good point. in a sense webassembly is that minimal very performant language. let javascript and typescript compile to webassembly, and you essentially got what is being proposed here
The DOM itself is very slow, much slower than Javascript, so you're not going to be seeing any great performance increase if WASM can access the DOM directly.
I also have to wonder if people are excited about replacing Javascript, why they would want to have HTML/CSS/DOM on top of WASM. A different front-end UI tech could be much better than slow, old DOM.
All imports have to come from the host, which in the case of the web means they have to be expressed as JavaScript. Behind the scenes they could be optimized, though, and I've heard that JS/Wasm engines maybe already be doing this with well-known imports (think Math.sin).
Drawing to canvas means recreating the UI and all its wide-sweeping concerns, which is quite an undertaking. And even if it were accomplished in a central open source library like Flutter, that adds a considerable amount to the package size of any application. Acceptable (or even preferred) for certain applications but not for most.
Providing access to an already proven DOM would be the better solution.
> And even if it were accomplished in a central open source library like Flutter, that adds a considerable amount to the package size of any application.
The download isn't much different to a typical website. That Flutter demo in wasm is 2 megabytes.
Uno Platform's WebAssembly implementation uses the DOM rather than drawing to canvas: https://platform.uno/
Uno's philosophy is to use platform native controls. The benefit is that you get platform native characteristics, the cost is it will never be exactly the same in each browser and platform.
You're joking, right? A 2mb bundle is *absolutely unacceptable*. People complain about React which is less than 100kb minified and gzipped. This website doesn't even include any images or anything...
What would access to the DOM look like? WASM already has import and export (nearly) arbitrary functions. People keep saying it can't manipulate the DOM, but it clearly can. So, what's missing?
I thing we agree. JavaScript is awful, and TypeScript is simultaneously impressive and still awful. I think we have three options:
A) Get your hands dirty and write what you want. Once.
B) Chant along with the mob who doesn't even understand what they're asking for.
C) Wait several years for some super complicated solution to be designed by committee.
I wouldn't even want direct access to the DOM if we had it today. The DOM as an API is atrocious.
Instead, I want a set of nice functions that do things like put a graphical chart on the page - all in one call. Or one call to pass a bunch of 3D triangles or splats to visualize in a WebGL canvas. Or one call to play some audio samples. Or a function to poll for recording audio. And so on...
if option A works, why aren't there any frameworks yet that implement it?
maybe all the framework devs are waiting for C?
but why?
you could be right about A but at present the majority view seems to be that C is the right option. which is what pushes me into going with B because i have no interest in developing my own framework.
if a framework appears that implements option A i'll gladly consider it. (just as long as it isn't tightly coupled with a backend)
So throwing out literally 99% of what makes the web actually portable and useful?
A random drawn rectangle is not a UI, it’s not accessible, not inspectable, not part of the de facto OS native toolkit.
If all we wanted is a random cross-platform canvas element to draw onto from a vm, it could be solved in a weekend. There are million examples of that.
Its web targeted version is still not accessible, even though they promised that they will actually render to HTML elements as much as possible. A single canvas element is not that.
> The Flutter team would like to eventually turn the semantics on by default in Flutter Web. However, at the moment, this would lead to noticeable performance costs in a significant number of cases, and requires some optimization before the default can be changed
Ah, so you admit it does indeed include accessibility but now what you're complaining about is performance. Not that you've actually tried it of course.
Can you give an example of anything anywhere that manipulates the DOM without using JavaScript? Because it seems to me that pretty much every web application is currently using the javascript host, and the well written ones are pretty snappy.
this is going beyond my level of experience, but i thought there can't be any such example because javascript is the only way. the difference is between code written in javascript which is fast of course and accessing js functions from WASM, which is slower. how much slower, i don't know. i also don't know how old that discussion is where i learned about this. so maybe it improved since. that would be good news.
did you mean there are snappy webapplications running in WASM? if you have any examples, i'd be curiuos to learn more.
> i thought there can't be any such example because javascript is the only way. the difference is between code written in javascript which is fast of course and accessing js functions from WASM
That doesn't have to be true.
Eventually WASM will get direct access to the full browser API, without going through JavaScript.
The browser exposes a browser API to the JavaScript VM it hosts, so things like the DOM are available.
Those things aren't available in other JavaScript VMs, like Node. (There's no DOM to interact with.)
And they're not yet available in the WASM VM in the browser, either.
The reason is that the WASM APIs/ABIs have not stabilised. It takes time to make right, but there is progress.
Eventually WASM will get direct access to the full browser API, without going through JavaScript.
well, that is what i am waiting for. my point is that it's not the case yet, while the gp seemed to suggest that it's not needed because access through the host is available
A fundamental aspect of the Wasm capability security model is that all access to the outside world (I/O) is controlled via imports. Direct access to the entire browser API doesn't make sense in this context.
> [...] go through the javascript host, which is slow
And now you admit:
> this is going beyond my level of experience [...]
> how much slower, i don't know
I guess people just repeat what they hear without questioning or understanding it, and then it becomes dogma.
> did you mean there are snappy webapplications running in WASM?
No. I meant that all existing web apps go through the "javascript host", using JavaScript. So if any of them are fast enough, and some certainly are, the problem isn't the "javascript host".
I commented this elsewhere, but the funny thing is that asm.js was the precursor to WebAssembly, and this proposal is essentially asking for asm.js back again.
