Comment by userbinator
5 days ago
It wasn't until they stopped adding features to the browser itself that it really started to become a problem.
Only for those misguided "push the web forward" idiots who just wanted the latest shiny shit, aided by Google's plans to control the Internet itself. Plain HTML worked well enough for everything else.
Google's weapon is change. They have the resources to outcompete everyone else by churning the "standards" as much as they want. The less people think that constant change is necessary, the better the web will be.
This is silly IMO.
Technologies like HTTP and Wasm are truly excellent tools for cross platform software delivery and browsers are an ideal sandboxed execution environment.
This idea that the web should only be for straight up HTML documents is a broken mental model.
Apple have a multi-billion dollar income stream that is firmly premised on the fact that nobody could deliver software on their platform unless they could steal 30% of the companies profits and as such spent a huge amount of time and effort undermining the idea that the web could ever be an app platform but you’re not compelled to cheerlead for Apple’s profit margins and anti-consumer bullshit.
The problem isn't web apps; it's web apps where simple HTML would be sufficient.
> The problem isn't web apps
Then the problem isn't adding features to make web apps more capable, either.
Web apps replacing unsandboxed applications is a net win. We could argue about whether web apps replacing sandboxed applications is a net win as well, but most local applications on PCs are not sandboxed, and even mobile applications aren't sandboxed as strongly as web apps. (I would love to see an "allow network access" permission on a per-mobile-app basis.)