Google Is Building a Chrome App-Based IDE

An anonymous reader writes "Google's Chromium team never ceases to amaze. Its latest project is a Chrome app-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) codenamed Spark. For those who don't know, Chrome packaged apps are written in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, but launch outside the browser, work offline by default, and access certain APIs not available to Web apps. In other words, they're Google's way of pushing the limits of the Web as a platform."

Comments

interesting

[keithwoodie]

Will be looking for the beta!

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Got you covered: Beta

A browser is not an iPod

[Neuroelectronic]

and the way Google does this is by moving processing to the client but maintaining control of the APIs. Which raises the question, in my mind, exactly what value is Google providing that you can't get from existing open APIs and platforms? Seems like the only thing they are "providing" is an expectation in your clients that you support Chrome only, and an API that is guaranteed to break and need maintenance in the near future.

Re:A browser is not an iPod

[girlintraining]

the only thing they are "providing" is an expectation in your clients that you support Chrome only, and an API that is guaranteed to break and need maintenance in the near future

You're forgetting; A browser is supposed to be a sandbox app. That is, its job is to render data and present an interactive interface to the user -- but not allow automated access to resources on the host system. Their APIs break that. Badly. One need only look to the recent example of Java and it's failed sandbox to recognize the problem here.

Re:A browser is not an iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

what value are they getting? control. and, more people that use their shit, the more people see their name, make apps in their store (which generates lots of user data for google to mine), use their browser, use their tracking / analytics bullshit, use their mail, and when google makes an 'offline' client-side framework, think of all the data they can collect off local devices....

Re:A browser is not an iPod

[colinrichardday]

I believe the GP was asking: What value is Google providing to the user?

Re:A browser is not an iPod

[serviscope_minor]

One need only look to the recent example of Java and it's failed sandbox to recognize the problem here.

Yes but this one is web so its in the cloud where as java is legacy.

Re:A browser is not an iPod

[Hognoxious]

AC answered. It's right there, just before "what".

Re: A browser is not an iPod

[ShieldW0lf]

You used 'raises the question' instead of abusing the phrase 'begs the question'. I think that deserves acknowledgement.

Thank you.

Re:A browser is not an iPod

[colinrichardday]

There is nothing before the what. Or is that what you meant?

Re:A browser is not an iPod

[Neuroelectronic]

Thanks for lowering my IQ by 10%

spam wonderful spam

[Joining Yet Again]

An "anonymous reader" wrote:

Google's Chromium team never ceases to amaze... ...Google's way of pushing the limits of the Web as a platform.

There's nothing amazing about making everything into a fucking HTML+Javascript app with a lowest common denominator of UI features requiring a PC built in the last 3 years and being sufficiently crippled that you'll want to store everything on the "cloud", i.e. on Google's servers.

No, fuck off, Google. I've done dumb terminals, and then terminals with a bit of intelligence+local storage to make things just bearable enough that you're still conned into giving yourself over to someone n thousand miles away who cares as much about your data as he worries about losing the $0/month you're paying him for service.

Re:spam wonderful spam

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who don't know, Chrome packaged apps are written in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, but launch outside the browser, work offline by default, and access certain APIs not available to Web apps

s/don't know/aren't on the Spark development or product team/

Re:spam wonderful spam

[colinrichardday]

But are the boring facts of my daily existence worth posting online in the first place?

Re:spam wonderful spam

[drinkypoo]

unless you are the president of a large company or a politician, nobody cares about you ...

We were thinking you could fire 500,000, from one of the smaller companies?

Fire one million.

and if you were, they wouldn't have to break into google to steal your data.

Nobody has to break into Google to get your data, Google will hand it over to the government on request. Is it Evil to comply with an Evil order?

Re:spam wonderful spam

[Joining Yet Again]

Or anyone who tries to influence a large company or politician - lobbyists, prominent activists, etc. The NSA and its foreign partners wouldn't monitor millions of transactions per day if they're only interested in a few hundred people, would they?

Is it possible that you have issues of self-worth which you're trying to project on others?

Re:spam wonderful spam

[Rob Y.]

Who said the cloud servers have to be Google's?
Any application based off of a central database has no business being built as a desktop application. The support of web-based apps is just orders of magnitude simpler, and they work better than fat-client apps when deployed across multiple locations. Anything that makes building this kind of app easier and cross-platform, while producing a richer user experience than existing HTML stuff is a good thing. You don't have to use it for everything, but why are you so opposed to it existing?

What the hell is the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't get the point, other than keeping computer people employed through layers and layers and layers and layers. As computers get more powerful, it seems software only gets more needlessly complicated and accomplishes the same thing at the same speed as it used to using old hardware and far less code and layers.

Re:What the hell is the point?

[Blaskowicz]

I like the idea of Firefox OS phones though, in that environment you don't have that many layers, just the web crap and javascript host that you needed anyway to look up web pages. It has the uglyness and inefficiency you complain about but at the same time the OS is kept small, gets security updates and you would be able to download those security updates easily enough through 3G/4G or wifi. The execution speed problem is dealt with by throwing brute force at it (low power, 1GHz ARM). If security/privacy features are adequate that's the first smartphone/phablet thing I can consider owning. (domain blocker, NoScript equivalent, fine grained permissions along with global rules like "any application that uses GPS can't use networking")

Re:What the hell is the point?

[squiggleslash]

Basically everyone recognizes Eclipse is a load of crap.

Some would say this is because it's a poorly designed mismatch of "integrated modules" written by developers who had half of a good idea, implemented half of it, and then gave up, leaving the rest of us to put up with things like autocompletion systems that physically get in the way, bizarre default file associations, and "features" like network access that are rendered virtually unusable by being buried by several layers of confusing "user friendly" GUIs.

Others, such as Google, however, believe the problem with Eclipse is that it's written in Java. If only it were written in something logical like CSS, maybe coupled with something readable like HTML, perhaps held together with something stable and feature complete like Javascript, which can control the other elements using something intelligently designed, standardized, and completely quirkless like the Document Object Model, you'd have an IDE that would truly shine.

Re:What the hell is the point?

[farble1670]

I like the idea of Firefox OS phones though, in that environment you don't have that many layers, just the web crap and javascript host that you needed anyway to look up web pages. It has the uglyness and inefficiency you complain about but at the same time the OS is kept small, gets security updates and you would be able to download those security updates easily enough through 3G/4G or wifi. The execution speed problem is dealt with by throwing brute force at it (low power, 1GHz ARM). If security/privacy features are adequate that's the first smartphone/phablet thing I can consider owning. (domain blocker, NoScript equivalent, fine grained permissions along with global rules like "any application that uses GPS can't use networking")

exactly, the *idea* of FFOS. how do you know carriers don't add tracking / spying software into the phones running FirefoxOS? i don't think FirefoxOS is in some commanding market position where they can demand carriers don't touch the software of devices running on their network.

Re:What the hell is the point?

[swillden]

I really don't get the point

Hardware and OS independence?

