You confuse marketing websites with productivity apps, google docs, figma and many more already render on a canvas using webassembly or not. It's a matter of exposing the right tools
There's friction to doing it this way right now, though. You lose out quickly on accessibility, SEO, performance and developer experience (you need developers that are more experienced).
Unfortunately, thinking about it in terms of game theory [0], I believe this is a good thing: I don't want most websites migrating to canvas-like APIs for rendering. My web browser is my agent and I'd like it to mostly render DOM-rendered pages with CSS styling and, perhaps, funny JavaScript that doesn't track me around.
Also, I wish Figma and Google Docs were just offline-usable desktop applications. Both are great _products_ and I use them, but using them on a browser tab makes me unhappy.
You can have programmatic apis for accessibility, SEO pages can be dom based, performance of figma is better than if implemented via the dom api, developer experience? you just get the best and stop pretending you have capable people that spend a day on discussing effects in react.
> My web browser is my agent
It's very likely not anymore, otherwise Chrome wouldn't have pushed for manifest v3
> I wish Figma and Google Docs were just offline-usable desktop applications.
I wish this too, but since we have decided app distribution to be web based, we need serious tools for making serious apps
> stop pretending you have capable people that spend a day on discussing effects in react.
Figma uses React for the UI panels. Google Docs uses the DOM extensively too.
> have pushed for manifest v3
I don't use Google Chrome.
> since we have decided app distribution to be web based
No one has decided this, it just happened because web browsers were in the right place at the right time. It's not set in stone and developer tooling for the desktop could easily revert this trend in a decade or so.
> Figma uses React for the UI panels. Google Docs uses the DOM extensively too.
Tangential uses of the dom, the core app is on the canvas
> I don't use Google Chrome.
Who cares? They have an almost monopoly and they dictate what to implement on the web, it's already happening that many sites don't work on firefox because they've been only optimized for Chrome. And btw Firefox will implement manifest v3 as well. If you're not using Firefox or Safari you're still using chromium. We don't even have the capability anymore of developing alternative browser engines, the spec is a monster and the various attempts are still very far away.
> No one has decided this, it just happened because web browsers were in the right place at the right time
Exactly and since this is the current reality I don't see why we couldn't have better browser tooling for rendering near native stuff like we do on desktop frameworks. Developer tooling for the desktop already exists since ages but web folks have injected desktop apps as well with bloated stuff like electron
Unfortunately, thinking about it in terms of game theory [0], I believe this is a good thing: I don't want most websites migrating to canvas-like APIs for rendering. My web browser is my agent and I'd like it to mostly render DOM-rendered pages with CSS styling and, perhaps, funny JavaScript that doesn't track me around.
Also, I wish Figma and Google Docs were just offline-usable desktop applications. Both are great _products_ and I use them, but using them on a browser tab makes me unhappy.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory
> My web browser is my agent
It's very likely not anymore, otherwise Chrome wouldn't have pushed for manifest v3
> I wish Figma and Google Docs were just offline-usable desktop applications.
I wish this too, but since we have decided app distribution to be web based, we need serious tools for making serious apps
Tangential uses of the dom, the core app is on the canvas
> I don't use Google Chrome.
Who cares? They have an almost monopoly and they dictate what to implement on the web, it's already happening that many sites don't work on firefox because they've been only optimized for Chrome. And btw Firefox will implement manifest v3 as well. If you're not using Firefox or Safari you're still using chromium. We don't even have the capability anymore of developing alternative browser engines, the spec is a monster and the various attempts are still very far away.
> No one has decided this, it just happened because web browsers were in the right place at the right time
Exactly and since this is the current reality I don't see why we couldn't have better browser tooling for rendering near native stuff like we do on desktop frameworks. Developer tooling for the desktop already exists since ages but web folks have injected desktop apps as well with bloated stuff like electron