Some interesting thoughts, in the original article and your response. Certainly good for generating discussion :)
It will take more than technological advancement to get the web there; it will take a cultural shift as well. But we certainly can't get there if we abandon our current trajectory.
The problem as I see it is that the web -- in terms of client-side executed markup and code (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) just wasn't designed with these kinds of interactions in mind (the interactions that Ryan Florence highlighted). It's the wrong foundation for it.
I don't think that "getting there" should be through bending original web technologies, but rather with something else entirely -- perhaps WebAssembly, or a return to actual native applications much like we've come to depend on on our tablets and phones. We already can do nice animations like that iPad demo with native desktop applications. There's many advantages to websites over native desktop apps, with the standout one being that they don't require someone to install an application on their machine. Maybe WebAssembly can give us a compromise -- desktop apps built with technology designed for that job, but available in a way that doesn't require any local installation. Then we can use tools that were purpose built for those kinds of tasks, instead of trying to wrangle the foundations of the web to fit something they were never built for.
When I think back to how we used to build websites back in the day, and how we build sites with technologies in tools like React now, I'm honestly not sure that we've gained anything of great enough value relative to the simplicity we've lost. In short, I'd be happy to abandon our current trajectory and put our hope in alternative solutions for those situations where what we really need is a native application. Leave the web for what it's good at.
That's interesting. I mean I was there too, and the extent of what I can build with a modern library so extends what I could reasonably do before. And the reason for that is JavaScript. When I was building sites in the late 90s so many things weren't possible and you had no choice but to pay these costs for interactivity. Sure I view sourced a few cool tricks.. image maps etc, but with my table based layouts and a little JavaScript I could do very little. Part of it was the available DOM api's. My lack of understanding of the language but I think we look at the past with rose colored glasses.
It's more interesting to me that native platforms have borrowed concepts from libraries like React in terms of declarative views etc. I'm not saying React invented this stuff but that the trend would suggest the contrary. These trends could be mistakes but popularity has as much stake in the course of events as innate value.
I think this comes down to really this hope of a Silver Bullet. It doesn't exist. Instead we have momentum of a ubiquitous platform that just is constantly aiming to improve. It's not only that the other approaches have already lost, we're getting to a point where any new approach will have to atleast acknowledge the current web. At this point a competitor isn't going to change the tide, but something from within. It's more likely that the web addresses those fundamental shortcomings than people moving to a different platform. Native Apps didn't kill the web even with all their superior capabilities. And on a similar note it is going to take monumental change for this to fundamentally change. Even with React's reach, it wasn't alone in a movement that started years before. This is bigger than any particular library or framework.
There is absolutely no doubt that you can do incredible things with modern web, and the power unlocked by having a programming language in the browser has been amazing. However, when I think about a great deal of the websites I interact with, and ones I build, there would not be much lost if they significantly simplified the tech stack they work with to be closer to the core technologies of the web (including a splash of JavaScript).
What I'm trying to convey is that I think our move to make everything a web app has been a mistake, for multiple reasons. You are absolutely right to say that this tide is going to be very hard (perhaps impossible) to turn, and I absolutely agree there is no silver bullet (I've looked), but that doesn't mean we haven't taken a worse path and shouldn't lament for what could have been.
The advantages of web apps are compelling for developers -- they are easy to distribute, update, control, make cross platform, when compared to native apps. It is not hard to understand why and how we have ended up where we are. I just wish we were somewhere else -- but it would take a lot of work to create that 'silver bullet'.
That whole app environment was basically triggered by one need, and one need only: bandwidth. No idea if anyone remembers when they launched this WAP protocol, making the internet available on smartphones, what failed for two reasons. The providers made it easy to access on their own portals aka AOL strategy at beginning of the web, leaving the rest of the market untouched, secondly the site performance was ridiculous. Apple stepped in, put a bunch of intelligence into the app, dramatically reducing the load time, did not convert so much traffic on their own apps and let developers do what they do best. By 2008 more than 50% of the whole mobile internet traffic was iPhone traffic.
Bandwidth is no longer the breaking point.
Google has for years campaigned the untapped goldmine local traffic, experience flows that often start at the search for getting something done in time, monetising on micro moments as more than half of all mobile searches have a local intend. I posted an example how something to get done interferes cross-applicational from the perspective of a user. With an app-only scheme this is getting impossible. Sure it is understandable that nobody pays so much attention. Most search engines run a change and heavily invested in AI to optimise traffic at the client's frontend. But even this is not enough, when it comes to intends other than something very individualised. I wouldn't care so much about the user, but more about what the user wants to achieve.
// , “It is not so important to be serious as it is to be serious about the important things. The monkey wears an expression of seriousness... but the monkey is serious because he itches."(No/No)
The problem as I see it is that the web -- in terms of client-side executed markup and code (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) just wasn't designed with these kinds of interactions in mind (the interactions that Ryan Florence highlighted). It's the wrong foundation for it.
Yes. Please. Can we please just accept that it's all broken.