Re:What the hell is the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

But what else are people supposed to do? Technology has allowed farming to occupy barely 1% of the population compared to 50% in the 19th century. We've decided as a society to not accept this progress to reduce the workweek. We still expect everyone to "work" to "earn" things, even though we all keep saying how "productive" we are and how technology is powerful.

Yet now we need both heads of a family to work, to pay more taxes than ever, to get fewer services as we hire more and more "competent" (they went to university!) people to manage, decide, do, undo, think, manage some more, do, undo and "produce" patterns of electrical charge on slivers on silicon that we all agreed "mean" something.

And all these people expect to be paid and they all think they're important. So we invent more and more absurd types of work. There's very little that needs doing, the rest is all theater.

Re:What the hell is the point?

[noh8rz10]

except it will never be truly hardware and os dependent. right now even web pages do better or worse depending on the 'puter i'm using. don't you see? the dream of independence is just a mirage.

Re:What the hell is the point?

[narcc]

exactly, the *idea* of FFOS. how do you know carriers don't add tracking / spying software into the phones running FirefoxOS?

If you're paranoid, just build it yourself.

Re:What the hell is the point?

[Lennie]

Buy your own FirefoxOS phone instead of paying your carrier, usually paying for it yourself actually turns out to be cheaper.

At least in Europe SIM-free (unlocked) is a lot cheaper than a subscription with phone.

If you take the difference you pay extra per month, the phone is usually slightly more expensive on contract than off contract.

Re:What the hell is the point?

[Lennie]

But the 'web runtine' (HTML, CSS, JS) is a lot closer than all the other runtimes at being operating system independent.

It usually is just a matter of not using the very latest features. Everything pretty much works.

You are forgetting an other advantage of the web is: there is nothing to install, the runtime is already available.

Re:What the hell is the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Others, such as Google, however, believe the problem with Eclipse is that it's written in Java

Google's Dart IDE is based on Eclipse and Google's Android IDE is based on IntelliJ IDEA. Internally, Google uses Java far more than any other language and that's not going to change any time soon; especially since the vast majority of Googlers think Go is terrible.

This is an editor that's being made as a showcase project. It's a tiny project by a handful of people to show what's possible with Chrome and Dart. Nothing more.

Re:What the hell is the point?

[squiggleslash]

There was more than a dash.

That said, I kinda felt bad slamming JavaScript - I don't mean "Web browser" (which most people who slam JS mean, ie "I hate JS, there' no way to create a file, and manipulating the DOM sucks!" is not a criticism of JavaScript, it's a criticism of web standards that integrate JavaScript) - I think it's a woefully underrated language that gets a bad rap because most people have to use it in conjunction with the aforementioned terrible APIs.

It's clean (mostly), scores well for readability (there's a reason programmers prefer JSON to XML) and allows the kind of casual programming that, say, PHP is famous for without having any of the "features" PHP is infamous for.

I'm glad projects like node.js are taking off, these are giving the language, finally, a chance to shine.

That said, of course, in this case, we're talking about the holy hell that is JS-in-Web-APIs. Even given Google is giving the system additional APIs so it can save files locally, the fact it's going to have to interact with the user through the DOM will ensure the language continues to get slammed for no good reason.

Re: What the hell is the point?

[ShieldW0lf]

You hit the nail on the head. Keeping people employed is not a bad thing though. If a tool allows mediocre developers to be productive members of society
without retraining, that is a GOOD thing, even if the tool isn't optimal in the absolute sense.

Re:What the hell is the point?

[R3d Jack]

Eclipse is the worst IDE there is, except for all the rest. Hopefully, Java will die soon, taking Eclipse with it. Then, everyone can rewrite all that awful business and data access logic in JS, and the world will be a better place.

Re:What the hell is the point?

[celle]

"Others, such as Google, however, believe the problem with Eclipse is that it's written in Java. If only it were written in something logical like CSS, maybe coupled with something readable like HTML, perhaps held together with something stable and feature complete like Javascript, which can control the other elements using something intelligently designed, standardized, and completely quirkless like the Document Object Model, you'd have an IDE that would truly shine."

      You owe me a new keyboard as spewed cocoa all over this one as I was reading that. It wouldn't have been so bad if the cocoa hadn't dried up in the time it took me to stop convulsing/laughing/crying.

Re:What the hell is the point?

[LifesABeach]

Personally, I'm not paranoid, but my clients would feel comfortable showing the world what they're prototyping.

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

...if it's offline rather than online and will only work on Chrome, what's the point of using HTML, CSS and Javascript with all the limitations that entail rather than a normal language with a normal runtime? The whole point of web programming is that it works anywhere. If it doesn't, you're just writing desktop programs using a silly API.

Re:But...

[Blaskowicz]

Because the Chromebook. They already have a desktop web OS, which competes with Windows and Apple laptops, and it sure makes sense being able to develop web apps or Chrome apps from that environment.

Re:But...

[Joining Yet Again]

Imagine if Microsoft had released an MS-branded laptop which only allowed you to use HTML+Javascript and Silverlight apps, and then released a development environment which ran under Silverlight.

That'd be as retarded as this is.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

But this is Google! Goooooooooooogle!

Local webapp

[paugq]

First we tried to replace desktop apps with webapps and that's why we stood the awkwardness and immaturity of JavaScript, CSS and HTML. At least, we could justify it by saying "you'll be able to access the application from everywhere" (not true: new versions of browsers broke apps everytime)

Now, we are using those same immature and awkward technologies (JS, CSS, HTML) to develop local apps, which could be developed in C#, C++ or even Delphi in a fraction of time, integrate better with the platform and have more direct access to local APIs. I'm sorry but I don't understand this.

And yes, JavaScript, CSS, etc are way immature if you compare with what you can do in C# (WinForms, WPF), C++ (Qt, Boost) or even Delphi. The debugging process in itself is a nightmare.

Re:Local webapp

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people spend most of their time in web applications. Youtube, Facebook, gmail, Netflix, etc. Show them a traditional fat client and they think it's weird and awkward. When they're not doing that they're playing games, which are flash/actionscript for the most part.

Stick-in-the-mud fuddy-duddies haven't noticed that.

Re:Local webapp

[Salgat]

Try looking into alternatives to Javascript, such as CoffeeScript or Dart. They make programming a lot easier. Dartlang in particular feels a lot like programming in C (syntax wise) but with the object orientation of Python.

Re:Local webapp

[Joining Yet Again]

Show them a traditional fat client and they think it's weird and awkward.

You're just making shit up. "Apps" are the Big New Thing. Never before have there been so many "traditional fat clients". The thing is they're only being released for mobile platforms, while the PC platform desperately tries to get rid of them. And why? Because two or three huge companies hate Microsoft, and think this is the way to wrest control of the APIs.

It's working.

But it's not for the user's benefit - at all.

Re:Local webapp

[Charliemopps]

I think that, what they do well is go cross platform easy. moving C++/C# From windows, to mac to linux is hard, takes time. But webapps generally work anywhere. I agree that JS, CSS and HTML are a pain in the ass... I'd love to see something new that compared to C# in ease of coding and power, but had the interoperability of JS. I myself will stick with the more robust languages. I still learning and not a great coder yet so all the wishy washynes of JS, etc... drive me nuts.

