Stop Microsoft
Miscellaneous => Applications => Topic started by: piratePenguin on 6 August 2010, 12:17
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Paul Rouget on Mixing the web! (Mozilla Summit 2010) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BsB0HpS768#ws)
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That is some seriously impressive stuff. Can't believe that is all being done without Flash or Silverlight. HTML5 can't come soon enough.
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This looks cool but doesn't mean much until most browsers support it which means we'll have to wait for ever for IE to.
How about just making an IE plug-in which opens the page using a webkit or gecko rendering engine if IE is detected? All of the most popular sites such as Google, Wikipedia and YouTube could push people into installing it so no one will use the old IE engine most of the time and be mostly unaware of it.
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This looks cool but doesn't mean much until most browsers support it which means we'll have to wait for ever for IE to.
How about just making an IE plug-in which opens the page using a webkit or gecko rendering engine if IE is detected? All of the most popular sites such as Google, Wikipedia and YouTube could push people into installing it so no one will use the old IE engine most of the time and be mostly unaware of it.
http://www.google.com/chromeframe (http://www.google.com/chromeframe)
Alternative browsers have 50% share or something around there - that's huge. Of course this stuff isn't useful on mainstream sites just yet but it's exciting technology to play with. Btw IE9 is taking on an impressive amount of standards - it will be a good browser.
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IE 9 won't be available for Windows XP meaning that IE 8 will continue to reign for a long time to come.
Chrome frame sounds good and Google certainly have enough leverage to make it a standard plugin, if IE 9 isn't standards compliant enough for some of the advanced features they might want to implement.
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Check this out:
http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/ (http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/)
It *works* in FireFox, but runs much better in Chrome - and probably Safari as well.
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It doesn't work in Opera, the music plays but not the film.
It's impressive though it bit jerky which is probably because I have an old computer but it might be faster in Chrome, although I've not tested it yet.
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Check this out:
http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/ (http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/)
It *works* in FireFox, but runs much better in Chrome - and probably Safari as well.
(Haven't ran the demo yet, will do once I'm using Chrome) edit: couldn't run the experiment on my computer using chromium, waited 5 minutes and was stuck on 73%.. just too slow.
One of the goals of Firefox 4 is to have the fastest Javascript interpreter (which, with V8 already there, would be an impressive feat, but the importance of which is bigger than ever). Take a look at the graphs here: http://arewefastyet.com/ (http://arewefastyet.com/)
You see Firefox 4 making steady gains on 2 different branches - neither branch is as fast as V8 but they're clearly heading in the right direction, and also both branches are complementary. Once JaegerMonkey (made the mistake of almost calling it Jaegermeister again..) is stable, it will be integrated and make the whole thing much faster. This will be an insane asset, especially because all browsers will have fast JS engines (I think this is true about IE, but not sure).
(this goes down well with my attitude of using Javascript to do everything, even out of curiosity started working on a JS video codec drawn using canvas (may release this out of curiosity too).. who really wants to use low-level languages with so much being pumped into making javascript faster? The programming language of the web is a very important one..) related: serverside-javascript has recently gained a tonne of momentum, http://nodejs.org/ (http://nodejs.org/)
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Oh no. More ways to make fake software on the interwebs. Just what we need, CPU-muching browsers that give us a slower, less useful, less worthwhile computer experience!
All this stuff I see looks really great, but still nobody has sold on the why of it. Why is this better than real software running on a real computer as opposed to some HTML stuff in a browser? I can run Word '08 on my old G4, or OpenOffice on any computer around and it's perfectly quick, capable, has at least the features I need (and then about a trillion others I don't) but most of all it. Can. Save. To. My. Hard. Disk. I don't have to rely on Google or Oracle or some fly-by-night cloud storage provider who might get bought up and thus shut down.
The web sure has come far. Too bad the destination is a giant tar pit of fucking fail.
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It's because updating software is a bitch. Especially on Windows, where even applications have to be updated manually.
A web-application and storage that is wholly on a self-owned server, instead of Google or Zoho, is a great idea because a lot of issues with security patches are gone. It's just updating a web application once, and then it's okay.
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Google Docs allows you to save to your harddrive. Indeed most office solutions should and they do.
