Re:TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML
by rektide on Tuesday September 06, 2022 @03:07PM
(#32741753)
Operating systems like WebOS, KaiOS/Firefox OS, ChromeOS largely do away with many layers of the stack, by making the web technology front & center. I do think you're right that perhaps some layers could go, but I think native apps & much of the native OS itself are far closer to the LaserDisc technology[1] that we can get rid of.
Reciprocally, on the server, there's definitely traction strong traction with webassembly being the de-facto platform for glue/extensions/user-code, owing to it's super sandboxing & capability systems like WASI. Being able to take any langauge, compile to wasm, and distribute & safely run that module has been a huge upgrade, and a very nice bit of platform that historically wasn't really available/commonplace on "native".
Your issue with "Electron and friends" is wrong. As you say, Electron does at present bundle a whole browser in each app. But many "friends" have new approaches. Tauri recently went 1.0, and generally builds off the already available WebView that all major OSes include[2]. I'd be interested to see what kind of fear/concern you'd present if Electron also had a more respectful shared-library usage-pattern.
Reciprocally, on the server, there's definitely traction strong traction with webassembly being the de-facto platform for glue/extensions/user-code, owing to it's super sandboxing & capability systems like WASI. Being able to take any langauge, compile to wasm, and distribute & safely run that module has been a huge upgrade, and a very nice bit of platform that historically wasn't really available/commonplace on "native".
Your issue with "Electron and friends" is wrong. As you say, Electron does at present bundle a whole browser in each app. But many "friends" have new approaches. Tauri recently went 1.0, and generally builds off the already available WebView that all major OSes include[2]. I'd be interested to see what kind of fear/concern you'd present if Electron also had a more respectful shared-library usage-pattern.
[1] "Writing an App is Like Coding for Laserdisc" https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/09/writing-an-app-is-like-codi... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32723192 (153 points, 1d ago, 184 comments)
[2] "Tauri [1.0] - Electron alternative written in rust" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29807022 (558 points, 8mo ago, 419comments)