Re: Next Web Focus

On 1/24/14 10:15 PM, Brian Kardell wrote:
>  > I thought this group was focused on polyfills and extending the
>  > browser using the tools available within it.
>
> The aims of this group are, yes focused on advocating and discussing
> polyfills and prollyfills - and advocacy that enables this, for
> significant reasons and in ways described on extensiblewebmanifesto.org
> <http://extensiblewebmanifesto.org>.  Very key among these is that it
> provides an evolutionary model forward rather than allowing a browser to
> stymie efforts or prompting big bets on radical change which, if they
> fail (and many do), stall forward momentum on the current platform.
> Actually, i would say the majority of work has been applying this
> advocacy in existing WGs to prioritize efforts in this direction as a
> guiding philosophy.

Nothing in the mission statement or the manifesto requires the kind of 
derision for separation of concerns that has been a regular feature of 
this group in the last few weeks.

> There is a significant amount of new magic being discussed in the CSS WG
> aimed at advancing the goals I described in the post I put to the group.
>
> There are also  members of the WG attempting to explain the existing
> magic and create a more extensible system where this sort of
> experimentation can take place outside and follow a more evolutionary
> path without a big bet.  Since there are wholly lacking primitives or
> explanations necessary to provide the level of separation that they
> seek, this is substantial.  One of these (Regions) is attempting to at
> least explain the newly proposed magic in many of them. The majority of
> the regions draft attempts to lay out the fundamental primitives that
> can be used to explain the rest.  Debating the appropriate primitives is
> fair game, but there has been little of that actually.  I'd love to see
> more.  In any case, the one major issue that a lot of people seem to
> have is that it recognizes something about the fact that the DOM is,
> indeed, involved in rendering today - and that as such, in order to do
> something practical today the only box that is pragmatically useful
> until those other ones come about is the one that is there now.  This is
> fine for many, but met with reproach by some who prefer something purely
> more in line with their aims, which, as I say introduce some pretty
> significantly new things at a high level.

There's magic and then there's magic.  The Web already holds a lot of 
magic.  "Pragmatically useful" in this conversation seems to be the 
polite way to say "I have this tactical need and don't have much concern 
for its impact on the larger strategy."

> It seemed significant to me and that we ought discuss in terms i thought
> relevant.  That seems to have gotten a little off in the weeds.

 From my perspective, this thread went off in the weeds from the outset. 
  I watched for a long time before deciding that it was time to point 
out how strange it was.

>  > From my perspective, the very separation of concerns this derides as
> a dead horse is what makes polyfills and browser extensions possible
> without infinite tangles.
>
>  > Based on this message, though, it seems like the "next web"
>  > perspective is something much more severe, leaning toward throwing
>  > over the things that have worked in the past in favor of rapid
>  > application development.
>
> I am beginning to worry that we have some significant communication
> barrier going on here.

No.  We have a values barrier here.

> My comments and aims, and it reads to me like
> those of others as well are all around minimizing the severity of change

Conversation about minimizing change doesn't help when the actual 
layer-blurring proposal reaches directly to the heart of how we build 
web applications and sites.  "It's just one tiny little change", but 
there's a much larger impact on the overall ecosystem.

You asked earlier for examples in code, but the problem, like most 
architectural problems, isn't actually in code.  The problem is in the 
integration and social layers above it.

> to the standards in platform at once and create an environment in which
> we can prove out and improve before we invest years or even decades into
> significantly new very high level abstractions in standards.  Where new
> magic is necessary, explain it such that continued work and improvement
> can harness significant mindshare and be proven out.  I really don't see
> how it could be taken otherwise.

Rushing for the new magic while polyfills still need a lot of love and 
attention seems like a major mistake to me.

I get the logic of ever more ever faster to get mindshare and shiny and 
racing to meet the expectations of developers who just want to build 
apps and happen to be stuck using web tools. I'd prefer, though, that 
extensions of the Web recognize the foundations that made them possible.

The work described in the Extensible Web Manifesto has only begun.  The 
virtuous cycle of API development through polyfills still needs a 
serious jumpstart.  I agree that it's the way forward, and would much 
rather see focus on building a polyfill ecosystem than pushes for 
changes to the basic structures of HTML/CSS/JS/DOM interaction.

Browsers certainly are exposing more functionality through APIs, but are 
regions really a "low-level capability"?  It seems unlikely to me.

>  > Is that really the purpose of this group?
>  >
> I hope i have clarified my original intent in posting this to the
> group.  If not, I'm happy to have a more rapid exchange directly if you
> feel that would be  more helpful and we can always loop it back in if we
> come to any form of resolution.

For now I plan to return to observer status, and will work outside of 
this group to promote what I thought it was trying to do.  I've been 
doing that anyway, for a very long time.

(I'll still have an article for Wednesday, and will let you all know 
when it goes up.)

Thanks,
-- 
Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com/

Received on Saturday, 25 January 2014 12:29:20 UTC