Comment by Lio
5 years ago
I'm sad that this is necessary.
Most comments here seem to of the "Good no one should write a web page that accesses bluetooth and I don't care if you want to do that".
This is sad for me because I would like to be able to write web pages that talk to smart turbo trainers and other health devices.
Now you might say why not write a app to do that but personally I prefer accessing stuff from web pages.
I find apps restrictive as a user. For example there is no way to block ads in an app and often no way to zoom or select text.
Again you might be fine with that but I just wanted to offer an alternative opinion.
I think it's about user expectations. As a user, when I'm browsing the web, I expect to be reading primarily text, with a hyperlink here and there, maybe some images. If I need to interact with the web site, I expect to see text input fields, a "submit" button of some sort, etc. When I click on a link and browse to another web page, I expect to see something similar: Hypertext, images, maybe a form field or two. I don't expect to have a peripheral attached to my computer get its firmware updated.
The APIs listed in the article are so far outside what I would expect to be a HTML browser's business. It's ridiculous. If I want to do any of these, I'll install an application to do them.
Installing an application is a nice speed bump. It's a deliberate action that the user has to take and think about. When I hand over my root password to my installer, or when my operating system asks me, "Do you really want to install this application?" it gives me the opportunity to pause and reflect on what I'm doing here. Who is the company behind this application? What access to my life am I giving it? Am I OK with running this application on my personal computer? Sometimes, after reflection, I hit cancel and get rid of the installer.
This whole contemplative speed bump goes away when rando web site written by rando developer, getting paid by collecting who-knows-what can suddenly do a Bluetooth scan or talk USB to one of my devices, merely by my issuing a GET request.
I think this is a pretty narrow vision of what the web can be. For example, text + hyperlinks excludes things like google maps and youtube, which are quite literally world changing pieces of technology.
For sure there is a balance to be struck in terms of how much access we allow other people to our phones and computers, but let's not kill off whole classes of novel applications before they've even had a chance to be built.
No, let's do that. Please.
Web sites have no business looking at my devices, nor using other APIs (I was disappointed not to see the page visibility API on the linked page too).
If you want a dynamic app delivery framework, perhaps it's time we find a way to do that which doesn't massively overload what many expect is just an informational service.
> ... web pages that talk to ... health devices ... there is no way to block ads in an app
Wait, what?? Why on earth would you use an app with ads for health devices?!?
Moreover, why on earth are you using apps with ads for anything?
Please, please, please, pay for your apps and games. Stop making everything an ad service. The race to the bottom in the web and mobile world is disturbing.
Would you want to pay for your house plumbing by being forced to watch an ad every time you shower? Think about how dystopian that sounds. There are even Black Mirror episodes on that.
> Wait, what?? Why on earth would you use an app with ads for health devices?!?
GP said they want to _write_ a web app that talks to health devices. And that they like the web platform because it's easy to block ads shown to you by other web apps.
I will add that it's also easier to detect/block tracking. Browsers such as Firefox even try to do this for you these days. And to generally examine what the app is doing (e.g. by running it in JS debugger).
Yes, paid apps usually (but not always) remove ads. They keep the telemetry, though.
> ... web pages that talk to ... health devices ... there is no way to block ads in an app
You’ve selectively mixed two paragraphs to change the meaning of what I actually said.
I did not say I want to use apps with ads with health devices, at all. That’s a complete straw man.
I said I want to access my own sports equipment via Bluetooth from a webpage I’ve written myself.
I also said that I dislike apps because the user looses control over things like tracking, selecting text, zooming and whether adverts are shown.
On the privacy end of things, ads certainly aren't helping, but a pretty large number of even paid apps are happily vacuuming up data and sending them to the developer and often third parties (vendors of analytics/debugging platforms in particular). I tend to think of an app for most things as a loss of privacy and try to avoid using them when possible.
> a pretty large number of even paid apps are happily vacuuming up data and sending them to the developer and often third parties
Please name some examples. I certainly do not have not use nor know about any paid software that "vacuums" my actual data or tries to track me.
> analytics/debugging platforms
You cannot compare anonymous, aggregate details about overall usage of an app or crash stacktraces (which is what most paid/OSS apps do) to the kind of identification webs do for ads.
Again: native apps do not care about showing personalized ads to you nor their business depends on it.
> I tend to think of an app for most things as a loss of privacy
Mobile apps from vendors like Facebook definitely. Normal paid/OSS desktop software, no.
There are many apps that continue to show ads even in their paid version / upgrade. Might not be an option for him?
I would seriously consider any alternative vendor or simply living without the app. No serious health device will show you ads of any kind in their software.
There is a modern overreliance on apps for everything these days.