Borg, Omega, and Kubernetes (ACM Queue)

If you aren't able to get done what you want to get done, you'll invent features or import them to do it. That plain HTML cannot do those things might be a misuse of HTML, an inadequacy in the specification, or not even coverage of the specification by browsers. But people still want to do it so rather than let them bodge a way to do it, maybe we should be providing languages that are already complete and planned so the planned route is used rather than a third-party add-on.

Of course, just "being" HTML5 isn't the be-all-and-end-all and quite often in my industry (education), I see HTML5 touted as the Flash/Java/Plugin replacement of today. Sure, it can do more, but can it do all that those plugins did? And if it can't, either users or content creators will complain.

And then you get into things like Node.js, emscripten, etc. where - actually - even Javascript isn't sufficient and people ARE using it to recompile C99 code written in SDL to display in a browser window without requiring plugins (replacing things like Unity web plugin, for instance). I've done it. It's magical, miracle-performing, time-saving fabulousness. But still the inner me reels at the thought that such things are necessary, or even so easy to do and still be held as "HTML5 compliant".

A part of me just wants a universal language. That a browser can understand the same as a computer. Vector graphics, for instance, and well-defined bitmap routines. Scalable interfaces. And controls on what portion of the functions the browser will allow or deny rather than having to have OpenGL and WebGL and artificial constructs to impose those limitations. We can't put insert, say, a native-looking application command button, reliably into a web page. So web and desktop-application will always be different, and maybe that's correct but I guarantee that SOMEONE somewhere just wants to recompile their desktop client application into a web client that looks identical.

But there is no simple answer. The less features you give, the more inventions are tacked on, in several different, competing and non-standard ways. The more features you give, the more complex the interaction and you lose the purity of what you were trying to achieve (e.g. have all text searchable or accessible, etc.).

But with the world moving towards virtual machines, containers, apps, etc. I can't see how each webpage being considered an "app" with just resource limits but full capability (subject to operating system security) is really a bad thing. The websites that want to do fancy stuff can. Everyone else can just bundle a basic "generic HTML5 display app" which just renders their old website. That's where Chromebook is basically going. It's where most mobile apps already are. Maybe we should just embrace it and spend time making sure the sandbox is secure and the "instruction set" used consistent and reliable instead of trying to impose perfect purpose-built languages for each part that will all be out of fashion in a year anyway, just as browsers start to support them fully.

I'd honestly prefer www.mybank.com to be a standardised VM-like contained app that had the run of a general purpose instruction set in a limited environment than have to force them to let me use a vaguely modern browser, or stick plugins into IE (still need to do that for my employer's business banking!), etc. So long as I can control resource limits per page, it would probably work out better and if they want to suck in their own proprietary display library, or an Adobe-Flash like library from a remote website, that seems much more sensible than trying to make ME install all those things and keep them up to date forever more and then blaming me when I can't see the website.