The why of the web? Refalm mentioned one aspect. How about the ability to seemlessly access and edit all of your documents through one well-understood interface on your Windows work pc, your home mac or gnu/linux computer, your tablet, etc? Launch the URL and do what you need. How about the web is the most important information resource we have, and making it richer, while remaining very much backwards compatible whereever that's possible, will be an improvement making it simpler to create richer applications, while in fact making things faster? I basically think you're dissing the technology when you should perhaps turn your attention to the websites and web-developer decisions. The majority of professional web developers know too much about backwards compatibility in the sense of IE support and not in the sense of working on all types of configurations including super-slow computers (except mobiles), but you have to ask yourself what is their interest in putting resources into those configurations, but I think the efforts of those designing the technology are pretty much as substantial as they can be for keeping the web accessible to everyone, as is indeed one of the motives of the web originally.
Just what we need, CPU-muching browsers that give us a slower, less useful, less worthwhile computer experience!
You can always use an old browser but in many cases this will not make your web experience faster! this is due to the momentous efforts by many companies at making JS become the fastest interpreted language it can be.
You can disable JS and there may be pages on the web that should work better for people who have JS disabled, but that's between those people and the websites - not the technologies of the web! (which are substantial in areas of compatibility and accessibility) HTML is still supported! In fact it's one of the only standards we can expect to be supported in 50 years time.
What about your Word files? What do you think those users are gonna do in 50 years time?
Gmail has a static interface option, other big email servers too. But other than that you have to ask where the demand for it is. Very few people do not use JS, I would argue that almost everyone bar people with serious resource limits should be turning it on.
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I agree with JJ that web applications are shit compared to real software. I'd rather use MS Word than Google Docs because it's faster and more streamlined. I don't think Google are going to fall any time soon but at least when a normal software developer goes under yo still have a copy of their software on your hard drive or can download it from a warez site.
However, I think JJ has missed the point about HTML 5 which is all about an open standard to allow web developers to do things which were only previously possible using proprietary platforms such as flash and multimedia codecs.
Talking of Java, why on earth hasn't any chip considered making a hardware accelerator? Surely that's got to be the best thing speed-wise.
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Who said Java? Do you mean Javascript?
I started looking into this a number of years ago and I believed I've written about it here, though I can't find my old posts. (Refalm, is there some display a list of threads started by a particular user?)
Anyways I'm sure that I found years ago hardware XML and/or XSLT parsers, doubt if they could be any addition except in mobile devices (optimized code running in our speedy cpus would seem to be faster) and btw they're not that important for the web since 99.9% of web content is html or html5 parsed.
I'm sure you'll get results for "hardware accelerated javascript" on google, it would seem like a huge task, and one that could be best undertaken by the huger chip manufacturers. I really think JS is becoming hugely important and hardware acceleration should be explored. We are right now experiencing speed gains at the hands of all web-browsers in JS performance due to JIT and tracing (optimizing JS loops and methods for your cpu), but particularly for mobile devices hardware acceleration could be the best way to go.
However I thought you would have a better idea of how big of a task this is - it would seem gigantic, no? Especially with the way JS is hooked in with browser interfaces, I don't know how it would work.
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I admit I don't know much about Java script other than it's an interpreted language executed in a VM.
Yes, I imagine it's possible to make a Java VM in hardare inwhich case it would no longer be a VM but a real machine and agree that it will not be an easy task. All I can say is that, if you decide to take an electronics course, do a module on FPGAs, team up with some of your fellow students, write a hardware JS processor yourself and release it under a FOSS licence of course.
I've done a Google and most of the results are focused on graphics acceleration but Arm have such a technology.
http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/jazelle.php (http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/jazelle.php)
It would be cool to have Java code running at native speed.
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Anyone see Google's logo today? Some HTML5 goodness for you there.
I tried loading it up at school, and its amazing how much shittier it looks on IE8.
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I admit I don't know much about Java script other than it's an interpreted language executed in a VM.
Yes, I imagine it's possible to make a Java VM in hardare inwhich case it would no longer be a VM but a real machine and agree that it will not be an easy task. All I can say is that, if you decide to take an electronics course, do a module on FPGAs, team up with some of your fellow students, write a hardware JS processor yourself and release it under a FOSS licence of course.
I've done a Google and most of the results are focused on graphics acceleration but Arm have such a technology.
http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/jazelle.php (http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/jazelle.php)
It would be cool to have Java code running at native speed.
Yeah, it would be cool to take a class on FPGAs. I study maths and won't get that opportunity, but it could be something I should study by myself sometime. There is already a bunch of GPL code around, see opencores or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware)
Opencores has a project to create a hardware Java processor too: http://opencores.org/project,jop (http://opencores.org/project,jop) I've no idea about it's success, or how it would compare to ARM Jazelle but I would expect Jazelle to be better (as I said I expect these to be big tasks, but probably tasks that will eventually be seen to by the big players in the industry - these technologies becoming more central to devices e.g. mobiles, TVs could almost entirely render using web technologies (see for e.g. http://www.svgopen.org/2010/papers/75-SVG_for_IPTV/ (http://www.svgopen.org/2010/papers/75-SVG_for_IPTV/) )), but even so what use would it be compared to running the software java VM on a modern day cpu? Will it necessarily be faster? (of course a chip would free up the cpu up a little bit and that's a consideration, but is it that important?)