Re:Local webapp

[Junta]

Adding my rant, particularly about how this is far from an isolated incident...

Some notable examples....

Palm's WebOS bragged on how developers *got* to use javascript and css to develop local applications.... Despite some decent UI design elements, the thing was a beast to develop for in that model.

Gnome 3 in it's infinite wisdom has gone to javascript and css for their shell...

iPhone in its original vision figured web browser would suffice before realizing pretty quickly that a decent framework would be called for...

Of course we also have the peculiar entity of Node.js, because web developers had to deal with languages that were just too reasonable in the webapp server space (yes, I know the I/O semantics natively act in a reasonable manner, but things like eventlet bring that sort of model to python).

It's related to the phenomenon where so many vocal developers believe if you do *anything* over a network it better be http. I've even seen scenarios where developers have advocated for http over TCP as IPC for multiple processes that are related by common fork() ancestory, meaning they couldn't possibly run on distinct servers (ignoring the massive security exposure it represented on top of the weirdness).

Now there are decent and reasonable things in the space (e.g. network apis that reasonably *can* map to REST semantics can be explored decently) among the abominations (e.g. SOAP which of course has been plaguing the world for a long time, but still it's the best example of a widespread moronic standard over http for no good reason on top of being a mess in and of itself). Of course everyone jumping on the 'REST' bandwagon means a great deal of interfaces claim to be that way without really usefully being in that camp, and even in apis where it's done mostly correctly, developers think they suddenly have no obligation to write client libraries or utilities or even so much as document it. It's the latter that seems to be most prolific sadly...

Re:Local webapp

[Desler]

Because the way to stop the issues with bloated web code is to add more layers!

Re:Local webapp

[Blaskowicz]

I've seen the 'entire Java API libraries' aspect described as a giant attack surface. That's one easy to understand explanation for the security problems with Java, and client-side execution of arbitrary java code downloaded from the internet is now pretty much dead.

Re:Local webapp

[TrollstonButterbeans]

Seconded. Programming languages --- you can have any 2 of: easy, universal, powerful --- but never ALL 3. Drives me crazy sometimes.

Re:Local webapp

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'd love to see something new that compared to C# in ease of coding and power, but had the interoperability of JS
It's called Java Standard Edition

Re:Local webapp

[jon3k]

I think you make a good point, but I also think the ability to deliver apps easily and provide broad cross-platform compatibility with web apps (html+css+javascript) offers some advantages as well. It also allows us to use the same set of tools to develop local applications as web based applications, which is more accessible to a broader set of developers.

Re:Local webapp

[jon3k]

Spoken like someone who's never worked on any large or complex piece of software.

Re:Local webapp

[tepples]

It takes time to port an application from Windows to OS X, even if only time to earn the money to replace your current computer with a Mac on which to test the OS X port of your application.

Re:Local webapp

[gl4ss]

but the point of these is that they're as if they were traditional fat client apps.

they're just trying to grab the share that phonegap etc are already having.

while also making a base for removing access to the underlying operating system in chromeOS.

Re:Local webapp

[IllusionalForce]

Another argument frequently used is portability; you just port the browser and all the web apps run, at least somewhat. Your examples, however, aren't all that convincing in that direction. While C# works somewhat with Mono on Linux and OS X (though the (Free)BSD port isn't actually officially part of Mono) when using WinForms, WPF is not supported and Mono has no plans to support it. C++ with Qt and/or Boost is reasonable, though there are some pitfalls here and there to watch out for. As for Delphi, I'm not sure how mature Kylix is and if it runs on the BSDs.

Generally, if you say portability is more than just x86 with Windows/OS X/Linux, you'll hit a brick wall really fast, and browsers are surprisingly frequently ported.

Re:Local webapp

[noh8rz10]

i laughed.

Re:Local webapp

[paugq]

Mono. Yes, portable: with Mono, I can develop for Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android and even PS4. Probably more.

Re:Local webapp

[Lennie]

Basically low cost, good enough and open platform wins every single time.

Look at the Internet and Linux as just an example.

open platform (which makes for a low barrier to entry): web -> check
good enough: web in many, many cases it is -> check
low cost: less brain power is needed to create 'web apps' than native apps, so there is a larger base of people you can hire from -> check

But hey, it is the same reason Valve thinks Steam Box can work, because it is an open platform.

Re:Local webapp

[Lennie]

If the only think you want (which might not apply to you) is other syntax then just transcompile to Javascript. Lots of 'languages' to choose from these days.

Re:Local webapp

[Lennie]

But the web isn't about the programming languages. It's about the runtime that is already installed everywhere.

Re:Local webapp

[paugq]

Local webapps are easy to port only because they are simple apps. Start adding the kind of complexity and features you have in native app developed in C++, C# or Delphi and we'll talk about porting complexity.

Also, C++, C#, Delphi apps are expected to integrate PERFECTLY in the platform: colors, behavior, etc. Local webapps do nothing of that. No wonder there are no "porting complexities". Ugh.

Re:Local webapp

[Lennie]

Is that runtime pre-installed ? No, it is not, but the browser is. This is an important part of the reason why web technologies are adopted.

Re:Local webapp

[exomondo]

Is that runtime pre-installed ? No, it is not, but the browser is. This is an important part of the reason why web technologies are adopted.

And is the implementation consistent across those platforms? No, it is not. In fact there is not even any consistent mechanism to even tell what level of compliance with what level of the standard the implementation is at.

Do you understand those words?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still use HTML, CSS, JavaScript and web-local storage when you're offline, then sync data when you're online.

Re:do you understand those words?

[digitalchinky]

The FileSystem API along with FileReader kind of blur this point already.

NO IE6 support?!

[Billly Gates]

What kind of terrible crackpots are these guys. Any PHB will tell you if it wont look right in IE 6 then something MUST be wrong with the developers.

After all they create things with FrontPage 2000 all the time. How hard can it be?!

Re:NO IE6 support?!

[Joining Yet Again]

Anything on the web which requires more than IE6 is excessively complicated or needless eye-candy.

The web is first rate for delivering information, and third rate for delivering software.

Re:NO IE6 support?!

[TrollstonButterbeans]

I hate IE6 -- being a normal sensible human being --- but your statement is so true about the kludge of the level of reliability and consistency of "online software".

(Which is sadly why a lot of it is made in Flash and avoiding browser kludge --- ugh!)

One example: My Android phone's default web browser cannot use the Gmail.com site correctly!

Re:Do you understand those words?

[Joining Yet Again]

If "can sync data when you're online" => "web app" then thanks to rsync I've just wep-appified EVERYTHING, fuck yeah!

Intriguing ...

[TrollstonButterbeans]

"They already have a desktop web OS [Chomebook], which competes with Windows and Apple laptops"

I guess Chromebooks are selling well --- but I haven't seen one in a store (I avoid "un-Best Buy") --- or one in real life.

Yet ...

I'll have to keep an eye out ...

Re:Intriguing ...

