

The web sucks. Browsers need to innovate - a4agarwal
http://sachin.posterous.com/the-web-sucks

======
fjabre
The web is the closest we've ever come to a standards compliant universal
platform that is write once - works everywhere, period.

Last time I checked you have to be a paid member and go through an oft-
criticized approval process to develop for Apple's proprietary app store
platform on all iDevices.

Besides, Chrome OS and webkit are supposed to usher in a new era of enhanced
HTML5/Canvas support including better access to the GPU. Google is betting on
Web apps and I'm pretty sure Apple is not ignoring them with a standards
compliant Safari browser on all of its devices.

So the web doesn't suck.. It rocks - and it will continue to do so for the
foreseeable future.

~~~
mattmanser
"works everywhere, period"

Hehe. This made me chuckle a lot.

We are now entering an era where the hardware is suddenly significantly
different, but your app may have to target all 3. As in an iPhone sized
screen, an iPad sized screen and a monitor. Often you won't be able to use the
same app for each one. The UX has to be different.

So the dream of write once - works everywhere is now at an end because of the
devices themselves.

~~~
fjabre
Well you make a good point but I'd argue that most web apps are easily
adjusted to work well using Safari even on something the size of an iPhone.
Take Hacker News for example - half the time I'm reading/commenting on my
iPhone even though this site is not iPhone optimized.

~~~
infinite8s
Hacker news is on the low end of the webapp scale.

------
dean
Why does the OP compare the web to the iPad? The iPad is really just another
standalone computer running a native OS like the Mac or the PC. In this
context, he's really just comparing web applications to desktop applications,
which is a comparison that has been made for years. Nothing new here.

Locally installed applications are slicker and more responsive than web
applications. They always have been, yet developers have moved to the web in
droves despite that. Why? Because the web offers other advantages, like being
accessible from anywhere, for one. It's the closest thing we have so far to
the dream of write once, run anywhere.

"People use web search today because they don't know how else to find high
quality information."

That's what search is. No point in searching for something if you already know
where it is.

"The web is a mess of content with no organization. On an iPhone, I launch the
appropriate app"

Great idea, if you can organize every bit of info on the net into its own app.
I wonder how many screens that would be on an iPhone?

I agree that browsers are constrained in how they can innovate, and it is a
problem. But the web is not going away. Search is not going away. And iPads
are never, ever going to replace the web.

------
RyanMcGreal
>Why do all browsers have to support the same standards?

Written like someone who wasn't around for the mid-to-late 199s.

------
Rauchg
Article full of emotions, disconnected ideas and "facts", no real arguments :(

Good luck looking at tiny progress bars when upgrading your ABC app, I'll just
press refresh.

Oh, and how do you intend to share the ABC news stories with your friends?
abc://article ?

~~~
swernli
I don't think you've tried the app he is talking about. The ABC app for iPad
is for watching the streaming video of recent shows. It has nothing to do with
articles or sharing.

Call me old fashioned, but when I want to share something with a friend, I
either tell them about it myself when I see them, or worst case scenario I
shoot a quick email that says "Check out the new episode of Castle on
abc.com!" The only people I know who wouldn't be able to parse that simple
message and then go to the website and watch the show also don't check their
email or even have an active account. Not everything has to be an automatic,
shareable mini-link that can be pasted into a twitter stream.

~~~
aboodman
Wow, really?

I guess hyperlinks aren't _required_ for sharing, but they are so cool. The
fact that on the web you can try a service just by following a link that a
friend mails you makes things so incredibly frictionless. I supect that
conversion for "just go look on abc.com" is a lot worse than "click this
link".

Same thing for advertising. If there were no hyperlinks, you wouldn't be able
to track conversion on your ads. That seems important.

Not to mention the fact that URLs are unique identifiers. So you can do
analytics and find all the referers to your app/movie/article/whatever.

------
jessriedel
The problems with browsers compared to web apps are well described by the OP,
but I just don't understand the author's solution. Have everyone do their own
thing? Make me download an app for _every_ website I visit?

This seems like the worst possible outcome:

> Why do all browsers have to support the same standards? This only limits
> their innovation, and limits web developers.

Shouldn't the solution instead be a new, more powerful standard? (Ignoring how
pie-in-the-sky this is.) As in, not band-aids like AJAX and Flash, but a from-
the-ground-up standard? After all, 99% of iPad apps have the same basic
capabilities; there's no reason you couldn't have a standard which replaces
HTML which could fully cover those apps. Then, if you have a need for a
_really_ specialized service, you can create a dedicated app.

~~~
einarvollset
Ah yes, the new more powerful standard. Agreed by Google, Microsoft, Apple,
Oracle, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Standards are for lowest common denominator and almost by design are never,
ever simple enough - see e.g. SOAP vs REST, XML vs JSON (Dave Winer be
damned).

