mf - story #5911 - >besides an html vie

posted by dsk on August 8th, 2011 at 2:00PM

>besides an html viewer.

You mean you want an html *4* viewer. And a css viewer. Apparently not html 5 viewer because perfection was reached with html 4. And not an html 3 viewer because it wasn't quite perfect.

>Moreover, using untrusted hardware provided by strangers is generally not a good thing if you value your privacy at all.

That's a nonsensical statement in a world with such things as online banking.

>It provided decent html display of my emails while I was abroad.

So you provide an use-case for web-based access to your personal resources that made your life easier and could not be replicated with installed software and you still don't understand how every other person on this planet prefers a browser for numerous other (similar) conveniences?

> I would just setup an ssh (possibly -X) tunnel to my machine.

... because of course using ssh is conceptually so much different than using the http protocol. Apparently you're fine with socket based client-server architecture when using ssh, but hey, if you want to do something similar via http (e.g. have a server push something down to the client without waiting for the client to poll or refresh the page), that's sacrilege.

>so you kinda still do need your own computer.

Nobody says you need to replace your computer.

>It doesn't require any fancy scripting

You wrote it in php which has it's own underlying runtime.

>It adds bloat

You don't know what bloat means.

>it did nothing important that couldn't already have been done without it.

How do you manipulate the html DOM tree without javascript?

>Regarding opengl-in-html (or whatever it is), if you give me a single good reason for it

Quake in a browser. Takes up no space. Runs in a sandbox. The entire client-side footprint (memory/disk) is gone when you close your browser. Instantaneous updates. No install means it will run under any computer, even computers that you don't have admin access to (which would prevent you from installing a binary).

Link | Parent

posted by dennisn on August 8th, 2011 at 4:53PM

I bet HTML3 was just fine too, actually. (What significant thing does 4,5.. have that 3 didn't?)

I'm not sure what you mean by that online-banking retort. You would do online banking on a stranger's computer?!

"Web-based" is also a fad buzzword, by the way. My ssh+mutt is "web based" too -- you probably specifically mean "Monster-Chrome/Mozilla-based". Sure it was convenient, *as a last resort* -- ie. if I don't have a computer with me, or if the kiosk operators are too stupid to install an ssh client.

Yes, server-pushing-browser via HTTP is sacrilege -- the protocol wasn't designed for it. That's why we have other protocols, like SSH and IRC and SMTP and IMAP etc etc. Reinventing all these well-established standards, just because it's "cool" to have HTTP+Browser do everything, is dumb, and unecessary at best. But hey, if you like reinventing wheels with nothing new added, have fun.

Regarding PHP vs. JavaShit, sure they're both "just languages", except in practice one started as a cool open-source project and was designed for the server end. The latter piece of shit started who-knows-how (probably as some proprietary crap), and shoved down the throats of clients (it's primarily client-side junk), leading to countless headaches and annoyances. (Why does a browser need to be a compiler again?)

Why the fuck would you want to change the html-dom tree? (aka. "dynamic" (ooooh) content.) That's what plugins are for, if you absolutely need them. That's also what other programs are for. (You remember what programs are, right? All those other things outside your browser window. They're actually quite useful.)

Quake does take up space -- memory and bandwidth, if nothing else. My "client-side" footprints are zero too. (Because my browser doesn't suck. (Dillo and luakit).) My distro doesn't suck either, which means my software is quite up-to-date... sure, not instantaneous, but good enough. In exchange for this lack of up-to-the-second updating, I get infinitely more variety and better software. But sure, if your distro sucks, and your browser sucks, I guess shoving everything into a browser is a bandaid-alternative.

Link

posted by dsk on September 5th, 2011 at 10:37PM

Just to be clear, this is argument is about your particular eccentricity. The market has spoken. A richer web is what everyone wants. The debate is over. You can hardly find anyone who thinks that the people of early 90s when hypertext was developed, somehow achieved perfection because the web consisted of simple markup and request-based architectures. Smart people are on this side too.

>You would do online banking on a stranger's computer?!

Depends, but yes, I would. At some point you have to trust somebody.
Oh, you don't trust any computer that isn't yours? Well then do you trust all the intermediaries that your packets will jump through to get to the banking server? Oh, you don't have to because you use SSL? Well, do you trust the cert issuers?

>Yes, server-pushing-browser via HTTP is sacrilege

I meant to segue into WebSockets, a protocol which is completely separate from HTTP, but uses it in the "handshake" step. It's supported by every major browser.

Why not?

> That's why we have other protocols, like SSH and IRC and SMTP and IMAP etc etc.

Well shit ... by that definition HTTP also re-invents the wheel. There's nothing intrinsically revolutionary about HTTP.

>"Web-based" is also a fad buzzword, by the way.

That's needlessly pedantic. "Web-based" is a perfectly valid way of describing a particular architecture.

