What’s stopping web standards from being made simple or unchanging enough for a smaller project to maintain a functional web browser?
What’s stopping web standards from being made simple or unchanging enough for a smaller project to maintain a functional web browser?
SpaceScotsman@startrek.website 1 year ago
At this point the web is about as complex as an operating system in terms of complexity. That needs really strong specific standards in order for it to work, and in turn projects like web browsers are huge and complex.
If someone wanted to build a web browser that only followed the simpler parts of the specifications, it wouldn’t work for many websites* and people would not use that browser.
*Whether or not sites need to be so complex is another question entirely, but the reality right now is that they are
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Occasionally when I do web stuff I look into the big frameworks but quickly get overwhelmed and go back to simple html/css/js, so yeah I kind of just don’t get what the point is or why anyone needs or wants complexity there. Large websites always do most stuff serverside anyway it seems, so where is this complexity even getting used? Suspect Google etc. are pushing stuff no one needs in this regard as well to move the web towards something only they can handle.
dan@upvote.au 1 year ago
There’s a very large number of DOM and browser APIs now though… Even with basic JS without libraries or frameworks, you can still build fancy 2D and 3D graphics (WebGL), interact with USB devices, allow input via game controllers, stream H264 video, implement custom caching, use push notifications, and a bunch of other things. The web browser has to implement all of that complexity.
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
That’s a good point, I guess I haven’t been too aware of all that stuff.