[Nerdfest]

I've looked at them ... not for me, but for the sort of person that I sometimes eed to suppport. Like setting them up with a Linux laptop it takes the vast majority of the support issues away while not really removing any capabilities normally required by this sort of person. Not a bad deal, although it would be nice of they started pushing the higher res screens at better prices.

Re:Intriguing ...

[noh8rz10]

dude, wtf? your best zinger for Best Buy is "un-Best Buy"? Here's one, how about "Worst Buy"? That's low hanging fruit. I'm not trying too hard right now because I'm drunk, but just imagine all the possibilities.

Re:Intriguing ...

[martinQblank]

I've seen two Chromebooks in the wild - they were not running Google's OS.

Re:Intriguing ...

[squiggleslash]

Well, last weekend I was at BJs (an unfortunately-named warehouse membership store) and they were selling a couple. Today I had to get an oil change, and went to Wal-mart as they're right next door, and was surprised to find three chromebooks sitting next to the Windows 8 laptops.

Those are the only stores I'd expect to sell any kind of laptop in in the last few months with the exception of Target which might sell them but I didn't actually go anywhere near any of the areas where they'd be likely to be sold.

So yeah, they're in the stores.

Like you though, I haven't seen one in the wild, that is, seen one in the hands of a co-worker or heard a friend or co-worker mention they own one. Perhaps though we're not the intended market?

Re:Intriguing ...

[TrollstonButterbeans]

I think my "un-Best Buy" is a 2 of 10 on the zinger scale. Your "Worst Buy" is maybe a 3.2 of 10 on the zinger scale.

Face it, I don't think either of us has stand-up comedian quality material going on here ....

Re:Intriguing ...

[noh8rz10]

how about going down to the local strip club, Breast Buy?

Nothing new. GIB has been a browser IDE for years.

[Qbertino]

What's all the excitement? The General Interface Builder is basically full-blown bsd licensed browser-based offline IDE of Eclipse proportions. It's quite amazing, certainly speeds up development of non-trivial GeneralInterface Ajax Applications quite a bit and is very well matured.

I'm not holding my breath for Google to catch up on GI anytime soon.

My 2 cents.

Web People vs. Desktop People

[Ukab the Great]

Here's my memory of what happened. Maybe it's falsely implanted by the NSA. Feel free to mod down -1 Heretical.

When the web first was popular, the web folks told us that web apps would replace desktop apps. And the desktop people said "what about dynamic and interactive GUI's that fat client apps provide?" And the web people told the desktop people "users won't really miss that. HTML by itself is good enough." And when no one was looking, the web folks snuck JavaScript and DHTML through the back door to cover up the insufficiency they denied existed with web apps

Then later on, the web folks told us that web apps would replace desktop apps. And the desktop people said "what about asynchronous network communication that fat client apps provide?" And the web people told the desktop people "users won't really miss that. HTML + DHTML + JavaScript by itself is good enough." And when no one was looking, the web folks snuck Ajax through the back door to cover up the insufficiency they denied existed with web apps.

Then later on still, the web folks told us that web apps would replace desktop apps. And the desktop people said "what about the offline storage that doesn't require network communication that fat client apps provide?" And the web people told the desktop people "users won't really miss that. HTML + DHTML + JavaScript + Ajax is good enough." And when no one was looking, the web folks snuck HTML5 offline storage through the door to cover up the insufficiency they denied existed with web apps.

From my point of view I see an endless cycle of web zealots who keep saying that fat clients are irrelevant, yet who seem to be adding one layer of kludge after another just to keep up with basic fat client functionality that they keep denying is unimportant to users. After all I've seen, I really can't take web people very seriously.

Re:Web People vs. Desktop People

[Joining Yet Again]

Beautifully put.

Re:Web People vs. Desktop People

[LoztInSpace]

Very nice. Don't forget also that once introduced, each iteration is then actually hailed as something revolutionary rather than something missing and that was solved/commonplace years ago.

Re:Web People vs. Desktop People

[swillden]

So, what's the next insufficiency? At some point the web folks will say that web apps can replace desktop apps, and there won't be anything left that isn't covered. I think we're actually getting very close to that point.

Re:Web People vs. Desktop People

[BlackHawk-666]

I doubt there will be a time when we wont be using fat clients but I see myself and the general public using and needing them less as every year passes.

I have a pretty decent rig by any standards these days, full capable of running Crisis 3 at max settings and 60 FPS with about 12 terabytes of local storage available. I used to log onto my PC every day and sit there poring over documents, reading crap off the net, looking at pictures of cats and wasting time on slashdot. I'd fire up my IDE and get some work or hobby coding done or just scratch an itch.

I recently bought a Kindle to give me some time away from the PC. Now I do my reading in an arm chair on the verandah looking out over our gardens and trees. I then noticed that although the Kindle was great for documents, it was terrible for web reading, and I still do a lot of that. I bought myself a Nexus 7. Now whenever I need to study or read I can do it from that comfy chair, while my PC sits idle.

Instead of immediately turning on my PC each morning I grab a Coke and go sit in my chair and swipe my Nexus 7 into life. I check my mail, delete the crap, make note of the interesting, and leave the stuff where I will want to type things since I prefer to do that from a desk and chair. I read the headlines on Slashdot and BBC news. I check the status of my torrents which are running on a headless box (actually a My Book Live hard drive is running Transmission for me).

Having a convenient little device, I can carry around which excels at consuming data means I only ever have to use my PC now when I want to write some code or play one of the latest graphics heavy games.

I am working on a game of my own these days and that means taking a lot of notes, a lot of time spent thinking and quickly writing down those flash ideas that would be gone faster than a desktop PC boots (even with the SSD, it can be too slow once it lumbers into life). I write all my notes using a web browser, either into the tiny little note taking app on Chrome, or directly into a wiki running on one of my low power machines. At no time do I need to load up a large, heavy app running on a big machine to do most of the tasks I do every day now.

There is a place for these heavy desktop based applications, but there's also a place for the lightweight, network connected apps that are now the more dominant force in most people's lives.

Re:Web People vs. Desktop People

[Lennie]

The advantage for the 'web folks' is:

The operating system on the device people buy already comes with a runtime for running 'web apps', aka browser.

By default you run it in a sandbox and the application running in the sandbox is automatically updated every time you open it. A website is updated on the server, anything that needs downloading again gets downloaded again (even if it's a HTML5 offline 'application').

No other runtime has these advantages.

Re:Web People vs. Desktop People

[jemmyw]

This wording is comparable to the way stupid people understand evolution. "The giraffe wanted to eat the leaves high on the tree so it grew a long neck". Nobody had these conversations. Folks were just trying to get shit done. Capabilities have been added to browsers, but not always driven by the needs and requirements of those making the websites. Look at AJAX - it was an ActiveX component accessible from IE and it took quite a long time before the common use of it was realized. It was not a case of the secretive cabal of web designers getting together and dreaming it up to combat the free world of desktop programs.

And much of this has been user driven. When webmail become popular no one was systematically breaking into houses and deleting all desktop email clients from people's computers in order to force them to use a web based application. I'm not arguing that it is a well informed decision either (I use a desktop email client).

Re:Web People vs. Desktop People

[celle]

"No other runtime has these advantages."

