Re: [webvr] Chrome WebVR avaliable only on secure origins

Not to dispute the very legitimate points addressed in the past few
threads, just FYI it's possible to start Chrome and Firefox such that a
local web server is not needed (for three.js/A-Frame/WebVR development, for
example):
https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/wiki/How-to-run-things-locally#content-loaded-from-external-files

I try to link to that page in project READMEs and documentation. Just
trying to spread the knowledge, but obviously I'm not dismissing the other
points.

The same-origin policy is a hassle, yes. It's also the sandbox that enables
folks to load a web page and not be afraid of getting a virus. FWIW, IME,
most (non-super-technical) folks I've encountered understand this. And
they're the same folks who get scared when they see contextless permission
prompts and blindly accept them because… all my friends use Whatsapp or
Snapchat. Again, not an excuse. It's just the landscape today.

For folks interested, Anne van Kesteren (standards guru at Mozilla) has
written quite a few good pieces on his blog about these very topics. Though
he's advocated for the same-origin policy (for the aforementioned reasons),
he is also critical of its hinderance to web development (and consumption
of web pages): https://annevankesteren.nl/2016/07/web-computing


On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 3:36 AM, Sean McBeth <sean.mcbeth@primrosevr.com>
wrote:

> It comes to my attention that the issue with XmlHTTPRequest is not to do
> with secure origins, but same-origin policy. So I also have to keep track
> of multiple ways in which my page may not work, for no other reason than
> "browser refuses to do what is syntactically correct". It's a serious
> barrier to adoption for new developers.
> On Jul 13, 2016 6:29 AM, "Sean McBeth" <sean.mcbeth@primrosevr.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jul 13, 2016 6:04 AM, "Martin Splitt" <mr.avgp@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > >> We welcome feedback, especially if this policy makes your planned
>> use case infeasible!
>> > >
>> > > TLS makes all kinds of things infeasible.
>> >
>> > Can you give a example?
>>
>> For one thing, your own file system is not considered a secure origin.
>> I've ran into lots of people trying to get into WebVR that just don't
>> understand what that means. They see a page, they see they can link to
>> images on that page, they can double click on that file and see the
>> results. It never occurs to then that they need to run a local web server.
>> If they don't already know what that means, it's nearly impossible to
>> explain the indirection. Why do they need a web server when the file is
>> right there?
>>
>> I know several more people who have no idea how to setup a self-signed
>> certificate on their machine to be able to test features on their own
>> networks. OpenSSL is not that easy to install on Windows. A similar fiat
>> decision was made for WebRTC. I eventually just copied the certs off of my
>> production site and live with the cert warnings. S terrible solution to a
>> stupid problem.
>>
>> Frankly, I've been a web dev for 20 years and it feels rather ridiculous
>> that web dev is harder, more cumbersome *today*. I don't even get why
>> disabling XmlHTTPRequest was necessary, rather than restricting it to the
>> parent directory of the page.
>>
>> I agree with Florian. It's on Google to provide tools, not dictate how
>> they are used.
>>
>