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I'm not sure what your point is. REST [1] has beaten SOAP as the de facto API
standard, and JSON has beaten XML as the de facto standard for portable data
structure.

[1] Notwithstanding: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1304244>

~~~
kree10
I think the point is the "winners" have something in common and this is no
accident.

XML and SOAP came out of "let's invent new formats and protocols"-type
standardization, while REST and JSON were products of (essentially) one guy
looking at a simple, existing, well-known concept (HTTP and js object
literals, respectively) and putting a new frame around it.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I understand what you're saying and broadly agree with you; though I'd point
out that Roy Fielding, the guy who articulated REST, was one of the principal
authors of the HTTP specification.

------
asnyder
This isn't true. There are numerous toolsets that allow you to have desktop
grade applications. Fluid dynamic feel, drag & drop, etc. I'm the co-founder
of one of these toolsets, NOLOH (<http://www.noloh.com>), but there are others
such as Cappuccino, Sproutcore, qooxdoo, etc.

With the above tools you literally just sit down, start writing your
application and forget about browser issues, or limitations. The issue isn't
that you can't do it, but that people aren't.

Once we accept that the issues mentioned in the article aren't in fact issues
anymore, since many toolsets have solved these problems, we can then sit down
and spend a few minutes watching a video, or reading an article and help the
web move forward. We don't get anywhere by saying we can't do things, because
the fact is, we can. You just have to use the tools available to you.

~~~
hernan7
Also, I would say that if the absence of "desktop grade" UI functions makes
the web dev's focus on the app's core functionality at the expense of eye
candy, then I'm all for it. But then, I don't use drag & drop too much myself.

------
revorad
_When GMail launched in 2004, it took one step forward and 10 steps backwards
from the mail application I was using. Even today, the major features GMail is
releasing are simply trying to match the features I've had on the desktop for
years._

Sachin, isn't that true about Posterous too?

While I agree with the points you make about the weakness of the web, you are
missing one key point.

The web makes it possible for the end user to stop thinking about the OS and
installing stuff. If we had to move to the model you are suggesting, people
would have to start choosing browsers. It would be sad if I couldn't use
Posterous because it doesn't work on the Ubuntu version of Firefox.

Besides, considering most people don't even know what a browser is, why would
you want to make them install 5 different ones? It will only bring back the IT
department.

~~~
a4agarwal
When we launched posterous in 2008, yes it was missing a bunch of features.
But look at us now (or actually, in a month, we have a lot of stuff about to
launch). We'll have everything all other blog platforms have, and more.

But SIX YEARS after gmail's launch, they can't say the same.

For Posterous, and any other web app, we'd have to decide the tradeoff. If we
focused on one browser, could we add enough value to that experience that it's
worth dropping support for Ubuntu Firefox?

Each browser and each developer should be able to decide this, instead of
being slowed down by the platform as a whole.

~~~
revorad
Come on, are you really suggesting that gmail didn't add any value and is just
playing catch up with old email software? Free unlimited email storage? Auto-
saving and suggesting contacts? Threaded email conversations? Big attachments?
AJAX? Email search that works?

 _Each browser and each developer should be able to decide this, instead of
being slowed down by the platform as a whole._

You know you _do_ have the freedom to pick one browser. But you won't because
it makes no business sense, unless you are talking about innovation in a
vacuum.

We are re-inventing the wheel with the web to some extent. But it is already
beginning to get very good very fast and Posterous is a good parallel of that
phenomenon in the blogging world.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
I would go farther and suggest that GMail was designed with the intention of
making the desktop version of email obsolete.

They added in some desktop features primarily (IMHO) to support users who were
so ingrained in their usage patterns that they couldn't see that really good
search was actually BETTER than putting your email into folders. Desktop apps
are only just beginning to catch up with faster search--and they still don't
do it as well as Google.

------
what
"People use web search today because they don't know how else to find high
quality information. The web is a mess of content with no organization. On an
iPhone, I launch the appropriate app."

How is launching the appropriate app a way to find high quality information?
You would have to know which app contains the information you're looking for,
in which case you already found it.

I would rather do web search and get a direct link to the information I'm
looking for than search the app store for an appropriate app and then have to
find the relevant information within the app.

------
weixiyen
> When I started writing this post last week, it was going to declare the end
> of the web. I'm not quite ready to call it dead, but it's on thin ice.