      And no security to boot.

Re:Web People vs. Desktop People

[swillden]

locking you into Google

Umm, these are all open standards, how are you locked into Google?

Re:Web People vs. Desktop People

[exomondo]

No other runtime is as far behind on new features either. Whenever a company introduces new features in their products this feature then has to be exposed through a web API, then go through a standardization process, then be implemented in other companies products and also exposed through that same standardized web API. The reality is that this takes so long that web apps are never on the cutting edge and by the time a particular API is standardized there are various vendor-specific implementations of it that then need to be supported too.

I can't understand software anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

What's next? An IDE that lets me browse the Web? A word processor that lets me drive CNC machinery?

Re:I can't understand software anymore

[chill]

EMACS was released in 1976 and I'm pretty sure can do both of those things.

Re:I can't understand software anymore

[narcc]

EMACS is pretty amazing. I'd switch over myself, but it really needs a better text editor.

Re:Nothing new. GIB has been a browser IDE for yea

[Gramie2]

GIB looks interesting, but the last release was more than two years ago.

Facebook app isn't HTML5

[Dan East]

I guess you missed the part where Facebook rewrote their Android app from HTML5 to a native implementation less than a year ago:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/13/facebook-android-faster/

Embrace and extend

[goombah99]

Do you remember those words. That was how Microsoft set the web back 20 years by killing standards compliance. Now google is the evil.

Re:Embrace and extend

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Except they're not forcing these extensions on anyone, Chrome the browser is still very much W3C compliant (for better or worse). It's just that it has an "extra mode" for running something HTML-based outside normal web browsing. I say let them experiment with whatever they want, that's perfectly fine with me.

Re:Embrace and extend

[Rob Y.]

Perhaps, but at least Chrome is available on multiple platforms. Microsoft non-compliance was aimed at lock-in to Windows. Google's seems to be aimed at making it possible to do most everything from a 'web browser'. A loftier goal and hard to call 'evil'. Where do new standards come from if not this kind of experimentaion?

Re:Embrace and extend

[goombah99]

Your slashot ID is low enought thatyou should recall that Internet explorer was available for the mac too. And doing everything from the browser was why MS invented its active scripts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_Mac

Haven't we heard this before?

[Karlt1]

2007 Apple - you don't need native apps. You can build great web apps. Developers complain. Apple released a native SDK.

2009 Palm. You can build great apps using the web technologies you already know. Developers complain. Palm releases native SDK.

2011 RIM announces that you can build great apps using the technology you know. Developers complain. RIM releases native SDK.

Re:Haven't we heard this before?

[narcc]

What?

Of your examples, the first comes closest to reality. It's wrong, of course, but you could make a good argument.

The original iPhone browser wasn't (and still isn't) good enough for high-quality web apps. Of course, at the time, neither was any browser. If you'll recall, Apple didn't seem interested in third-party apps at the time. They were much more interested in controlling what apps were on the platform. (The ability to local/offline local/offline web app with a nice icon on the home screen icon was little more than a vague promise as late as October 2007.) Really, it's difficult to say that it had web apps at all.

The release of the SDK looked more like an attempt to regain some control over the iOS software market, as intrepid hackers had already developed native third-party applications. Jobs couldn't stop it, and the endless exploits were an embarrassment. The world would not let him have his completely closed platform. The SDK let them have some control those nasty third-party apps.

Palm never released a native SDK. The closest they came was the PDK, which isn't quite the same thing. I'm not sure who was complaining, as even the internet doesn't seem to remember. Today, new standards like webGL and the web audio api negate the need that Palm's PDK intended to fullfill.

RIM has always had a native SDK. Nor do I recall anyone complaining about webworks, not that it would matter if they did as there has always been an NDK.

Makes some sense even to use HTTP for IPC...

[SuperKendall]

I've even seen scenarios where developers have advocated for http over TCP as IPC for multiple processes that are related by common fork() ancestry

Although I admit it sounds a bit odd on the face of it you get to use whatever frameworks help you deal with REST communications, plus also later you could more easily actually move those operations to separate servers.

SOAP which of course has been plaguing the world for a long time

It has been but it's really a paper tiger at this point, few people use SOAP anymore, most everyone has moved to JSON over REST because of the many advantages.

Even the most imperfect of REST implementations is still lots nicer to deal with than the best SOAP implementation.

Re:Makes some sense even to use HTTP for IPC...

[Junta]

you get to use whatever frameworks help you deal with REST communications

The obvious problem being is those frameworks are making the best of the situation, you don't go out to make things more complicated so you can 'get' to use frameworks to bring it back to manageable. REST over http has some valid applications for specific network access patterns, language interoperability, and access from javascript in browser, but if you are doing IPC in most cases it's much faster and easier to use the particular languages serialization features over a socket for IPC.

I will add another criticism of the state of REST is that advocates sometimes overly believe in the power of caching proxies to cure any concerns about a design's scalability. True, it's better than SOAP with regards to taking some advantage of the semantics of the protocol, but still it's always wise to keep in mind that there is a time and place for many things, and rarely is that 'everywhere' and 'all the time'. REST is the flavor of the day so it currently is afflicted with zealots cramming it where it doesn't belong, which doesn't really do any technology any favors despite that technology's merits (Java is probably a great example of a technology with some extremely good stuff in it earning a horrid reputation largely borne out of being too popular and accumulating crap).

Graphics

[SuperKendall]

So, what's the next insufficiency?

Note that web apps still underpowered in terms of graphical capability.

At some point the web folks will say that web apps can replace desktop apps

Just like at some point it's inevitable we'll have flying cars?

Re:Graphics

[swillden]

So, what's the next insufficiency?

Note that web apps still underpowered in terms of graphical capability.

Or more generally, anything that needs number crunching performance...in realtime. Updating a big spreadsheet comes to mind, Google Docs spreadsheets suck once they get beyond a few screen fulls.

That's why NaCl is under development. Though, in general, I think the direction of the future for number crunching performance is to do that part in the cloud.

Re:Graphics

[Lennie]

I don't think 'the web people' will need NaCl, they have asm.js.

How would GPS and net be mutually exclusive?

[tepples]

global rules like "any application that uses GPS can't use networking"

How should a navigation application that doesn't use networking obtain maps of the area around the device? Or how should a navigation application that doesn't use GPS know where the device is located?

Re:How would GPS and net be mutually exclusive?

[Blaskowicz]

I can zoom the map myself to know where I am, and as for the GPS data it can be used to record trips on local storage without sending the data to Google or another 3rd party.

Re:How would GPS and net be mutually exclusive?

[Blaskowicz]

Disclaimer, the settings/options I talk of are a wishlist rather than something I know is existing, I don't know how stuff work on current - still early - Firefox OS. Never seen a phone with it yet.

Re:How would GPS and net be mutually exclusive?

[tepples]

I can zoom the map myself to know where I am

But how would you know on which point to zoom if the application cannot use GPS to display your current location as an icon on the map?

and as for the GPS data it can be used to record trips on local storage

Perhaps I don't know how people use GPS-enabled devices in the real world, but I was under the impression that far fewer people have a need to "record trips" than to see where the stopped vehicle is located with respect to the map around it right freaking now.

