple is adding mobile features to their iPhone browser, and no evidence to the contrary.

Qz9• 16 years ago

"...and the WHAT-WG has been busily standardizing, all of these things for quite a number of years now."

Quite a number of years too long. Let's take drag-and-drop -- how long has that been around? Decades? And it's only now that we can drag and drop attachments into emails in a handful of webmail clients? That's not innovation, it's playing a really slow game of catchup.

I agree that 'browsers are innovating' -- but it's at a snail's pace at best.

sjs2• 16 years ago

I guess it depends on your frame of view. Web apps have advantages over traditional desktop software, such as no installation required and upgrades by hitting refresh. Don't underestimate the power of users being able to just try your app by surfing to a URL, and "installing" it by remembering the URL (which the browser does for you), or bookmarking it. Some browers now automatically populate a home page with your most commonly used apps/sites. If you think about it Google is like a big web app store.

Version Tracker and all are great, as are traditional package managers, but they still can't match the UX of web apps in that area.

They are just different, each with their strengths and weaknesses. It seems like it's going to be easier and quicker to get web apps on feature parity with desktop apps before the desktop catches up in the ways it is behind.

Qz9• 16 years ago

Web Apps do have advantages over traditional desktop software -- what I'm trying to get at is that we can take what we've learned about web apps, and apply that knowledge to 'traditional' software to get desktop apps that don't suck. It doesn't have to be about web apps vs desktop apps, or one catching up with the other. Within a few years I don't think there will even be a concept of desktop vs web apps, not because one killed the other, but because they will have been integrated.

> Some browers now automatically populate a home page with your most commonly used apps/sites.

This is exactly what I mean. Now? This could have been done years ago. Don't even get me started on the bookmarks system (offline and online both). There are innovative things that can be done with these simple aspects of web interaction that could have been done years back -- it's not like there's some miracle tech that is making new stuff possible. UI designers as a group (or maybe more fairly, the companies that employ them) have, in my opinion, been inexcusably lazy in regards to pushing forward the computer user experience.

mbrubeck3• 16 years ago

Imitating desktop platforms has never been the strong point of web sites and web browsers.

If you think of the web platform in terms of how good it is at building desktop applications, then you will see many valid weaknesses, but you will completely miss many important strengths. Clay Shirky makes this point better than I can: http://www.shirky.com/writings/evolve.html

Browsers have been innovating, just not where you might be looking. One type of innovation that's totally invisible from a "competing with native apps" viewpoint but really useful in terms of the web's strengths is Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS). CORS has been a draft spec for a while and is now implemented by most major browsers. With CORS and other standards it's influenced (like WebSockets), a web page can send and receive data to multiple sites while still remaining in the browser's same-origin sandbox (which means users don't need to trust it any more than a regular web page).

That security sandbox is a unique strength of the web; average desktop users still need to trust every application developer with complete access of their computer. This is an area where native platforms are playing catch-up to the web - iPhone and Android have finally brought this level of sandboxing to mainstream operating systems, a decade after it evolved in web browsers.

Qz9• 16 years ago

It's not about imitating a desktop application, but about having a usable interface with one. For example:

Let's say I'm one of those wackos who keeps a zillion files on my desktop. I want to upload a picture to imageshack or whatever. The way we've been forced to do this for years now is to click the browse button on the webpage, navigate to the desktop folder,and finally scroll down through a zillion files to find the one image I want to upload.

Or, you could just drag the image file from the desktop to the imageshack page and it would Just Work.

I realize there are apps that let you do this kind of drag and drop uploading, but that's exactly the point -- apps did this easily, so there really was absolutely no reason for it to take years for drag and drop to finally make it into HTML.

Thinking in terms of desktop vs mobile is narrow-sighted. What's at stake here is pushing forward the browser (aka: web) interaction experience, regardless of platform.

blehn• 16 years ago

As mentioned by others in previous threads -- even with the web's shortcomings vs. desktop (or native OS) applications, the web still has major advantages for both the developer and the consumer.

for the developer:

- distribution is easy. buy a domain name.