That's where I stopped reading and lol'd

------
jz
IMHO one of the main reasons for the success of OS X and the iPhone/iPad
platform is due to web browsers. Imagine a world where web browsers didn't
exist but only specific "thick clients" that used the Internet as a web
service to access and store data. Almost all these clients would be originally
developed for Windows (Flash player was) with Mac and *nix as an after
thought. What if you couldn't access Facbook, gmail, Twitter, etc through a
web browser? Without the ability to do your day to day activities on a non
Window's platform, how many users would make the jump to a Mac or an
iPod/Phone/Pad?

------
modeless
This guy is so wrong; everything he describes is already happening; he just
doesn't see it. There was stagnation for a few years which we're still
catching up from, but these days we have innovation out the wazoo.

Take WebGL as an example: it started as a Firefox developer's side project,
and competed for a while with other 3D APIs like Opera's simple 3D and
Google's O3D. Then Khronos got involved, a standard got written, WebKit got
support, and next year we'll likely have 3D games written in Javascript
running on our phones.

What part of that process is broken? Seems to me as if it's working perfectly.

------
jarek
I've seen this argument so many times I've lost count.

If you compare an iPad app against a website, yes, the iPad app is better for
the amount of effort put in. Now go and make an iPhone OS app, an Android app,
a J2ME app, a Windows app, and a Mac OS X app, and you still won't reach as
many users as with a single website.

Fracturing the web with browser-created SDKs will break the foremost feature
of the web, and quite frankly, we've been there before and it didn't work out
that great. Does any developer miss 1997, browser wars 1.0?

------
synnik
The author is oblivious to the irony that he is publishing his rant on the
exact platform that he chooses to vilify.

The fact is that the web is a monstrous success at its purpose - to share
information. The fact that it isn't rich enough for his taste just shows
exactly how great it is. He is taking the entire thing for granted, and
whining about what really are extra features.

Could we find something better for some apps? Sure, but that in no way
invalidates the gigantor success of the web as a whole.

------
nlawalker
The author's idea essentially equates to taking the proprietary-ness of
plugins and expanding them to the entire browser application. Instead of
having a Silverlight plugin and a Flash plugin, we'd have an Adobe browser and
Microsoft browser (that's even more proprietary than the current one). At
least, that's my idea of it. If the author is suggesting a proprietary
application to represent a single web site, that won't fly.

I agree on most points - if we want to see _really_ rich web apps, this would
be the way to go, and despite existing standards every browser supports
proprietary stuff anyway, so we might as well stop fighting it - but the main
problem is that users will no longer have a single blue E or swirly red dog on
their desktop that they can rely on to bring them everything on the web.

Couple this idea with some standards about how all of these different browsers
will be made available and standards that require one browser type to be able
to open another browser type if the target content better supports the other
browser, and maybe we could get somewhere.

------
fleaflicker
The web "sucks" compared to iPad apps because those apps aren't overrun with
seizure-inducing ads and crammed with superfluous SEO-optimized content.

IPad apps are designed exclusively to focus on the content or application.

The same is true for iPhone apps. Limited screen real estate forces developers
to focus on the usability of their core product.

For example, media iPhone apps focus on the content (i.e., the article or the
video). Media websites focus on selling display ads, driving traffic to other
sites owned by the same parent company, and forcing as much content as
possible onto the page to draw SEO traffic.

So the iPad appears light years more advanced but it's not. Its presentation
is just more focused.

------
jsz0
We already tried that. Remember the late 90's? IE4/5/6? Microsoft via
Windows/IE are still in the best spot to push the proprietary web. They may
have _only_ 50% market share but that's quite an advantage over 15% for WebKit
and 25% for Firefox unless they combine forces. As long as Windows remains
dominate on the desktop ~90% of people can simply click on IE to access an IE-
only website. Before too long they'll forget Chrome or Firefox ever existed.
Few sane developers will exclude 50% of the market.

~~~
stanleydrew
I highly doubt that people who have tried chrome or Firefox will forget it
existed. they may not use those browsers at work right now. but corporate apps
are changing rapidly towards true open web-standards-based browser solutions.
and as that transition accelerates its hard to see how the fastest browser
doesn't win. my money's on chrome.

------
misuba
People like apps because installing and opening an app doesn't make them feel
stupid. Remember the ReadWriteWeb Facebook-login debacle? Even the users who
didn't make the same mistakes as those folks still feel frustrated with all
the steps and layers in between them and what they want. And don't get me
started on URLs.

People don't want browsers - they want Facebook. They want YouTube. We don't
need better browsers; we need the Cocoa API to be cross-platform (and stop
sucking).

------
jheriko
I'd disagree, I think its more about how programmers are using the web. The
plethora of easy web languages is the problem - they've encouraged programmers
to develop the wrong solutions - webpages based on a towering technology
stack, instead of a "proper" program to be run on client machines that makes
use of the internet to support its features. Of course this is a lot harder
than producing a website solution, there are platform issues etc... but its
hard to deny that this allows you to produce a higher quality app - you
basically get complete control of everything that a browser or Flash or
whatever will do for you.

i.e. The web doesn't have to change to get the result this article seems to
want - just the plethora of crappy programmers who abuse it.

------
protomyth
I know this is heresy. but someone should start working on the next thing.
Gopher got replaced.