It's in fact probable that arm or intel have or are creating chips for devices that can speed up web browsers on devices, most devices use chips to assist with video decoding and things like that, it makes sense if these devices are used to view more complex web apps, to go that direction with handling them too.
lead head, http://rawkes.com/experiments/google-bouncing-balls-canvas/ (http://rawkes.com/experiments/google-bouncing-balls-canvas/) pretty sweet
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Maybe I'm mostly just pissy over the fact that I'm actually going to have to finally buy a new computer. ;) And for what? To do some crummy websites because some jackass at the newspaper I'm submitting to thought it'd be a great idea to have some internet shit rather than just emailing stuff.
They will remain nameless, but these people embody everything I hate about people who embrace new technology without regard for what it is, how it works, or if it's even worth using. The only way to keep in touch with the editors and reporters is asshole Facebook. This is a bitch because then when I send in an important question, it gets mixed in among all the retards who liked the photo from the KLBJ FM remote that the newspaper went out and "covered." That is the editor went out and shmoozed at the titty bar and got drunk, but took a notepad and pencil so they could say they were covering the event.
I digress in a serious and massive manner.
HTML5 sadly is at the same time the best of the up-and-coming web techs, and the one that I'll never see on this old fogie. My old OS, OS X 10.4.11 has been utterly left behind despite having its last update in 2007. I guess it really cheeses me off that there's still shit coming out for Windows XP, but Mac devs just fucking LOVE to leave behind users nowadays. It didn't used to be that way.
Maybe I should just slam a Hackintosh together, grin, and bear it. :D
Or give Opera a whirl. Maybe their browser lets my old rig do Aychtee Emell Five.
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Your phone surely provides a faster web experience than your computer!
If Opera doesn't work.. there's always the linux road! Wouldn't hold a huge expectation for performance except with a distro like DSL maybe..
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It sure does, but it can't do everything I want at once. I can look at web pages on a tiny screen, then somehow make my way over to Yahoo messenger and tap slowly on the touchscreen keyboard, then... What?
I can't get anything done on the phone, it's just a little thing that lets me keep in touch with people. A computer lets me actually get things done.
The problem is that Linux abandoned the old ideas of scalability. I think that OS X 10.4 runs quickly enough. It doesn't lag for me. I can use Word and get things typed, and thankfully it still saves to RTF so I can continue to annoy editors and publishers with the excuse, "Word still opens RTF, so it's technically a Word file. Don't like RTF? Convert it yourself." :D
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Let's back up on those reasons advancing web technologies is important . . .
It enables more bigger badder web applications. The only two universal platforms barring trash like Java and considering only desktops and laptops, are the web and Windows, I don't think Mac users should be dumping on the web with that in mind (the only universal platform including mobile devices is the web or Java). Also, the web is accessible, and I don't even mean for disabled people: people are 100x more likely to check out a website than to install and run an application. Name me a piece of software that has as many users as Facebook: Windows probably fits the bill and that's it. If Facebook was designed to require any more effort to get set up on, I'd rekon that we'd never have heard of it. If I wanted to show off an application, how many percent of people are likely to click a link, download, and run? How many people are likely to click a link and view an app if it's in web-form? For some context, Mozilla have done studies that show that huge percentages of people run the Firefox installer and don't even finish it (say 10%, that's about how many million people?). Growth explosions that occur on the web are like nothing in history, because it's a universal place, and it's so simple to spread what you enjoy to other people. Social networking sites and free massively collaborated encyclopedias wouldn't work if people needed to do work for them to get exposure or growth. Anything that takes you out of the web browser is work. That is actually peoples understanding now. Now the applications they can get inside the browser are, ok, maybe not so suitable for computers from the 90s, but they are above desktop software at ease to try out enabling growth that desktop software never sees, and they are more powerful than they ever were. That's important.
(and that's why I don't wanna know about C or Python anymore)
These improvements are the only thing that makes the web competitive as a platform (and there's a lot more needed to be done). And that's the only hope for a free universal platform. Flash and Java can work for an unfree universal platform. But otherwise all bar Windows users will have to make do with apps that are offered, that's nothing but a step backwards.