- agile, iterative development is possible. you can ship a MVP, and push updates frequently and easily.

- greater reach. developing one web app (possibly with a mobile web version) is more efficient than creating a windows, mac, linux, iphone, ipad, android, etc

for the consumer:

- no installation necessary.

- updates are invisible. I'm pretty good at keeping my software up to date, but I just looked at my iPhone and I have 22(!) app updates waiting for me. It's a chore to keep up with that.

- accessible from any computer.

As new browser technologies (HTML5) allow developers to utilize more of the computer's powerful hardware (local storage, GPU acceleration, etc), I think native desktop/mobile applications will become even less necessary. You couldn't pay me to use an existing desktop mail client over Gmail.

While some applications will be slow to move to the web for obvious reasons (intensive audio and video production), I don't see any reason why ChromeOS (or the browser-based OS) won't be a huge success.

grayrest• 16 years ago

I'll also toss in the back button as one of the greatest platform features out there.

mbrubeck3• 16 years ago

Yes! And the Android back button as another example of operating systems playing catch-up to web browsers. (Clearly the innovation and imitation is flowing in both directions.)

btmorex• 16 years ago

"You couldn't pay me to use an existing desktop mail client over Gmail."

So, I understand having your email everywhere. That is a killer feature. But you can also provide that feature by simply having a web gateway to your IMAP mail.

What exactly is the killer feature of gmail? The tagging is nice, but other programs have similar features. Teh spam filtering is nice, but actually there are better spam filters. The only thing I can think of is the integration with google docs and I actually hate that feature. I don't know how they managed it, but opening a pdf with google docs is about 5x slower than downloading the pdf and opening with evince. So, it's pretty much a non-feature unless you can't be bothered installing a pdf reader.

I guess I find gmail useful, but I'd still rather use a normal email client if for no other reason than interruptions in my network connection don't affect working really.

FooBarWidget3• 16 years ago

That web gateway has to be maintained and that is one of the biggest drawbacks over a hosted service like Gmail. If you don't constantly upgrade your server and your software one day you'll get rooted by some exploit bot.

Sure, if you have the time and patience to constantly maintain your servers, and you think your web gateway's UI is as good as Gmail (I don't) then go for it. I want to spend my time doing actual work though.

> but opening a pdf with google docs is about 5x slower than downloading the pdf and opening with evince

And yet I keep using their preview feature because it somehow feels faster than opening it in a native app. The actual stopwatch time doesn't matter, it's the perception.

I think this is the reason why people like Gmail so much: it feels fast, it feels comfortable to use. It's not so much the features; strip out a few features and I'd still use Gmail.

tjogin2• 16 years ago

You couldn't pay me to use an existing desktop mail client over Gmail, either.

Other than reasons you already iterated, the killer feature for me, the one I truly cannot be without, is the threaded conversation view. I know some desktop clients have threaded views, but unlike Gmail's implementation, they suck.

rufo• 16 years ago

As far as I know, the way Gmail handles conversations and archiving is unreplicated by any desktop client, and single-handedly the most powerful thing about Gmail. I now have a regular habit of archiving any message that doesn't have an actionable item, decluttering my inbox. If another message should arrive in a thread, I have the entire conversation history right there. A good desktop app could replicate it, but I could see this behavior being difficult to map on top of a standard IMAP server.

In addition, there are a ton of innovative small features (especially in Labs - Don't forget Bob!/Got the wrong Bob? have saved my ass multiple times with new clients) that I just don't see other e-mail clients implementing, and they're constantly rolling out new ones. The fact I can get the exact same functionality on any computer I happen to be on is just icing on the cake.

