On: Browsers, not apps, are the future of mobile

[iLoch]

How about a web spec for creating sandboxed native UI? Would go nicely with WASM.

[themihai → iLoch]

There is already one(i.e. HTML5 input types) but it's quite incomplete and poorly supported so we have to reinvent the wheel with CSS and JS which makes the web apps inconsistent and slow. The main issue is that the internet must be backwards compatible and browser vendors are reluctant to provide shiny features due the maintenance costs.

Hopefully WASM will fix the performance issue and the internet speed will get fast enough to compile and serve mature frameworks such Cocoa.

[duaneb → themihai]

Is there a way to bypass HTML completely?

[pjmlp → duaneb]

Yes, you have poor souls re-inventing desktop UI toolkits by making the web page a gigantic canvas or webgl content.

[duaneb → pjmlp]

Yea, but that still involves calling through HTML/DOM to access basic graphics contexts.

[symlinkk → pjmlp]

which is technically still embedded in an HTML document

[pjmlp → symlinkk]

Yes, hence why I mentioned poor souls, trying to bend a document platform into something that is natural in native code.

[rhelmer → duaneb]

There is a design doc describing non-Web embedding for WASM:

https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/NonWeb.md

That doesn't mention HTML but focuses on avoiding JS entirely, so presumably there'd be some more direct way to invoke the program (but don't take my word for it ;) )

[st3v3r → duaneb]

Yes. Make a native app.