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Comment by nice_byte | Hacker News Reader

the disconnect here is that the web browser isn't a document viewer (but the author here wants it to be just that). and yeah, html is a _document markup language_, but the problem is that it's not what we _actually want_ - we want cross-platform, sandboxed applications with instantaneous delivery. practically no one really cares about "hypertext" - that's not where the majority of value for most people lies.

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>"we want cross-platform, sandboxed applications with instantaneous delivery"

My version of "we" wants:

a) Plain websites that are just documents with links and navigation.

b) Yes browser based applications please.

c) Yes native apps please as the browser is severely restricted (and for good reasons) on what it allows those apps to do.

Each part is equally important to "we"

i also prefer native apps for doing anything, but the collective "we" has already decided otherwise, and there's no point fighting that tide.

>"collective "we" has already decided otherwise"

It has not. Many native applications are doing just fine. I have one native desktop based as a product with about 40,000 customers and is growing.

The fact that 90% are doing A does not mean that the rest 10% doing B are unprofitable or less important. "Niche" markets (I could hardly call native apps niche yet) can be very attractive.

Yes. Browsers are great at presenting beautiful webpages, the best compliment to that would be an application that opens when you click on "try our app", downloads a nice compressed binary, and executes it in a sandboxed environment that works on every platform. Maybe that can be successfully built into browsers but I believe it could be better done as a separate project with a fresh start.

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