Ultimately: it feels like desktop clients have largely stagnated, while Gmail has an incredibly effective way of thinking about e-mail.

stephencelis2• 16 years ago

While I prefer Mail.app aesthetically and for the purposes of OS integration, the thing it really can't beat Gmail in is speed. Search is incredibly fast (as one may expect), but also workflow: almost every action is a keyboard shortcut (or two) away. I'm not aware of any other web gateway that has these shortcuts enabled.

stan_rogers• 16 years ago

Network interruptions don't have to interfere with Gmail use either -- just enable Gears (on the Offline tab in Gmail settings) for offline use.

dkersten2• 16 years ago

The biggest thing I dislike about web development is the available client-side programming languages.

dkersten2• 16 years ago

I understand that people are attached to Javascript, but I don't know why someone would downvote because of that. I didn't mean it as a jab at Javascript, but an observation that we're extremely limited when it comes to client-side programming language choice.

We can use Javascript.. or flash.. or Java applets (which really is't much of contender these days). Thats more or less it. Yes, theres a few projects which translate Java or Python to Javascript, but you're limited to whatever they can piggyback on top of Javascript.

Thats not much of a choice and yes, I dislike that this is my only choice for client-side programming. What if the Javascript VM ran bytecode instead, like the JVM or CLI? Then plenty of other languages could target the browser and we'd have more choice, flexability and innovation.

Javascript serves it purpose of client-side web scripting well enough, but with the whole move to the web, its a little ridiculous that this is almost the only choice I have. The great thing about desktop programming is the wealth of different languages I can use - C, Python, Ruby, Erlang, Haskell, Clojure, Prolog, F# and so on.. thats a nice bit of variety! Different languages are good and bad at different things, forcing everyone to use one is not, IMHO, a good thing and, contrary to what Javascript fanboys say, the language is not perfect or suited to everything you may want to do in a browser (which is becoming increasingly more).

amalcon• 16 years ago

Heh. You couldn't pay me to use GMail over Thunderbird. Thunderbird may not have the fancy conversation stuff, but GMail has no reasonable way to deal with the four separate accounts I use for various things.

necubi• 16 years ago

Funny, that's why you couldn't pay me to use Thunderbird over GMail. Incidentally, if you are interested, there are ways to manage multiple accounts, though they're a bit clumsy. Basically, you can have GMail download your other email accounts through POP (or have them forward to your gmail account). Then in gmail you can create a rule that automatically labels email from that account appropriately and create another inbox to handle just that mail. Finally, it lets you set up an alternate sending address, and you can set it to always reply with the same email that the original was sent to.

r0s• 16 years ago

I use Gmail to manage four separate accounts.

You can set filters that label each message based on sender, or any search really. For example to:main@gmail.com gets labeled and color coded.

You can set up multiple inboxes for your accounts.

Also it's easy to switch between accounts when replying, to reply from a different address for example.

Gmail is just too good for me not to use it, but use whatever works for you.

stcredzero2• 16 years ago

More like: the web does suck, and it innovates. (Also there's plenty of good and great on it at the same time.)

est2• 16 years ago

Let me get this straight, when Microsoft add private API to IE, it's called violating standard, while -moz or -webkit are called innovating?

How much is the difference between DirectAnimation from IE4 and WebGL?

And CSS filter from transition/transforms/animations/whatever?

And XML Data Island from E4X?

As a matter of fact, the whole concept of DHTML was introduced by Microsoft, including AJAX, which first appeared as msxml in IE5.

FooBarWidget3• 16 years ago

Many Microsoft add-ons are inherently Windows-specific. DirectX cannot be implemented in a reasonable manner on any non-Microsoft platform. The same can be said for ActiveX, which depends on COM which is huge.

I don't get your first sentence. First you're claiming that people accuse MS of violating standards when they add things, and then you claim that people have adopted some of Microsoft's add-ons, thereby contradicting your first claim?

est2• 16 years ago

Because something is not cross-platform then it's not innovation?

kenjackson2• 16 years ago

Why can't you implement COM cross-platform? And the same with DirectX? Both of these seem pretty well understood and the object surface can be implemented without knowing the internals (although with COM the internals and the surface go hand in hand, although object layout and such is well documented).

