Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

back in the olden days a web browser was largely considered just a program to read documents stored on other systems that can be linked to each other sent over a simple stateless protocol. Then we started to be able to collect user input, then a hack was invented to maintain state between requst/response pairs (cookies), then a scripting language etc

There are many use cases out there where not treating a browser as a container to run an actual application is the right way to go. On the other hand, there's many use cases where you want the browser to be, basically, a desktop app container.

The big bold letters at the top of the article declaring htmlx is the future is a bit much. It has its place and maybe people are re-discovering it but it's certainly not the future of web development IMO. The article gives me kind of web dev career whiplash.



When do you want the browser to be anything more than a hypertext document viewer and why?


Roughly every time I can use something by just typing some words instead of downloading a .exe.


Or its close friend: when I want to use the data or customize the UI via `document.querySelectorAll`




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: