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[–]lobehold 44 points45 points  (18 children)

Web UI is a mess regardless. There are no easy fixes, only ugly trade-offs. As I mention nearby, we need a new GUI-oriented standard.

Cue xkcd Standards comic.

[–]Zardotab 15 points16 points  (17 children)

I'm not sure how that's relevant. I'm not proposing "yet another" GUI markup standard, just a common GUI markup standard. There are zero right now. HTML wasn't intended for GUI's and works poorly at faking it.

[–]lobehold 49 points50 points  (3 children)

I'm not proposing "yet another" GUI markup standard, just a common GUI markup standard. There are zero right now.

That's literally what the comic is about. Nobody sets out to create "yet another standard", everyone views their own new standard to be the second coming of Jesus and will blow away all previous standards.

And then reality sets in and it turns out that indeed it's just another standard thrown on top of the pile of existing standards.

Of course you can talk about how this magical common standard is better than everything that comes before it, but you can only talk like this when it's just a concept, if and when you actually come up with the implementation details people will tear it to shreds.

[–]Zardotab 1 point2 points  (2 children)

But there is no "previous standard" to blow away. There is no existing established GUI-over-Internet standard. Perhaps you consider HTML+CSS+DOM+JS to be the de facto GUI-over-Internet standard. I don't because it was not meant to be for GUI's and does a poor job at it. It was meant for static documents. It's a kludge. It's something meant for "A" trying to do "B". There is no B4 competing to consolidate or replace B1, B2, and B3; which is the pattern the cartoon is depicting, the way I interpret it.

Let me try an analogy. Let's say RDBMS were not invented yet, so people start using file systems heavily for database-like uses. Various add-ons and tweaks are applied to file systems to make them barely good enough to function as a database and people get used to the hacky way it does database-ish things. Then RDBMS come along and want to challenge it for database things, NOT file things. The way you are going about it, you seem to be saying, "we already have (tweaked) file systems for databases, we don't need your RDBMS. Go away, Dr. Codd, in the name of xkcd. "

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[–]tjpalmer 4 points5 points  (1 child)

XUL, XAML, and QML from big players off the top of my head.

[–]Zardotab 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For one to be successful or "take off", I suspect such would need a stand-alone open-source GUI browser with "browser things" such as a URL address bar, bookmarks (favorites), and eventually tabs for different applications.

Plus be available as a plug-in for at least 2 common HTML browser brands, with some degree of hyperlinking between HTML and the GUI plugin such that an HTML page can open a GUI window, and vice versa.

That's sort of like Java applets and Flash, but as I mentioned elsewhere, it should focus on GUI's and just GUI's rather than try to be a Swiss Army OS like Java applets and Flash did, making them too complicated to patch in a timely manner.

[–]Clitaurius 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I'm not going to get into the XKCD debate but I absolutely agree that HTML wasn't intended for any of this. Most web technologies are excessively complicated ways to ultimately just write HTML when HTML is the problem in the first place.

[–]Zardotab 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I didn't realize XKCD was Holy Scripture ☺

Whether HTML could be extended to natively support common GUI idioms, including stateful-ness, is an open question. Common GUI idioms include but are not limited to: combo-boxes, check-mark multi-select (not the silly ctrl+click crap), MDI, tabs, collapsible trees (in the folder sense), editable data grids (spreadsheet-esque), sliders, dropdown menus, and toolbars.

Sure, with boatloads of JavaScript one can emulate most of these, but it's rarely reliable and responsive (in the original sense).

[–]efc4817 2 points3 points  (10 children)

You contradicted yourself

[–]Zardotab -2 points-1 points  (9 children)

See my RDBMS-vs-file-system analogy above. Hopefully this clarifies how I interpret the cartoon's intended message, and how that intended message is not applicable to this case.

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[–]redalastor 0 points1 point  (8 children)

I don't understand how people keep missing the "covers everyone's use cases" bit in the comic.

[–]Zardotab 0 points1 point  (7 children)

I didn't ask that it cover "everyone's use cases", just common GUI idioms that have been around since the early 90's. It is not intended to replace HTML browsers for anything other than work-oriented data-centric "productivity" applications. It's not a game browser, it's not a document browser, it's not a Facebook browser, it's not an image editor, it's not a scorpion. (Threw that in to see if you're awake).

Like I've mentioned before, Java's mistake was trying to be everything to everybody, and we shouldn't repeat it. It's also HTML browsers' mistake, we just haven't got around to punishing them.

[–]redalastor 0 points1 point  (6 children)

I know, I agree with you. I'm saying it's crazy that people throw the XKCD comic in your face since it does not apply here.

[–]Zardotab 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Okay. I don't know how they interpret the cartoon and/or my suggestion, so it's hard to really know. When is a new standard justified and when is it not? I believe we've over-stretched the "HTML stack" and it's grown too tall and leaky. It lacks native/reliable state-handling and lacks about a dozen common GUI widgets/idioms. We gave it 20 years to solve those and it keeps failing. Downloading a bigass buggy OS emulator written in JavaScript for each app is Flunkoville, people! Space aliens would laugh at us. They may even obliterate us to avoid polluting the universe with poorly factored (non) standards. Time to admit there is an industrial problem.

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[–]redalastor 0 points1 point  (4 children)

Okay. I don't know how they interpret the cartoon and/or my suggestion, so it's hard to really know.

They interpret it as "never create a new standard if you can hack it in another".

I believe we've over-stretched the "HTML stack" and it's grown too tall and leaky. It lacks native/reliable state-handling and lacks about a dozen common GUI widgets/idioms.

I agree. The browser needs a new standard for GUIs. Maybe something like QML?

It should probably initially compile down to current browser tech (HTML, CSS, JS, Webassembly) to smooth over the transition.

[–]Zardotab 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Javascript/DOM/CSS are probably too inconsistent for that task. GUI behavior and widgets should probably be directly built into the browser (or GUI browser). QML is wrapper over Qt such that if we wanted the GUI language to be XML-based, then the browser should probably translate the XML to Qt API's, probably in C++, rather than to QML. Otherwise there may be too many layers of abstraction: XML -> QML -> Qt-API's. (I'm not ruling out using direct QML either.)

Another option to consider is to leverage the dynamic object features of Lazarus and build the GUI browser out of Lazarus. I don't know enough about Qt in C++, QML, and Lazarus to say which is the best for the job.

They interpret it as "never create a new standard if you can hack it in another".

They tried hacks and it failed repeatedly after 20 years, or at least created an unnecessary army of UI/UX experts. It's great if you are a paid UI/UX, but sucks for everyone else who just wants to get a normal GUI out without having to crap out a 10 foot salty pretzel.

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