Unless there are specific patents or Apple like TOS, it seems like this stuff is fair game. We shouldn't let laziness allow us to say something is not cross-platform.

kvs• 16 years ago

I think most complaints I have seen/heard about IE are not about innovation but about violation (of standards) either by deviating from what the standard says or simply not implementing certain portions. Innovation without violation is great for developers.

Silhouette• 16 years ago

Articles like this are part of the problem. Here we have someone quite sincerely claiming that the Web doesn't suck as a platform compared to using native applications, because the Web can do things like drag and drop. Just stop and think about that for a minute. The author is arguing that the Web platform doesn't suck because at some as-yet undetermined point in the future, some browsers will be able to do some things that desktop applications on every major platform have taken for granted for well over a decade?

I'm sorry to be negative here, but I think a huge contributory factor in the glacial pace of the Web's development is the staggering lack of perspective repeatedly demonstrated by those who are leading that process and/or evangelising the Web as a general purpose software platform. At a time when the leading edge is considering controlled side effects and transactional memory, the Web is learning about having multiple threads and doing message passing. At a time when the leading edge is using GPUs to accelerate not just graphics but intensive computations generally, the Web just learned how to do a basic 3D rotation matrix.

In a full game of Go, there is a 19x19 grid of positions on the board. When a weaker player has a game with a stronger one, it is traditional to let the weaker player start with between 1 and 9 extra stones on the board as a handicap. More than 9 stones, on a board with 361 positions, is considered unnecessary because at that point it's not a competition at all, it's just a tutorial by the more advanced player for the benefit of the beginner. Just a thought.

NathanKP• 16 years ago

All these innovations are great but can we use them yet? The answer is no:

http://caniuse.com/

And the reason why that answer is no is mostly because of older versions of IE.

stephencelis2• 16 years ago

The answer is yes, but not all of your users will benefit if they use their current browser.

If you really need to reach IE6, use libraries like IE7.js and gracefully degrade your feature implementations, but don't hamper the experience of your more savvy users.

ahoyhere• 16 years ago

Why are people holding themselves hostage by demanding that their tools work with a 9-YEAR-OLD browser?

Yes! IE 6 was initially released in 2001!

That's about 100 years in Internet Time. Screw it.

waxman• 16 years ago

Pardon my ignorance, but why don't all browsers auto-update to the latest stable version, even without user permission? Because I feel like the one thing that really holds back web techniques are old browsers (IE6, IE7, Firefox2, etc.)... Imagine if everyone already had CSS3 and HTML5 right now?

jarek• 16 years ago

For better or for worse, anything that autoupdates without asking for permission is an absolute non-starter in enterprise.

I imagine a possibly small but definitely vocal group of users, too. Not everyone thinks whatever the browser maker thinks is newest and greatest actually is the greatest.

Aegean• 16 years ago

Web sucks big time with its plethora of different technologies and architectures being bundled together in ad-hoc and unintuitive ways. The next Google is going to be founded by the web architect who builds a framework that solves all this heterogeneous, complex development environment with a clean, structured, portable and open solution.

Even facebook is one big application based on messy technology. They can cope with it only because they have lots of Ms.

You can't fix it by extending crippled java script whose name has a misconception to begin with.

Let me give you an example: In 70s operating systems were built as ad-hoc services on top of the hardware. Functionality was implemented in ad-hoc fashion, interfacing to each other in afterthought, clunky ways. Then came Unix, and eventually evolved the design by bundling the filesystem, disk IO and process memory management in one implementation. We need someone clever to do the same to web and relieve us from this mess.

zandorg• 16 years ago

I once thought of a browser UI feature which, when enabled, makes broken links (eg, links leading to 404's) crossed-out as text links, and with a red border for image links. But nobody would implement this. But I guess I could make a plugin.

The Web Doesn't Suck. Browsers are Innovating.

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