When the public can develop only web apps

[tepples]

Often a device manufacturer is willing to expose a web browser but not a compiler to the unwashed masses of amateur developers. For example, the first Wii homebrew games appeared in early 2007 as Flash objects and JavaScript programs running inside the "Internet Channel" browser by Opera.

C++ Make the world a better place, again.

[danknight48]

Honestly, why cant they just teach kids C++ at school, instead of Java/HTML/"My language is better than yours but the same, Java 2.0"?
- Teach them the "hardest" language first C++ (Minus machine code).
- The language that encourages you to write with performance in mind, and, gives you a reward for doing so.
- A language that isnt forced full of external functions which allow you to write shit code, and, bog down compiled performance.

- Wait 10 years

- Take note as every application in the world is done professionally, with a C++ writer behind the wheel.
- Take note as webpages actually run on a current system without bogging down.
- Take note as games/applications no longer kill battery life on your phone.

Whether they are using Java/HTML etc etc, their C++ background will help them understand "true" world performance when creating an application.

Well theres my "Wishful thinking post of the week" lol :)

Re:C++ Make the world a better place, again.

[Lennie]

The web technologies are written in C++

But the C++ binaries are tied to the processor architecture and don't have a simple delivery process around it. The best they have is: it's pre-installed (like the operating system).

Web technologies do have that, because basically every user-facing device has a browser installed by default.

Gamepad, webcam, graphics, printing, memory mgmt

[tepples]

So, what's the next insufficiency? At some point the web folks will say that web apps can replace desktop apps, and there won't be anything left that isn't covered.

Good luck getting robust gamepad, webcam, 3D graphics, audio/video codec (WebM vs. MP4 format war), and shipping label printer support working across more than 90 percent of desktop and mobile browsers. For example, Apple has implemented WebGL in iOS but allows it only in iAds because WebGL in regular web apps would compete with the $99 per developer per year plus 30% of sales it gets from the App Store.

Good luck getting robust multitasking and memory management in a mobile web application. In Chrome for Android and Firefox for Android, if I have a complex web application open, and I switch to another tab and switch back, the browser will often purge the page from memory and reload it from the network, causing me to lose what I have entered into the web application. This happens when the browser runs out of memory.

Re:motorbike tours in vietnam

[jones_supa]

Interesting, a spam message which actually tries to tap something from the context of the discussion.

JS file APIs, MTP, and Rhmsoft File Manager

[tepples]

If Google was actually interested in pushing the limits of the Web as a platform, they'd find a way to provide local file access from JavaScript.

Google could even call it something like chrome.fileSystem or File API.

I bought a Nexus 10 and was horrified to learn that it had no out-of-the-box capability to access local files of any kind

Then you didn't try plugging your into a Windows PC to copy files on and off it using MTP. (On Linux, recent versions of gvfs have added MTP support, and it should land in Ubuntu LTS next year.) The other way is to go to Google Play Store and download Rhmsoft File Manager. I use it on my first-generation Nexus 7 tablet to browse SMB shares over Wi-Fi, copy files to the device's internal memory, and launch them on the device.

it can't even display something as simple and universal as a PDF file on a USB flash drive.

I'm over 98 percent sure that the USB flash drive came formatted in a file system on which Microsoft owns one or more United States patents. Google and ASUS don't want to pay more royalties to Microsoft than they have to, which is why a lot of devices have been dropping support for microSD cards and USB flash drives. Use MTP over USB or SMB over Wi-Fi to copy local files onto your device.

Re:JS file APIs, MTP, and Rhmsoft File Manager

[BlackHawk-666]

Let's not forget that DropBox and Google Sync are both useful for moving files around from most platforms to any other.

Re:JS file APIs, MTP, and Rhmsoft File Manager

[noh8rz10]

MS owns ntfs, but fat16 is unencumbered. this is why macs can access fat16 drives as well, and can utilize windows disk network resources if they're in that format. your 98% excuse is bollucks.

Re:JS file APIs, MTP, and Rhmsoft File Manager

[tepples]

You're right, provided the files are small or you have unlimited Internet. But for feature films or large music collections, you may need to pay extra: pay Dropbox or another cloud storage provider for an upgrade past 2 GB, and possibly pay your ISP an overage fee equal to twice the file's size (once for uploading, once for downloading).

Developer licensing

[tepples]

Why is it that so many corporations who hire lots of programmers try to push HTML + Javascript for everything?

Perhaps some of it is that startups want to get their apps onto a device without having to sign up for an expensive developer license. License agreements to develop native applications for game consoles and BREW phones have historically required overhead that startup companies could not afford.

Komodo, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, basically Google is taking it on itself to do for Chrome what ActiveState did for Mozilla years ago -- which led to the excellent and constantly improving Komodo IDE (build on the Mozilla framework)?

Re:Gamepad, webcam, graphics, printing, memory mgm

[swillden]

Good luck getting robust gamepad

Lack of standardization may be an issue there, true. But games of significant complexity in general are going to be platform-specific. Of course, the bar for games that can work as web apps keeps rising.

webcam

That problem is already pretty well-solved. Google video hangouts work well across a wide variety of systems, for example.

3D graphics

There's no real reason that should be hard. We've had solid 3D graphics standards for decades, and while fragmentation due to rapid progress has been an issue (plus some deliberate MS-induced fragmentation), at this point 3D is pretty commoditized. Which isn't to say that this is a solved problem, but just that it's not a technical problem.

audio/video codec (WebM vs. MP4 format war)

Meh. That's just a matter of getting people to stop fighting.

shipping label printer support

If you don't mind needing to be online when you print, that's not an issue either. Drivers in the cloud.

Collaboration

[willy_me]

This browser based app must bring something new to the table to be relevant. My guess is that it will greatly simplify multiple people collaborating on the same project. Solutions already exist but they are not nearly as seamless as they could be. I still remember seeing Smultron for the first time and being very impressed. As far as text editors go, it's nothing special but the ability for several people to edit the same file at the same time was (and still is) impressive.

No one knows exactly how this project will turn out but you can bet Google has their reasons for funding it. I'll take a wait and see approach before passing judgement. It is probably not for me (or you) but will be perfect for others. And if it requires all of these layers to accomplish it's goals then it is not a waste.

Re:Collaboration

[Joining Yet Again]

greatly simplify multiple people collaborating

A decent VCS won't work better just because you're connecting to a development machine in the cloud via RDP/VNC - and neither will it just because you connect to it via HTML+Javascript.

No one knows exactly how this project will turn out but you can bet Google has their reasons for funding it.

Yeah, to advertise to you, or to gather your data to sell to advertisers. The same reasons Google does absolutely everything.

Re:Collaboration

[Lennie]

Distributed VCS is how collaboration is solved.

Sometimes you want realtime collaboration though, someone to talk to, to show you how to do things, to tell you what you are doing wrong while you are doing it.

Or just straight pair programming.

The web already provides all the pieces: microphone/webcam support, real time communication, just look up webrtc.

