The Web Platform &
the Process of Progress
Alex Russell <slightlyoff@google.com>
Fronteers, October 5, 2012
@slightlylate
Progress is a
man-made process
Progress is relative to human standards and values. It's also subject
nearly entirely to man-made changes in the environment, tools, and
education. Our greatest achievements aren't naturally-occuring
events, they're liberating, empowering changes to the situations of
our fellow men and women brought on by improvements in morals,
technology, and norms.
Progress requires change
There's no progress without change.
Change is a vector
Not all change is good, nor is all change substantive. Making large,
positive changes therefore requires that we have it in mind that we
want to make things better for people and that we are
the ones who will bring it about.
molwick.com
Some Thought Experiments
- What if there were only one browser?
- What if browsers still cost money?
- What if everyone had the latest version of the best browsers immediately?
- What if everyone were instantly upgraded, but there were no auto-updates?
flickr.com/photos/csswizardry/7123697613
Tell the Front-Trends story:
- saw one talk that extoled the virtues of polyfills
- next talk by Rachel Andrew (photo?) talked about the costs
- webdevs caught in the middle
Polyfills Are A Tax
flickr.com/photos/trekkyandy/1683463590
HTTPArchive, 2012, Top 1000 Sites
flickr.com/photos/evanblaser/5573908825
...it's called Accessibility, and it's the most important thing in the computing world.
The. Most. Important. Thing.
We are building multiple experiences, wether we know it or not. If
you don't believe you are, you aren't testing your fallback...and
I've got nothing but contempt for your work.
So we need to deliver multiple good experiences at the
lowest possible cost. HTML is brilliant at this, but only if
we pay attention. The trick, then, is to try to do as much as we can
to reduce the number of designed experiences. Optimally, we want two
buckets: the "top-level experience" and the "fallback experience".
...and we need all of this to work on IE 7 & 8...
flickr.com/photos/virgomerry/86976318
This factory looks like it's polluting, but that's just the post-hoc
view. It's likely doing some other things too: creating jobs, raising
standards of living, helping people acquire the products it makes at
much lower price than if you hand to try to make it without
industrial means...so pollution is a side-effect of a good thing.
It's the cumulative effects that cause problems.
flickr.com/photos/captainchaos/40122880/
Perception is Reality
source: caniuse.com
Progress Delayed Is
Progress Denied
The Price of Delay: <canvas>
- Introduced '04 by Apple
- 82% penetration (likely lower) in 8 years
- Improving at the rate which IE <= 8 dies
- 15% and falling
The Price of Delay: Rounded Corners
- Introduced by Firefox in '04
- Introduced into Safari by Apple in '07
- 82% in 8 years
- Improving at the rate which IE <= 8 dies
- 15% and falling
The Price of Delay: SVG
- Usable in WebKit and Gecko since at least '06
- 82% in 6 years
- Improving at the rate which IE <= 8 dies
- 15% and falling
The Price of Delay: <video>
- Introduced by Opera in 2007
- 82% in 5 years
- Improving at the rate which IE <= 8 dies
- 15% and falling
The Price of Delay: 3D CSS Transforms
- Introduced to WebKit by Apple in July '09
- 64% in 3 years
- Improving at the rate which IE <= 9 dies
Optimistically, New Features Shipped Today Will Not Be Usable Until 2016
The IE8 Baseline
- Introduced March '09: 2mo before Chrome 2.0
- Global usage: 13%
- Assuming Need to support IE8 blocks use of:
- Modern JS
- Canvas & SVG
- CSS3 selectors & media queries
- CSS Multiple backgrounds, drop shadows, gradients
<video>- CSS Transforms & Animations
- Anything new (e.g.: WebGL, Web Audio, Web Components)
What about an IE7 Baseline?
- Introduced '06...Pluto was still a planet, iPhone didn't exist
- Supporting IE 7 blocks adoption of:
- Everything listed for IE8
- x-domain messaging & ajax
- Local storage of any kind
- Safe JSON parsing
- Fast DOM queries with CSS syntax
- Ajax Accessibility
- Data URLs
- CSS box-sizing
flickr.com/photos/usaghumphreys/7407407960/
flickr.com/photos/thedjneight/363709985
Only We Can Do This
The tension we feel, the cognitive dissonance mixed with pride we feel about doing a good job in a shitty environment is entirely warranted. But instead of advocating for use of some technique because