I'll be frank as well then :)
On Thu, Aug 19, 2021 at 7:59 AM Marcos Caceres <marcosc@w3.org> wrote:
>
>
> > On 16 Aug 2021, at 10:26 pm, Thomas Steiner <tomac@google.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 2:50 AM Marcos Caceres <marcosc@w3.org> wrote:
> > Thanks for attempting to pick this up again. My opinion/advice as
> someone involved with this API from the beginning...
> >
> > Thanks a lot, greatly appreciated!
>
> To be frank (and this is not in any way directed at you, Thomas!): After
> 7+ years, I think the API is now too poisoned by bad history to revive.
The API is alive and kicking, and it's being used
<https://www.algolia.com/blog/engineering/netinfo-api-algolia-javascript-client>
by enthusiastic
<https://twitter.com/Dieulot/status/1427699698996031490> developers
to provide better
<https://github.com/WICG/netinfo/issues/85#issuecomment-615161295>
experiences
<https://github.com/WICG/netinfo/issues/85#issuecomment-615346371> to users
<https://github.com/WICG/netinfo/issues/85#issuecomment-621454042>.
From my perspective, there are a few issues this reboot can solve:
1) The API is currently exposing too much information and could potentially
cover the same use cases while exposing less entropy
2) The API is currently not as useful as it can be, and can cover the use
cases more accurately
3) The API is currently Chromium-only. That is mostly due to criticism
related to (1), as well as lack of interest in the legitimate use cases
that it solves. Fixing (1) could solve the former part.
I'd urge us to just cut our losses and see if we can just do something
> new/entirely different or come at this from a different angle.
Again - this is being used in the wild today to create better experiences
for bandwidth-constrained users, as well as better analytics. "Cutting our
losses" would mean to regress the web experience for users under harsh
network-conditions and remove those developers' ability to optimize their
sites for these scenarios.
>
>
> Instead of focusing on the API at all, if we can get other implementers -
> which are noticeably absent from the cc: and possibly the working group (!)
> - to agree on a tiny set of use cases, I think that would be a better
> (re)start to this effort.
>
> Otherwise, I worry that we are going to just fall into the "well, we all
> think it's a good idea" Chromium-echo-chamber, while just further
> frustrating and polarizing WebKit and Gecko folks with respect to the
> netinfo use cases. I know that's not on purpose, but that's kinda where we
> are (specially with anything "net info").
>
> Kind regards,
> Marcos
>
>