Re: [dev] Talk about sane web browsers

Sent from my iPod

On Sep 9, 2009, at 4:53 AM, Pinocchio <cchinopio_AT_gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:37:58 -0700, frederic <fdubois76_AT_gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>>> 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.
>>
>
> Well, I am looking at it as a GWT which has a direct rendering
> support in a browser. GWT doesn't need wide acceptance to exist or
> be useful.
>
>>> 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.
>>
>
> That is true... some kinks may need work around. May be we will need
> to use some obscure tricks in HTML + Javascript to accomplish part
> of it instead of poisoning the webstack with HTML + Javascript
> compatibility. I guess we won't know unless we begin to work on it.
>
>>> 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.
>>
>
> I guess the problem would be convincing the 100s of millions of
> people to install our plugin. Much worse than converting web app
> developers to our stack. [I have a feeling I didn't quite get your
> point here...]
>
>> [...]
>>> 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.
>>
>
> Yup something like that. I guess you chose Lua because Lua is small
> in size and pretty expressive as a language. There is also io (iolanguage.com
> ) which I found to be small and expressive. It would be nice if
> there was a neat way of making it frontend independent. I was
> thinking about it more from a secure code execution + graphics
> runtime perspective.
>

There is also "neko". The problem is that I don't see the need of
clientside scripting. A clean design should split presentation and
data. And having a templating language for merging them into a canvas.
So not having the possibility to create infinite loops, eat the CPU,
etc.. The web should be safe and simple. If you want to run something
more complex you should use a sandbox or something able to do static
code analysis in a way that ensures me that the running code is no
dangerous.

> --
> Pinocchio
>
Received on Wed Sep 09 2009 - 06:25:59 UTC