> Websites that re-implement text boxes, history, scrolling, so many things, never get every detail right.
As browsers continue to give developers more low-level control, the less of a problem this is. Take one of your examples, history. This used to be a high-level feature implemented only by the browser and if you built an SPA your users either had a very bad experience or you had get "clever" with various tricks. Now, we have a nice history API.
You say that everyone benefits from the same years of experience and testing but at the same time they're limited to a single vendor. A single idea of how it should work. And a single implementation. Right now if I don't like how validation works/looks that is implemented in JavaScript, I can choose any number of alternatives or implement my own ideas.
The browser should help developers build the best possible solutions, it should not implement those solutions itself.
Browsers themselves have always had weird edge-cases and as a web developer I've always had to work around them (see this article). Sometimes even depending on the browser. The whole idea of an "SPA" was never even imagined by browser makers but developers made that happen.
> As browsers continue to give developers more low-level control, the less of a problem this is. Take one of your examples, history. This used to be a high-level feature implemented only by the browser and if you built an SPA your users either had a very bad experience or you had get "clever" with various tricks. Now, we have a nice history API.
Quite the opposite, in my experience! As browsers give developers more low-level control, they're more tempted to build half-assed replacements for built-in functionality.
The history API - it's good it exists, mainly because it gives SPA developers a way to solve one of the many intrinsic flaws in the SPA design. On the other hand, it's subject to ridiculous kinds of abuse (stuffing history to make it appear to users that the back button doesn't work), or getting out of sync (because web developers can't manage a stack) and making history unusable.
> The whole idea of an "SPA" was never even imagined by browser makers but developers made that happen.
Yes, with generally terrible results, which could have been avoided if browsers hadn't stagnated.
Really? This is like complaining about movies that use CGI -- you only complain when you can see it. When it's seamless, and often it is, you don't even notice or care.
Why stop at browser apps? All apps are terrible on all operating systems for all the same reasons.
As browsers continue to give developers more low-level control, the less of a problem this is. Take one of your examples, history. This used to be a high-level feature implemented only by the browser and if you built an SPA your users either had a very bad experience or you had get "clever" with various tricks. Now, we have a nice history API.
You say that everyone benefits from the same years of experience and testing but at the same time they're limited to a single vendor. A single idea of how it should work. And a single implementation. Right now if I don't like how validation works/looks that is implemented in JavaScript, I can choose any number of alternatives or implement my own ideas.
The browser should help developers build the best possible solutions, it should not implement those solutions itself.
Browsers themselves have always had weird edge-cases and as a web developer I've always had to work around them (see this article). Sometimes even depending on the browser. The whole idea of an "SPA" was never even imagined by browser makers but developers made that happen.