Combine that with an online editor like etherpad or more advanced for collaborate online code editor.

Re:Collaboration

[Joining Yet Again]

Remind me again why developers would not install development software? If you're sitting at a PC 8+ hours a day for weeks/months/years then you're sure as hell going to spend 30-60 minutes (or 5-10 minutes, if your IT dept are good) setting everything up properly to make it as efficient as possible.

Re:Collaboration

[Lennie]

It's all about devops these days, right ?

You should be able to get the same environment wherever you are ;-)

Scroogled

[tepples]

gamepad

Lack of standardization may be an issue there, true. But games of significant complexity in general are going to be platform-specific.

Yet somehow, SDL manages to abstract gamepad access across multiple PC platforms. True, the button order for non-Xbox 360 controllers varies considerably, but there are ways around that. I seem to remember XBMC maintaining a device description repository for game controllers.

Drivers [for printers] in the cloud.

That would just let Google see everything you print and mine it for keywords.

Re:Scroogled

[swillden]

gamepad

Lack of standardization may be an issue there, true. But games of significant complexity in general are going to be platform-specific.

Yet somehow, SDL manages to abstract gamepad access across multiple PC platforms. True, the button order for non-Xbox 360 controllers varies considerably, but there are ways around that. I seem to remember XBMC maintaining a device description repository for game controllers.

Ah, well, then it can be done. Cool!

html, javacript, and css?

[edibobb]

This is just about the most inefficient programming combination ever devised, with the possibly exception of machine code without libraries. Why in the world doesn't Google provide a real language so we can bypass the archaic syntax and semantics of html and css? HELP! I'M STUCK IN THE MESOZOIC ERA OF PROGRAMMING AND I CAN'T GET OUT!!!

Re:motorbike tours in vietnam

[kumanopuusan]

People have been proclaiming the end of Slashdot for years, but commercial spam taking hold is the fourth horseman of this particular apocalypse.

Re:Google is actually crippling JavaScript

[narcc]

I've been waiting patiently for years to see full local file access added to JavaScript, so that I can start using HTML/JavaScript for general app development.

You could try node-webkit. Yes, it supports the FileSystem API.

Well

[Hognoxious]

For those who don't know, Chrome packaged apps are written in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS,

I didn't, but now I know to avoid them like the plague.

but launch outside the browser, work offline by default, and access certain APIs not available to Web apps. In other words, they're Google's way of pushing the limits of the Web as a platform

And there's another good reason.

Wrong.

[Qbertino]

Imagine if Microsoft had released an MS-branded laptop which only allowed you to use HTML+Javascript and Silverlight apps, and then released a development environment which ran under Silverlight.
That'd be as retarded as this is.

No it wouldn't.

If they gave away all of the software for free, integrated online services for free, if the software were based on an FOSS core, new very essential core components itself were released as FOSS (V8 anyone?) which all would basically prevent long-term lock-in powers for good and gain aknowledgement from the opinion leaders (i.e. us), the hard- and software were well integrated and the hardware itself were usable, sturdy, cheap, lightweight and pleasing in a visual and aesthetical way ... etc.

If all that would happen, then it would definitely not be retarded.
It would actually be quite smart and entrench a solid global market dominance even further. ...

Which is why Google is kicking MSes ass in that dept. btw. ... 1 billion activated android devices and counting. One-stop, cheap, total zero fuss, buy-unpack-turnon-use pissing-into-serious-apple-massuser-territory Chrome OS (mini) laptops that start to look as flashy as iStuff moving into the market, etc. .. You get the picture.

Bottom line:
I'd be carefull to call anything Google is doing right now retarded.

Re:Wrong.

[Joining Yet Again]

tl;dr "I have a hard-on for Android therefore this tangentially related idea is also good."

Microsoft have been around and leading in the consumer+developer software space for about as long as Brin&Page have been alive. I'd be careful to call anything Microsoft does retarded.

Re:Gamepad, webcam, graphics, printing, memory mgm

[Lennie]

Cisco said they would release a free H.264 encoder/decoder:
http://gigaom.com/2013/10/30/mozilla-will-add-h-264-to-firefox-as-cisco-makes-eleventh-hour-push-for-webrtcs-future/

At least free in the sense of: free to download, I don't need to pay MPEG-LA or be worried about their patents.

Cisco is paying for that.

Re:Nothing new. GIB has been a browser IDE for yea

[Lennie]

Cloud9 IDE is also exists, but a large company pouring money in this space might have an even bigger impact.

At least that is how I see these articles.

Re:Visual Studio Online

[Lennie]

Actually, they didn't. They have a way for Visual Studio to control what you do in Azure, as the article says:

"developer services that run on Windows Azure, and extends the capabilities of Visual Studio"

Re:Visual Studio Online

[benjymouse]

Actually, they didn't. They have a way for Visual Studio to control what you do in Azure, as the article says:

"developer services that run on Windows Azure, and extends the capabilities of Visual Studio"

Actually, they did. Although "full-fledged" is probably a stretch when one thinks about Visual Studio. And it was only released as a preview.

This is a screenshot of the in-browser editor, complete with IntelliSense, Solution Explorer etc.

Videos of the beast at Channel9.

Re:Visual Studio Online

[Lennie]

Ohh, OK, thanks for the information.

Long file names in FAT are encumbered

[tepples]

fat16 is unencumbered

Long file names in FAT are encumbered whether or not the volume is larger than 2 GB.

don't know how many times it has to be said

[PJ6]

HTML is probably the worst engineering mistake in human history, in terms of total waste.

You do NOT make a machine-consumable standard "human-readable" or "human-writable". You do NOT combine machine-consumable and human-consumable standards. Human-consumable standards must compile to machine-consumable standards. Human-consumable standards must be associated with products, varied, and market-driven.

The web is easily 10 years behind where we could have been. Let's stop trying to keep shoving a square peg into a round hole. Let's stop trying to make everything HTML.

Leave me alone

[TechyImmigrant]

>HTML, JavaScript, and CSS

Fuck off. I write in Python, C, SystemVerilog and whatever else suits me. I guess I won't be writing Chrome apps.

Re:Do you understand those words?

[Your.Master]

You just totally glossed over the HTML, CSS, and Javascript part of his sentence.

As far as I'm concerned, cross-linked HTML + online syncing = web. Even CSS and Javascript are being a bit over-specific. For instance, one can imagine a different programming language that communed with the browser OM (older versions of IE even let a flavour of Visual Basic in, hilariously).

After all, the majority of websites are completely agnostic to whether you are online between the time you download the html page and the time you click the link. So it's not like "continuously online" is a traditional requirement of the web; before "Web 2.0" syncing was basically always user-initiated and discrete.

In other words, if you open wikipedia, then unplug your ethernet cable, are you no longer viewing a website?

Re:Do you understand those words?

[aaaaaaargh!]

As if HTML, CSS and Javascript was a desirable combination for anything ...

Nexus 7 Question

[LifesABeach]

Is there a web page that shows how to download, install, use the App Developer?

It's called security

[tepples]

I figured that someone would quote that crippled crap they're pushing in JavaScript.

