The File System Access API with Origin Private File System.
WebKit supports new API that makes it possible for web apps to create, open, read, and write files directly, or create directories and enumerate their contents.
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Ah the modern IE is finally making some tiny movements among the huge mountain of stuff it’s behind on!
To be fair, most of the modern “web standards” are complete bollocks, e.g. Bluetooth audio accessible from the browser? Why?!
Voice communication! Distributed audio output! Etc…
That’s actually a function I used after enabling the browser flag, lol. ^.^
I think we can agree this goes well beyond what a web browser should be able to do…
But yeah, I am aware many companies use the “web browser” more like a “OS-neutral GUI toolkit”, which is a huge shame on Microsoft and Apple, and whomever basement dwellers in Linux land didn’t get tired of measuring pricks whether KDE or GNOME is better… 
And now we’re stuck with this crap – people use the browser as the OS-neutral GUI toolkit that doesn’t actually exist. 
It’s very multi-platform though is the nice bit. I’m very much KDE linux, but I can’t expect everyone else to use what I use, so it’s still a useful way to interact. Now if only the average web developer would quit hemorrhaging memory and learning a bit about performance, lol.
There is a place for KDE and GNOME and XFCE and every other DE under the sun… but these people can’t even agree on a common ABI library that exposes a unified interface to native GUI in Linux! Inexcusable.
They already fulfill the X standards in addition to the freedesktop spec. What else are you referencing?
An actual common GUI. Not just the X protocol, but you know, the same style of components a la macOS’ Cocoa and Windows’ UI.
Elaborate? How would that work? On MacOS the Cocoa (I think?) framework is the most popular but it is by FAR not the only one, especially with all the electron apps. The Windows UI is excessively not uniform. At work at this moment I only have 6 programs up and every single one of them look excessively different, compared to the linux desktop I have up at work as well that has… 32 windows across 14 programs opened and they are quite uniform other than one (Teams, stupid electron).
It’s not the DE that specifies how programs are rendered, every program is given either a chunk of memory to fill in pixel data or a framebuffer to fill in with pixel data. Whatever they render to it is whatever they do. I’m not even sure how such a “common ABI” would work as definitely not mac nor windows have such an enforced thing either (and windows has, like what, 12 different built-in ones that all look different from each other, some of them VERY different).
The fact that the other OS-es started deteriorating is not an excuse for Linux. It should strive to be better.
I frankly don’t care about the details. But I think the pixel-perfect freedom that the Linux GUI programs enjoy should end. There should be only one API / ABI with declarative pieces: window, button, label, radio / check button etc. How would XFCE / KDE / GNOME underneath translate them should be their problem.
You are a better techie than me. You know it’s possible.
How would that work though? If you enforce that then you can’t do arbitrary drawing, so you couldn’t make new interfaces or even something like a game. In addition what happens when someone need different functionality, like a KDE TextInput box is substantially, like way substantially more powerful than the GTK one, do you mandate that high functionality? If so then what about when someone wants a more simple interface? What kind of API do they have, like are they mandated and controlled by the underlying system since the app isn’t allowed to do its own rendering, in which case how does that work, is it dbus messages? Is it something like a C API? But then what about languages that don’t fit in to either of those styles? What about the overhead? How do you map memory between them? Like do you want to send, say, a gig text file back and forth in a TextEditor widget? If it’s rendered in the program then how do you prevent the program from doing its own rendering then? Etc…
There is a near infinite variety of issues around you, just cannot mandate a uniform UI without just disallowing almost all functionality, including games or such things, and you would be locked in to that API even as technology changes, like look at MFC and GDI on windows and how extremely poorly suited it is for modern accelerated rendering, which is a big reason it died.
There should be only one API / ABI with declarative pieces: window, button, label, radio / check button etc. How would XFCE / KDE / GNOME underneath translate them should be their problem.
Okay let’s take some of these. What about a Window? In GTK/Gnome and such it’s a 2d plane. In KDE it’s a 3d mesh (it does not need to be flat even). Which would you support? What about a button, do you want an infinite variety of things that can be put on it, do you allow any widget on it, how do you support IME on it? You won’t even be able to mandate what it says as the program author can put whatever they want on it. Even something as “simple” as drawing a label, like let’s just take the basic version of a text label, does it support wrapping? Is it read by screen readers? Is it tab accessible for accessibility access? How do you internationalize it? How do you handle accelerators on it? How do you define a link of how it’s interfaced with it? Is it even based or callback based? Is it polled or pushed? Etc… And the rest of those get even worse…
And this only scratches the functionality issues among it all, it’s an impossible problem as trying to restrict functionality means that you just aren’t going to get developers for it. It sounds like you would want a single GUI kit that does everything, but that’s impossible, even conflicting requirements in programs. What the X/Wayland systems supply is something to draw on, that’s it, all programs handle their own drawing, to constrain it to a single UI would likely even involve constraining it to a single language, and certainly not something like a C interface as that would just, frankly, be utter hell to use.
And still barely even scratching the iceberg of issues with that.
If you want things to be more uniform then start rewriting GTK or whatever programs to use Qt/KDE, it’s the most powerful out, it’s lower memory, it’s faster, it requires C++, it can do things GTK just outright cannot do. I’d still be horrified at mandating that, I’m not even sure how you even could mandate it.
How would XFCE / KDE / GNOME underneath translate them should be their problem.
No, that’s NOT their problem, they all already supply that, the functionality between them just cannot be mapped between them as the functionality is too different, it would be an issue of the programs that would have to talk to them, especially around missing functionality that they would require.
No, it’s not possible, this is not a tech issue. Everyone could use KDE right now, but they don’t and you cannot force people to do so. If there is a way to do any custom drawing at all, even if that involves just making an image and passing that off to show on the screen and they can react to input anywhere on it to do as they wish then they WILL be doing custom rendering. You cannot stop people from doing that. It’s a social restriction, not a technology restriction.
Oh come on, obviously I was ONLY talking about normal GUI. You know, the stuff that 99.9% of the programs need and use. No need to get nitpicky with words. Pretty sure you knew what I meant.
And? If there’s an independent project building an abstraction on top of both they can inform the users (well, programmers in this case; they use the library). They can put pressure on GTK.
Some evolution, man! Evolution. Like feck all the people who sit on old laurels already.
I know we can’t mandate anything. But the will to improve things is not there.
Correct, and maybe it’s time a mainstream corp or whatever to make a pick between one of the main DEs and start investing more in it. People usually follow.
I am super close to starting to setup a backup dev machine with Linux and truthfully? Not looking forward to all the “diversity”.
Does Safari even have full support for PWA?
Not on iOS, it’d replace a ton of applications. And the 99$ dollars fee plus App Store taxes etc.
On macOS it’s pretty much the same thing, tho you can send notifications, but it’s meh.
Almost every program does custom drawing, whether it’s a little graph, or a sound sensor or whatever. A web browser like using here the entire HTML DOM is self-rendered, right down to my little text editor Kate does custom rendering in the minimap and some plugins. This is not a rare thing.
Except things are done in different ways because they have different feature sets, you can’t map everything from one style to another, there are a lot of incompatibilities in the designs.
Valve has on KDE, lol.
Not last I checked, Safari is the IE of the modern times, always behind and broken and slow.
I’d agree, Safari is the new IE! Apple needs to sort it out 
There are a few reasons why I still use Safari.
It’s so tight to macOS that’s hard to not use it.
Sounds like proprietary lock-in, which should always be avoided!
