If they simply dissatisfied with dom feature, they can simply influence the standard to make the feature they wanted happen like they always do.
As to why they don't want to use dom and instead use canvas at great expense of re-implementing a lot of basic text handling and accessibility feature, one can only guess. My take is moving to canvas will be beneficial to google because they can effectively kill dom-based adblocker, so it's only logical to start experimenting with canvas-only web applications.
It would be interesting to see a project that allows integration of these native features into an otherwise canvas-like environment. Copying all the minutiae of OS features and quirks seems like an unending task.
On my laptop (a Core i7 Chromebook - fast but not crazy by HN standards) the fan runs for a half second at first load - presumably during the compilation step - then shuts off immediately.
Easy to fix, but these are the sorts of edge cases a canvas-only solution is going to have to deal with.
Text selection and interacting with the content of the page seems to behave as expected.
As if fate tries to prove a point, I recently struggled with a random ass google docs document and just wanted to download and import to use in my own spreadsheet software. There probably would have been a Google Approved way of doing it but if there was, they intentionally made it hard. I ended up copying the HTML somehow. I guess that will no longer be possible in the near future.
Technically, sure, but the reality is that very few people are interacting directly with the HTML content of a Google Doc. What it does behind the scenes is really only relevant to the developers working on the app.
Personally I always use 'Right click -> Search..'
In neither case can programmability be blocked.
To me, pushing pixels in people's faces is not the web. The web implies hypertext, the web implies user-agents that fulfill the user's desired agencies. Developers switching to Canvas obstructs everything good, unique, & empowering about the web, converts it to the same terrible awful anti-user mess that everything else in tech is.
That's entirely valid for many things people put on the web, but clearly not all. A document editor is not hypertext with agencies fulfilled by the user-agent.
The web now supports a wide range of user experiences, and the "text + links" model is great for a subset of those, but not all. The fact that some apps are moving to a different model to me does not imply any existential threat to apps/sites that do fit well as hypertext.
I see a lot of comments in the thread as essentially arguing that now that UPS using jets to ship packages means that soon they're going to take our cars and bicycles away from us.
The web is about to get a whole lot more user hostile.
That was exactly true in the Flash days and yet it didn't take over the world or kill the open web.
And it’s possible we only managed to escape Flash-hell thanks to the fortuitous self-interest of Apple, so let’s not be complacent by assuming we’ll escape the next trap.
Having said all that, I actually like the idea of separating web applications from web documents and I don’t at all begrudge web application developers from doing what it takes to improve their applications. I just know it will be abused. The best I can hope for is that it leads to some re-focus on HTML as a stable and finished document language.
This is the return of Flash, except now, it's backed by Google.
I almost hesitate to write this, because someone will point us to where that has already happened, and then I'll feel a little sad.
https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/10/03/terminal-rend...