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Comment by ronreiter | Hacker News Reader

The web needs to split into two:

* Reader browser

* Application browser

The reader browser should show you the "web" in a kindle-like readable experience, just as it does today.

However, the application browser, although it does receive a URL, should not have any HTML page as a default view. Instead, a JavaScript should be first loaded, and from there, following the permissions it requests, it can open new windows, notifications, or any other desktop feature needed, which websites that just need to be read do not need.

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I can imagine an "application browser" being essentially a virtualized runtime browser - you point to the 'url' of an application, it downloads the runtime and source code and environment (if you don't already have it) and everything gets sandboxed and compiled on the fly, and runs as if it were native code. Of course, nothing would touch your actual filesystem, and you could get rid of an application as easily as you clean your browser cache today. This would also have the advantage of being language agnostic.

This is already technically kind of sort of possible with any number of sites that use compile-to-js languages, but these are invariably limited by the capabilities javascript and HTML. I suppose the ultimate version of this would look like browseable software images like Docker or something.

Reader browser: I would argue that it should be a reader/writer browser, where authoring, changing and interlinking documents is just as trivial as browsing them.

Application browser: but then why limit it to JavaScript?

I agree with the r/w web, and that was the original vision, but it's not really practical at this point because nobody supports such editing in a standard fashion

Chrome has support for "Chrome Apps" (https://developer.chrome.com/apps/about_apps) which make it at least partly an "application browser" as you're describing.

Interesting concept, but it seems needlessly complicated. What's to prevent websites like, say, the Guardian from declaring themselves as applications?

Nothing. But it would need to request permissions when it does so, and you can then choose not to use it.

Safari and Firefox include a reader mode, directly from the URL bar. A simple click gives you an instant kindle-like experience.

Is it what you mean?

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