CSS has media queries and all sort of crazy and wonderful stuff. HTML has tags for responsive design. JS has (in the browser) access to apis like mutation observer and orientation and speech recognition. It's TOTALLY built for that. Enough of the "get off my lawn" negativity
// , “It is not so important to be serious as it is to be serious about the important things. The monkey wears an expression of seriousness... but the monkey is serious because he itches."(No/No)
Some interesting thoughts, in the original article and your response. Certainly good for generating discussion :)
The problem as I see it is that the web -- in terms of client-side executed markup and code (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) just wasn't designed with these kinds of interactions in mind (the interactions that Ryan Florence highlighted). It's the wrong foundation for it.
I don't think that "getting there" should be through bending original web technologies, but rather with something else entirely -- perhaps WebAssembly, or a return to actual native applications much like we've come to depend on on our tablets and phones. We already can do nice animations like that iPad demo with native desktop applications. There's many advantages to websites over native desktop apps, with the standout one being that they don't require someone to install an application on their machine. Maybe WebAssembly can give us a compromise -- desktop apps built with technology designed for that job, but available in a way that doesn't require any local installation. Then we can use tools that were purpose built for those kinds of tasks, instead of trying to wrangle the foundations of the web to fit something they were never built for.
When I think back to how we used to build websites back in the day, and how we build sites with technologies in tools like React now, I'm honestly not sure that we've gained anything of great enough value relative to the simplicity we've lost. In short, I'd be happy to abandon our current trajectory and put our hope in alternative solutions for those situations where what we really need is a native application. Leave the web for what it's good at.
That's interesting. I mean I was there too, and the extent of what I can build with a modern library so extends what I could reasonably do before. And the reason for that is JavaScript. When I was building sites in the late 90s so many things weren't possible and you had no choice but to pay these costs for interactivity. Sure I view sourced a few cool tricks.. image maps etc, but with my table based layouts and a little JavaScript I could do very little. Part of it was the available DOM api's. My lack of understanding of the language but I think we look at the past with rose colored glasses.
It's more interesting to me that native platforms have borrowed concepts from libraries like React in terms of declarative views etc. I'm not saying React invented this stuff but that the trend would suggest the contrary. These trends could be mistakes but popularity has as much stake in the course of events as innate value.
I think this comes down to really this hope of a Silver Bullet. It doesn't exist. Instead we have momentum of a ubiquitous platform that just is constantly aiming to improve. It's not only that the other approaches have already lost, we're getting to a point where any new approach will have to atleast acknowledge the current web. At this point a competitor isn't going to change the tide, but something from within. It's more likely that the web addresses those fundamental shortcomings than people moving to a different platform. Native Apps didn't kill the web even with all their superior capabilities. And on a similar note it is going to take monumental change for this to fundamentally change. Even with React's reach, it wasn't alone in a movement that started years before. This is bigger than any particular library or framework.
React definitely didn't invent HTML.
Declarative views, indeed.
There is absolutely no doubt that you can do incredible things with modern web, and the power unlocked by having a programming language in the browser has been amazing. However, when I think about a great deal of the websites I interact with, and ones I build, there would not be much lost if they significantly simplified the tech stack they work with to be closer to the core technologies of the web (including a splash of JavaScript).
What I'm trying to convey is that I think our move to make everything a web app has been a mistake, for multiple reasons. You are absolutely right to say that this tide is going to be very hard (perhaps impossible) to turn, and I absolutely agree there is no silver bullet (I've looked), but that doesn't mean we haven't taken a worse path and shouldn't lament for what could have been.
The advantages of web apps are compelling for developers -- they are easy to distribute, update, control, make cross platform, when compared to native apps. It is not hard to understand why and how we have ended up where we are. I just wish we were somewhere else -- but it would take a lot of work to create that 'silver bullet'.
That whole app environment was basically triggered by one need, and one need only: bandwidth. No idea if anyone remembers when they launched this WAP protocol, making the internet available on smartphones, what failed for two reasons. The providers made it easy to access on their own portals aka AOL strategy at beginning of the web, leaving the rest of the market untouched, secondly the site performance was ridiculous. Apple stepped in, put a bunch of intelligence into the app, dramatically reducing the load time, did not convert so much traffic on their own apps and let developers do what they do best. By 2008 more than 50% of the whole mobile internet traffic was iPhone traffic.
Bandwidth is no longer the breaking point.
Google has for years campaigned the untapped goldmine local traffic, experience flows that often start at the search for getting something done in time, monetising on micro moments as more than half of all mobile searches have a local intend. I posted an example how something to get done interferes cross-applicational from the perspective of a user. With an app-only scheme this is getting impossible. Sure it is understandable that nobody pays so much attention. Most search engines run a change and heavily invested in AI to optimise traffic at the client's frontend. But even this is not enough, when it comes to intends other than something very individualised. I wouldn't care so much about the user, but more about what the user wants to achieve.
Yes. Please. Can we please just accept that it's all broken.
Not at all.
CSS has media queries and all sort of crazy and wonderful stuff. HTML has tags for responsive design. JS has (in the browser) access to apis like mutation observer and orientation and speech recognition. It's TOTALLY built for that. Enough of the "get off my lawn" negativity
shakes his cane at you
mutters incomprehensibly