D could catch this wave: web assembly

[Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d]

On 06/20/2015 03:00 PM, Joakim wrote:
>
> As the browser tries to mesh these two worlds, the old-fashioned static
> hyperlinked pages and the new dynamic widgets of AJAX and HTML5, rifts
> crop up.  The recent web components efforts you highlight do not address
> this at all, they merely make it easier to build more dynamic webapps.
> But in doing so, they actually bring the problems I'm talking about more
> to the fore.
>

An excellent example of this is sites like github that actually manage 
to break the "back" button, even though it's *clearly* a page-based site 
(that somehow doesn't seem to believe it is).

> The highest-DPI devices I use nowadays are mobile devices and, in my
> experience, websites are the ones who most often get it wrong.  That's
> usually related to tiny text, but that affects the overall layout too.
>

"Smart" TVs also have trouble there:

http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2014/07/samsung_smart_t.html

(See the section "The viewport", just underneath the photo with a phone 
held in front of a TV. Erm...speaking of which: 
<https://semitwist.com/articles/article/view/html-fragment-linking-is-stupid-here-s-the-fix>)


> Pretty soon it won't. :) There are an estimated 2.5 billion smartphone
> users:
>
> http://www.asymco.com/2014/04/07/postmodern-computing/
>
> The highest estimates of desktop and laptop users I've seen don't crack
> 2 billion.  That means desktops are already a minority platform.

People have been looking at the sales trends and predicting for years 
that mobile will kill of PCs. And all that happened (unsurprisingly, 
IMO) is that the decline in PC sales simply leveled off.

Mobile will not, and cannot, replace traditional laptops/desktops (as 
opposed to merely cooexisting with them as is the case right now) until 
if/when they finally incorporate all the usability and features of 
laptops/desktops. Obviously they're not there right *now* yet. But as 
for the future...

> All
> the major mobile vendors are working on multi-window implementations
> which will soon allow you to plug your mobile device into a dock that
> connects to a monitor/keyboard/trackpad on your desk and run your mobile
> apps in a similar way to the desktop: Apple's just-announced
> multi-window feature to go along with their coming iPad Pro, Google's
> in-development multi-window implementation that has been found in the
> Android M build, and Microsoft's recently announced Continuum for mobile
> devices, that lets you plug your Windows Phone into a monitor and use
> Office with a desktop UI.
>
> What this means is that people will soon be using their mobile devices
> for almost everything and desktop computers are effectively dead. :)
> Now, workstations were killed off by PCs and they still sell a couple
> million worldwide.  Similarly, there will always be a niche for PCs and
> mainframes.  It's just a small niche.

I don't think "phones/tablets replacing desktops/laptops" is an entirely 
accurate way of describing how that will happen (if it does).  More like 
"phones/tablets and desktops/laptops will converge into a hybrid".

Of course, that's dependent on the phone/tablet folks actually managing 
to pull it off. Which is certainly a possibility, I agree, but I'm not 
convinced they'll necessarily manage to, at least not in the short term.

MS, oddly enough, seems to have the highest chance of succeeding at 
this, as desktop/mobile convergence has been their big goal since Win8. 
And then Win9 (erm, I mean 10) cleans up some of the mess Win8 left. 
(Not that I like metro or what the metro "theme" has done to the desktop 
side of windows, even in Win9^H10, but that's beside the point here.)

Interestingly, Canonical could've beat everyone to the punch here. They 
had what was basically "continuum for linux" more or less already 
working, but then...they just...what, threw it in the trash bin or 
something? I dunno, I don't quite get Canonical sometimes.