Have you considered that perhaps the user wants it crippled, so that an application cannot read the user's personal data (and disclose it to a third party over the Internet) unless the user explicitly makes it available to that application?

Reminds of AIR.

[Static]

Adobe's Integrated Runtime. Putting aside the problem that Adobe was behind it, this was actually a truly good platform. Apps could be written with any mix of HTML, JS, CSS and/or Flash (put aside your complaints about that, too, for the moment). And best of all: it was genuinely cross-platform. The .air file for an app would run absolutely flawlessly in any of the three environments. They even had a Linux version for a while.

Of course, the sheer problem that it was Adobe behind it served to undermine its power. I reckon Google are right on the edge of that problem with Chrome. For one thing, it actually doesn't have very many options for controlling privacy. For another, it encourages people to sign-in to their Google account. And Google's own websites are targetted for Chrome first and fixed for other browsers later (maybe). Yet they have spurred on significant advances in browser developments. And there are still a lot of programmers who would like to build a local app but only know browser-based programming.

I no longer Trust Google, if I really ever did.

[bbsalem]

The idea that a corporation, a very powerful corporation, had as a motto "Do No Evil" is indication enough that evil is exactly what they are about.

First. consider the short-artention-span approach to products. How can we trust that this initative will be around long enough to feel safe in investing effort?

I recently re-examined the code editors that come from the Google Store that are supposed to work with Google Docs. Sometimes they do, but quite often they don't because of an odd cursor positioning bug that has been known since at least 2010 and which Google engineering has no consistent fix. And now they are talking about a Chrome IDE? How can they be trusted to providing a working product?

Google is an extreme example of the evil that exists in many Capitalist businesses. They want to create a captive market in which they control the user. That is why their API's are closed. Fortunately there is usually an answer for such control-freakism. It is eventual decline of the stock price and end of the business.

The cursor bug exists between several third-party code editor apps, It must be at the level of Google's own API, a problerm having to do with the way font bitmaps interfere with positioning on the bitmap that Google Docs uses in the browser. The bug is hard to repair because Google made a decision about low-level bit operations before or in spite of standards for glyph and font size generation. That is why cursors and fonts sometimes don't match up. If the API were public, people other than Google engineering would have determined the fix long ago, It may be, furthermore, that the problem is intentional, if it locks out third party success with Google's products.

So now they are announcing their own closed IDE? I smell a rat. What is more Google Writer seems to have been intentionally modeled after Microsoft Word 2000, yes 2000! The HTML editor seems no more powerful than Front Page 2000, which is crippled by today's standards. Since I know that Blogger had a working HTML editor, finally. I even suggested that they port that to Google Docs. I have got no reply.

Re:Google is actually crippling JavaScript

[bbsalem]

Yes, that is what business leads to, captive markets, if it is allowed to create closed APIs. The risk is that even large businesses do not have large enough engineering departments to fix bugs that annoyed users can fix in short order when the API is mode pubic and free of selfish-interest. It isn't so much the proprietary developers are stupid, it is that that someone else sets priorities for them and that sometimes they ship broken APIs for business reasons. It is sometimes amazing how fast longstanding bugs are addressed once an open API exists.

I think that an in intermittent cursor positioning bug with Google Docs that onterferes with third party code editors may be a case. It is clearly a bug in Google's API since it appears in several independently maintained Google Store apps. The bug has to do with different combinations of platforms and fonts and with font size and zoomed fonts, so it is a low-level bit map problem. It has been reported on Google's forums since at least 2010 and Google's engineers haven't found a fix. I think it is a design flaw in Google's API that violates a low-level standard for rendering fonts. It may be an intentional breakage that discredits third-party code editor developers. It would probably be fixed in a week if the API were made public.

A whole continent's worth of offline map data

[tepples]

The application can use GPS and do it with offline map data

An Internet-connected navigation application has the advantage of requiring less space in expensive flash memory. Without an Internet connection, you might need to store enough "offline map data" to cover a continent. Or what am I missing?

Re:A whole continent's worth of offline map data

[tepples]

Even if so, Blaskowicz would probably prefer to block Internet-capable apps from using coordinates derived from cell tower trilateration in the same way that he'd block them from using GPS coordinates.

Re:Gamepad, webcam, graphics, printing, memory mgm

[exomondo]

Meh. That's just a matter of getting people to stop fighting.

If only we had your insights in all the other wars across history, never realized the answer was so simple.

Bravo -- see also The Abolition of Work

[Paul Fernhout]

http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html

As a software developer, in some ways I think we hit a peak with languages like Smalltalk, Common Lisp / Symbolics, Erlang, and C in the 1980s and an OS / VM architecture like IBM's System 360 and VM (which was in a sense "open source" till the mid 1980s) and things have been sliding backwards ever since. I learned C around 1983 on Unix (VMUTS) running on VM hardware (on an IBM mainframe with two CPUs where typically when I did a compile VMUTS got one CPU and 100 I/O bound users shared the other, giving me ten a second turn around for "hello world"). VisualWorks+ENVY in the late 1980s was just amazing for its times, solving issues in practice that Java and Eclipse in practice still struggles with on 1000X faster hardware. That all could have just gotten less expensive, faster, and grown gradually, and become more (not less) open. See also: "VM and the VM Community: Past, Present, and Future"
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda/

The reality is, in the US marketplace, people usually create incompatible "standards" on purpose to gain vendor lock-in, or to make some marketing claim, or to work around some copyright or patent. As with Microsoft in the past, companies may intentionally try to sabotage standards (embrace, extend, destroy) as an example of market failure relating to monopoly and externalities. Still, another reason this happens is that creating new things from (seemingly) scratch can be a lot of fun (even as almost everything is built on layers of past work, including notions of physics).

I'm all for experiment and diversity, and I'm all for plug-in modularity, and I'm all for learning-by-doing including through building systems from the ground-up (e.g. http://www.nand2tetris.org/ ). But, practically speaking, our bigger problem these days is mostly too much software, too many standards, too many programming languages, too many libraries, too many IDEs, too many OSes, too many drivers, too many plugins, and too many applications (all with too much accidental complexity). Instead of having a few comprehensive reliable (and free and open source) systems implemented in the above languages and using a common VM standard, we have many half-made buggy ones. This is not to say those languages above could not be improved or that another addition to them would be bad. It is just that at some point a plethora of half-finished choices is its own kind of oppression.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More_Is_Less

See also:
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
"To make things worse, the solution to this is not simply to begin adding meshwork components to the mix. Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, they are constantly turning into one another, but because in real life we find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these cannot be established through theory alone but demand concrete experimentation. Certain standardizations, say, of electric outlet designs or of data-structures traveling through the Internet, may actually turn out to promote heterogenization at another level, in terms of the appliances that may be designed around the standard outlet, or of the services that a common data-structure may make possible. On the other hand, the mere presence of increased heterogeneity is no guarantee that a better state for society has been achieved. After all, the territory occupied by former Yugoslavia is more heterogeneous now than it was ten years ago, but the lack of uniformity at one level simply hides an increase of homogeneity at the level of the warring ethnic communities. But even if we mana