>Why the fuck would you want to change the html-dom tree?

Are you retarded? What kind of a question is that? My Gmail will instantly show me an alert when a new email has arrived, without a page refresh - which you may not want to do arbitrarily (what if I'm typing an email). You can't do that without having a client-side script like javascript. The only alternative is that I use an installed program - but the market has spoken, millions of people don't want to do that. They want web-based with the bells and whistles.

>That's what plugins are for, if you absolutely need them. That's also what other programs are for.

Do you just decide to go full retard? The fuckin point of web-based application (and let's face it, gmail and others are applications), is that you can use any browser, on any computer to get access, even computers that I may not have user privileges to install full-fledged application.

I'm having a hard time discerning if your hangup is that you genuinely not know why anyone would want to access, say, email with a browser, or whether you don't see a difference between an installed application, or one that runs in a browser.

I don't know which of the two is more idiotic.

>Why does a browser need to be a compiler again

"Interpreter" ... and see above.

Link

posted by dennisn on September 5th, 2011 at 11:27PM

Compromising an SSL certificate authority, and a no-name kiosk, are vastly different things. No, I wouldn't do banking on a stranger's computer.

"Why not?" websockets, or whatever other new-fangled browser protocols come up? Well, that's an excellent question. If you derive fun from reinventing wheels, that's none of my business. But if you then break old wheels, or pretend they don't exist, and expect everyone to hop on your new wheel every year, then it becomes absurd. (Ie. JavaScript-only sites are more often then not absurd.)

I don't think HTTP reinvented any wheels? Unless maybe the FTP wheel? Anyways, I can give you a valid thing or two that HTTP/HTML offered that FTP (or whatever else) didn't. Can you give me a single new thing that these fads offer?

Also, I think you're a bit too caught up in this web-based fad. I actually don't think "the market has spoken" in it's favor. I certainly would agree that it has captured the retarded masses -- simplicity does that. Of course, there are serious costs to that simplicity -- non-trusted source code, more centralized points of failure, bloat, less control/customization. For example, Ubuntu certainly is popular among newbies, it is pretty easy to use -- but the people who really matter don't use it personally.

You seem to be suggesting that using other people's computers (to access your programs via their browser/hardware) is a good thing. It really isn't. It is an absolute last resort -- and if it require any kind of real security, it's incredibly stupid. So, -1 for that reasoning.

I also do have a hangup understanding why you would prefer google to read and store your (sensitive?) information, and not your own personal program that you have complete control over. But, whatever, you're free to do whatever you feel like. As I mentioned earlier, my only concern is when old/working things get broken/ignored, by over-zealous (and confused :p) fads.

In conclusion, keep your js-gmail and your js-google-maps and your js-facebook, don't talk to me about them :p (unless you have an actual point), but simply leave a non-js version of them for the rest of us to use. Or, at the very least, don't expect all the rest of us to jump on your band-wagon, just because everyone else is doing it. That never works.

Link

posted by dsk on September 9th, 2011 at 8:49AM

>Compromising an SSL certificate authority, and a no-name kiosk, are vastly different things

There's a whole plethora of computers between your personal machine and a "no-name" kiosk that should illicit different trust levels. You wouldn't do banking on a no-name kiosk, but what about a locked-down university computer? Besides, as there's a whole bunch of certificate authorities that are based in despotic countries (e.g. China), or are run by people (all of them), you can be sure that your cert was / is probably compromised.

>Can you give me a single new thing that these fads offer?

Yes, it runs in a fuckin browser.

>For example, Ubuntu certainly is popular among newbies, it is pretty easy to use -- but the people who really matter don't use it personally.

LIKE WHO? Hell, Torvalds used Fedora 9, a few years back. Nobody uses something like Gentoo or minimalist distro, except hobbyists who? like to tinker. Who are these people that "really matter"

>You seem to be suggesting that using other people's computers (to access your programs via their browser/hardware) is a good thing.

It's deeper then that. You can distribute your "programs" (web-apps) and know that no matter what OS / architecture they use, as long as they have a modern browser, it'll work with ZERO hassle. You cannot get this kind of distribution with installed software.

>but simply leave a non-js version of them for the rest of us to use

You're going to find that difficult. At some point, it'll just be assumed that js is running.

> Or, at the very least, don't expect all the rest of us to jump on your band-wagon

Who are the rest of you, because the market already moved, you're still looking back at at mid 90s as some sort of a golden age (relevant: see Woody Allen's 'Midnight in Paris').

Also somewhat relevant: http://blog.mozilla.com/n...ess-observation/

"A web browser is not a document viewer, it is a full-blown programming environment with some very sophisticated text and graphical capabilities. A web page is not a document but a program."

Link

No doubt there are trust issue by dennisn on September 9th, 2011 at 9:47AM.