Comment by ryandrake
5 years ago
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.