Pale Moon forum

I was sent a link to this article: https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/intro ... ontainers/
From what I could gather, the server provides some webassembly which is actually node.js etc. and those programs are executed directly within the browser, instead of installing them on your system.

I wonder how long until computers will return to be thin terminals connected to a large mainframe, except that this time the mainframe is not across the yard from your office but somewhere in the depths of a secret lair located who knows where.

By definition they will be thick clients because you can bet your ass that all computing will be done client side. The only thing that will be "served" is the program code.

vannilla wrote: ↑

2021-05-21, 13:11

thin terminals connected to a large mainframe

Arguably this has long been the case ever since the introduction of javascript and the move towards web applications instead of locally installed ones. And with more and more emphasis on javascript, you can bet they will try to move over currently resource intensive desktop applications to the web. The first step is the subscription model - Adobe and now Microsoft have been doing that for a while. I won't be surprised if there's several more draft features tacked onto the standard so that eventually even complex software like Photoshop will be entirely online and running on Chrome

Personally I have always hated web development because of the totally anything goes approach to UI and widgets. When you develop a desktop application for Windows/Mac/Linux, there are UI conventions and standards to follow on those platforms, and they are easily got by using the standard widget toolkits for them (and even cross platform Qt is getting there in terms of being similar to native applications). With HTML and its very basic support for form elements now being superseded by div tags with heavy scripting and god knows what else. Also the main attraction of XUL development for me - an actual cross platform toolkit that works with simple javascript and lets you create reusable code with overlays and XBL.