~~~
Semiapies
Warm up your editor/IDE.

~~~
protomyth
I'm pretty sure I am not that smart. I always thought some persistently-
connected, Display Postscript like thing would do it, but it would have to be
designed for the interactive from the ground up.

~~~
Semiapies
Then find someone to fund who can. It doesn't do any good to sit around
barking at the world to do things for you.

~~~
protomyth
I think my partner on my current project would have some words... :)

------
tjmc
"on April 12, Steve Jobs said, 'Search is not where it’s at...' Full six years
ago I blogged about people's over dependence on search"

Mate, unless you're the same Sachin that bats for India I doubt people are
paying quite as much attention.

------
Qz
I think he's right that browsers need to innovate, not by innovating new ways
for web apps to do things, but by innovating new ways to interact with
existing web apps. There's a whole load of potential integration between
browsers and web content, and while there are various browser based
twitter/whatever clients and whatnot, most of them feel tacked on rather than
integrated. The internet tends to feel like a giant cobweb, rather than a
woven spiderweb.

------
sshumaker
The OP says: "Each browser should focus on innovation, not parity."

If that's the case, developers won't bother using those shiny new proprietary
features. We're in the business of making products, and there's no way most
people are going to waste their time adding tons of browser-specific features.

The fact that the browsers don't have parity is probably the most time-
consuming thing about web development.

------
cageface
I really couldn't disagree more strongly with this. The advantages of web-
based apps (distribution, network awareness, persistence etc) already outweigh
native apps for a lot of applications and this will only be more true as HTML5
compliant browsers become commonplace.

If anything it's the complex content creation apps that devices like the iPad
seem to eschew that will be last to go online.

------
olalonde
I could refute almost every single point in the first set of arguments.

~~~
a4agarwal
go for it

~~~
olalonde
WebSocket, Canvas, Web Workers, HTML5 drag and drop API, WebGL, O3D,
Application Cache API, Chrome/FF (and possibly other browsers) allow web apps
to open mailto: links, FireBug, Web Developer Toolbar, etc. etc.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Unless you actually refute EVERY SINGLE OBJECTION, apps still win, at least in
the user-experience sense. Something as small as not getting an hourglass when
the app is "thinking" is a bug, which every web app has right now.

~~~
weavejester
It's pretty trivial to turn the cursor into an hourglass with CSS. That isn't
a limitation of web applications.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Then why do nearly none of them do it? Probably because they can't judge when
they will stutter and lag - so many layers of web indirection. The fact is,
most web apps only a mother could love. The rest of us are sitting stunned and
silent when someone shows off their latest "jewel" which stutters, lags, has
buttons that don't react when pressed, takes 3-5 seconds to put up/take down a
dialog based on a server database query...

------
patrickk
_"On the web, people still use plain text editors."_

I use DreamWeaver, which I happen to think is quite nice.

------
mattmanser
To me, this feels like the difference between smartphone and desktop/laptop
kinda boils down to the Appstore being on the homescreen.

In a way what he's asking for is already there, Adobe Air and Silverlight.

They can both do exactly as Sachin asks for, web focused, quick downloading,
rich applications, just like iPhone apps. Fantastic dev environments.

But how do you find those apps? There's no Air store on every desktop. MS
could never put a Silverlight store on every desktop without being slapped
silly with monopoly charges. Apple are never gonna put an Adobe Air store on
every Mac.

What he's asking for, in a way, is impossible, a new type of browser won't fix
it. In reality only Microsoft or Apple can. Or a totally new OS. And I doubt
Chrome OS is going to go in that direction.

------
eli_s
This is just about the stupidest thing i have ever read.

From one of Sachin's comment 'Users would want to use your product and
therefore they would switch to Chrome. Other browser would lose market share
and either implement whatever makes Chrome better for you, or do even better.'

Rebuttal: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ>

nuff said

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clammer
So we're back to web apps vs. desktop apps? An iPad app is installed software
running against a native OS API, so I'm not sure why it's singled out when
it's just another form factor for a desktop.

Browser based software sucks for a few reasons, but I'm not sure the most
glaring were mentioned. It's also fantastic for many other reasons some apps
are awesome on the web.

You can write a photoshop app for the browser, but why would you want to?
Certain apps belong on the desktop, so let's not blame the web for
that...unless you're one of those people who thought desktop apps were dead.

------
TotlolRon
The world sucks. It needs to be like EPCOT.

