Re: [dev] Talk about sane web browsers

>> * defining a protocol that would play the role of HTTP,
>
> I don't think that would be necessary. HTTP is okay.

Good enough versus Right. An old story.
It is true it isn't that bad, but it needs some cleanup.

>> Of course it has to be totally incompatible with the current "web
>> stack",
>> browser included. It can be quite a problem for wide acceptance; the
>> majority of "web users" today are, I think, not computer literates.
>>
>
> It doesn't need wide acceptance. Dwm doesn't need wide acceptance as
> long as it works with most of the useful X11 applications. Dwm would do
> fine with a bunch of folks who care about a suckless window manager.
> This "new webstack" would be something similar. There are no hidden
> plans to conquer the world here :).
>

I think wide acceptance is mandatory, because the platform we talk about
would be useless if nobody writes interesting contents.

> Yeah, [writing a browser plugin is] definitely an option. However, I
> think I would favor a method where this document format could be changed
> on the server side to HTML + Javascript for the regular browsers.

It seems a lot of work to me. Furthermore, HTML/JS compatibility issues
may poison insidiously the whole thing.

> I am saying this because even after a lot of marketing muscle and
> commercial force, it has been hard for Adobe, Sun and Microsoft to push
> their rendering stacks over HTML + Javascript. Flash is the only thing
> which gained major adoption... and the picture might change once HTML 5
> comes out.
>

The Flash strategy is definitely what I have in mind.

[...]
> Benefits of going the suckless format:
> - Concise, hacker friendly, open source implementation.
> - Rapid evolution of the format to new usage scenarios.
> - Platform support, acceleration
> - Warm fuzzy feeling of using less RAM + CPU cycles for rendering web
> content.
>

Maybe it is not that hard to do. I think it is possible to build a
prototype using Lua with some GUI toolkit bindings for instance: the
server would send the Lua source to the client, and the client interprets
it.
Received on Tue Sep 08 2009 - 08:37:58 UTC