
Chrome: Closing the capability gap between the web and native - feross
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/capabilities
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carlosdp
It kinda surprises me that Google is the one to jump on this rather than
Mozilla given that Mozilla has already implemented version of a lot of these
APIs (at least the mobile-related ones) as part of FirefoxOS. I guess maybe
not having that skin in the game anymore prevented those APIs from becoming
standardized?

But these are also very useful for desktop applications. Anyways, this is a
great initiative, it's about time a real effort was made to close that gap.

~~~
mindcrime
_Anyways, this is a great initiative, it 's about time a real effort was made
to close that gap._

That's actually debatable. Arguably moving more of this stuff into the browser
is just digging us deeper and deeper into the "browser as a poor man's
operating system" hole, and creating more of a "we have an OS running on top
of an OS" scenario. It might well make more sense for the browser to just
_browse_ and then hand content which needs these capabilities off to native
code that implements them.

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ender7
There's a decent argument that _current desktop OSes_ are a poor man's OS. The
permissive-by-default approach of traditional OSes is deeply problematic and
attempts at reigning that in (Mac App store sandbox, capabilities work on
*nix) have largely failed to gain any traction.

It's certainly not elegant that we build a proper security model from within a
browser rather than an OS, but it might be the only practical approach (short
of some large-scale migration to iOS/Android/Fuschia etc, which
seems...unlikely.)

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izacus
> There's a decent argument that current desktop OSes are a poor man's OS. The
> permissive-by-default approach of traditional OSes is deeply problematic and
> attempts at reigning that in (Mac App store sandbox, capabilities work on
> *nix) have largely failed to gain any traction.

What if they've failed because they're a poor idea that damage the reason why
computers have become an ubiquitous tool and drivers of innovation? In Apples
little golden garden, Linux, Chrome and hundreds of other things you've come
to understand as required features of an OS would not exist. If Microsoft
would ban competitive browsers like Apple did, we'd never dig out of the
cesspool of IE6 internet.

And to build such innovative and updated software, you NEED the ability to
modify parts of the system, not a sandbox.

(Disclaimer: This does not mean the security approach does not need to be
updated. Sandboxes aren't a general solution though.)

------
polskibus
Is this the electron killer?

~~~
Svoka
More of Electron Enhancer, really.

